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Prep teammates Cejudo and Gibbs are reunited with the Penguins
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YSU long snapper Nathan Gibbs helped the Penguins form the best special teams unit of Eric Wolford’s four-year tenure.
Prep teammates Joey Cejudo and Nathan Gibbs are reunited with the Penguins
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
Paul McFadden came to Youngstown State as a standout soccer player from Euclid. Jeff Wilkins played quarterback at Austintown Fitch. Nick Liste played soccer and ran track at Niles.
Joey Cejudo? He was a short(ish), chubby high school kid who tried playing quarterback, guard and defensive tackle before it became obvious that his best position on the football field was as a kicker. Also, his only position.
“My first varsity play was at defensive tackle my junior year,” said Cejudo, who hails from Chino Hills, Calif., 30 minutes east of Los Angeles. “They asked who hadn’t played yet and I hadn’t played. It was the last 11 seconds of the game.”
He was “Rudy” Ruettiger, only if Rudy had grown five inches and lost 25 pounds after high school. He went from struggling to make 45-yard field goals as a Division III hopeful to booming 60-yard field goals at kicking camps.
“Next thing I knew,” he said, “schools were calling.”
Cejudo (6-foot-4, 220 pounds) spent the next two years at two California junior colleges, then headed 2,400 miles east to Youngstown, where he was reunited with his high school classmate, long snapper Nathan Gibbs, who had joined the Penguins in July of 2011, three weeks before training camp.
“I did not know one thing about Youngstown, Ohio,” said Gibbs, who was set to play junior college football after considering a local Division III school. “I didn’t hear about it until I got an email from [then-special teams coach Louie] Matsakis. I had to look it up to see where it was. I was like, ‘Oh, an hour from Cleveland, an hour from Pittsburgh. That’s not too bad.’”
Last season, Cejudo and Gibbs joined Liste and holder Dante Nania to form the core of the first good special teams unit of the Eric Wolford era. Liste earned first team all-conference honors, while Cejudo made 6 of 8 field goals and 49 of 51 extra points.
One of the missed extra points came on the lone bad snap of Gibbs’ career, which came midway through the second quarter of last year’s win at South Dakota.
“I didn’t follow through all the way,” Gibbs said. “I think another big thing is Joey and I actually went to high school with one of South Dakota’s star linebackers [Auston Johnson] and he was in my ear the whole time.”
Did he brag afterward?
“No, because we beat them,” said Gibbs, who made a perfect snap on YSU’s last extra point, which made it 38-34 with 14 seconds left. “I made up for it on the last one, right? That’s all that matters.”
Of course, the game-winning snap came two quarters after the bad one. That’s the problem with being a specialist, Gibbs said.
“Let’s say you have a bad block,” he said. “You can go back the next play and make up for it. If you have a bad snap or a bad kick, you have 20 or 30 minutes just to think about it. You have to have a short-term memory.
“Let’s say you’re at your job and you have nothing to do all day. Then your boss comes and said, ‘Hey, I need this done in five minutes,’ so for five minutes you work your tail off, then you sit back and relax for the rest of the day. I guess you could say that’s what long-snapping is.”
With Liste graduating, Cejudo will handle placekicking, kickoff and punting duties this fall. He averaged 36.7 yards per punt two years ago at Mt. San Antonio College, putting 15 of 47 inside the 20. He even taught Liste an end-over-end style that helps pin opponents near the goal line.
“I think he taught me more about field goals and I taught him more how to punt,” Cejudo said.
Hopefully, Liste taught him a few bad-weather tips, too. The California natives both say they love everything about Ohio except the weather, particularly when it snows on Tax Day.
“I’m sure everybody that lives here is sick of it, too,” Gibbs said.
Besides, California has its own problems. Going into his sophomore year of high school, Gibbs was attending summer school when an earthquake hit.
“The epicenter was my high school,” he said. “The buildings were just going crazy. You’re supposed to drop and get under your desk but while it’s happening, what are you going to do? We were just shocked.
“So what would you rather have? Snow falling from the sky or the ground opening up?”