By John Bassetti

sports@vindy.com

Youngstown

United Local came to play. The Golden Eagles came to play keep-away.

The admirable strategy did keep the ball out of Ursuline’s hands in a Division V, Region 7 quarterfinal, but United (7-4) couldn’t handle the load that the Irish possessed at Stambaugh Stadium on Saturday night.

“I say this tongue-in-cheek: They were bigger than us, faster than us and stronger than us; other than that, it was a fair game,” United coach Mike Ward said following his team’s 39-7 loss to the Irish (7-4).

Although the eventual outcome was expected, Ursuline didn’t have a playoff-perfect start with its first possession ending in a failed 33-yard field goal attempt.

Then Vito Penza threw a 44-yard touchdown pass to his favorite target, Dakota Hobbs, and Kimauni Johnson ran 44 yards to generate some Irish rhythm that got Ursuline off to a 13-0 first-quarter lead.

“They’re a very good team that’s well-coached and disciplined and their game plan was to keep the ball away from us,” Ursuline coach Larry Kempe said. “We had a couple quick scores and then, I think, they got a little down.”

From Ward’s perspective, it was: “We punted the ball, they got a decent return, we held and forced a field-goal kick and then they scored on a third-and-10. I can’t fault any of our performance, we just got outplayed by a better team.”

By halftime, Ursuline had 231 yards total offense to United’s 30, despite the Golden Eagles using as much of the play clock as possible.

United’s time of possession in the first half was 17:49 to Ursuline’s 6:11.

Next, Ursuline will play Liberty.

“We did some things I’m happy about,” Kempe said. “I think we came back and played very aggressively and ran to the football, which is what I wanted to have happen tonight. When we’re playing our type of game, we can be a very good football team,” he said of traits, such as, “being very aggressive, going after people, hitting people and being strong on both offensive and defensive fronts.”

Helping Ursuline finish with 273 yards on 31 rushing plays was the offensive line of Dante Cerimele, Sean McGuire, Robbie Beardman, Jonathan Neeley, Giacamo Cappabianca and Jabbar Price.

Penza also had TD runs of 20 and 51 yards, followed by Irish TDs of 9 yards from Daylen Harris and 2 yards by Anise Algahmee. John Hintz had three PATs.

United got on the scoreboard in the fourth quarter when J.D. Swords was running in the end zone as he caught Cody Dickens’ scoring strike from 15 yards away. Nick Varagliotti had the extra-point kick.

Also for United, Eric Blosser’s 13 carries netted 47 yards and Caige Vincent had six carries for 12 yards. Penza had 96 yards on three attempts and Johnson carried 10 times for 79 yards.

In the air, Penza was 2 of 8 for 59 yards, while Cody Dickens completed two of six passes for 17 yards for the Golden Eagles.

One area of concern for the Irish in upcoming games should be its point-after department, where three PATs failed.

Asked to comment on Liberty, Kempe said, “I’ve never seen them. We don’t play [many local schools], so I don’t know anything about them.”

Ward gave this assessment of his Golden Eagles: “We were outmatched, but I’m very proud of my team. We had a great week of practice and showed up and we worked extremely hard to get to this point. We won seven games in a very tough Inter-Tri-County League upper tier. We were rewarded by getting to the playoffs.”