Neighboring schools, Liberty and Ursuline, meet for only the second time

By Kevin Connelly | kconnelly@vindy.com

If two Mahoning Valley schools, located less than five miles apart, hardly ever play each other on the football field, can there really be a rivalry?

Does a bear ... roam Youngstown’s North Side?

Ursuline High School and Liberty High School meet Saturday night at Warren’s Mollenkopf Stadium in a Division V regional semifinal. It’s the first football game between the neighboring schools in 10 years and just the second all-time.

The Leopards shut out the Irish, 6-0, in the second round of the Division IV playoffs in 2004.

Since then, the programs have been at opposite ends of the spectrum. Liberty has just four postseason wins, while Ursuline has played in four state championships — winning three titles.

Liberty head coach Kevin Cylar was in charge of defensive backs during the Irish’s state title runs. Ursuline head coach Larry Kempe was the defensive coordinator.

Cylar says he’s tried not to buy into the hype too much, but it’s been difficult.

“I have a couple kids who used to play for Ursuline, who still have a lot of ties and friends over there,” said the Leopards’ second-year coach.

“There will be different story lines, depending on which one you want to pay attention to.”

We chose to pay attention to them all to get you ready for Saturday night’s Battle of the North Side.

KNOW THY NEIGHBOR

When the Liberty head coaching job suddenly came open less than two months before the start of the 2013 football season, the school had to move fast.

The Leopards were coming off a turnaround 9-3 season, after losing 18 straight games.

Cylar’s name was a familiar one around the school district, since he was a substitute teacher in the system. It was also well-known in the football community, for his connection to Ursuline’s recent success.

The change made sense.

“It was just more of an opportunity for my family, first and foremost,” Cylar said. “It wasn’t really anything to do with me, it was a family decision.

“My kids were going to Liberty, I was teaching in the school system and it just seemed like a good fit for me at the time.”

Cylar’s energetic personality and ability to connect to Youngstown-area kids — he was a 1991 East High grad — helped him become an instant hit at Liberty.

Kempe was named the Ursuline head coach in 2011. When Cylar left his staff two years later for the school down the street, Kempe knew what type of coach he was losing.

“He brings a lot of energy and the kids love to play for him,” Kempe said. “You get the kids to play for you, that’s a step in the right direction.”

What’s happened since is only natural when two coaches compete for many of the same athletes and their teams never come up on the schedule.

“We don’t really speak anymore, but he knows me and I know him,” Cylar said. “I guess that both of us may try and rely on that [Saturday], but it’s been so long.”

Both coaches downplayed either having any advantages because of their history. Cylar does have the benefit of knowing a few players who are still on the Ursuline roster from when he was there, but he shrugged that off, too.

“I didn’t get to share a lot of my ideas over there,” Cylar said. “So even though I worked over there, I wouldn’t say that [Kempe] knows a lot about me and I really don’t know a lot about him.”

REMEMBER THE NAME

Lynn Bowden grew up playing youth football for the Northside Knights in the Youngstown Little League.

That was the first time Cylar saw him play.

Now, if you believe Kempe, the first he saw of the Liberty quarterback was at his team’s film session earlier this week.

“You know what you hear,” Kempe said. “You don’t know much, because you’ve never seen them.”

If that’s the case, Kempe, and the rest of the Ursuline defense, got an eyeful of the area’s most-dynamic player, alongside a very familiar face.

Bowden has rushed for 1,888 yards and thrown for 751 in his first season at quarterback. The sophomore averages more than 10 yards per carry and has accounted for 38 touchdowns.

His sidekick in the Leopards’ offense, Ben Phillips, is a player the Irish need no introduction to. Phillips spent the first three years of his high school career at Ursuline, before enrolling at Liberty for his senior year.

In fact, Phillips was the favorite target of former Irish quarterback Chris Durkin last season. The two connected 23 times for 398 yards and three touchdowns.

Then the 6-foot-3, 200-pound wideout decided to join his cousin, Bowden, for his final season of high school football.

“I put trust in a couple coaches from Ursuline, but I had a lot of trust with Liberty,” Phillips said of the change. “I wanted to put my life in the hands of Liberty coaches to get me further.”

How’s that working out for the senior?

“Good,” he said. “Real good.”

Just another story line, depending on which one you want to pay attention to. Although this one the two sides couldn’t downplay as much as the coaching reunion.

“It means something, but you don’t want to get too high or too low,” Phillips said. “You just want to keep it the same like it’s just another week.”

Only it’s not just another week and both teams know that. If it were, Phillips wouldn’t have cut off communication with some of his friends down the road.

“I keep in touch with them, but not this week,” he said with a grin. “Can’t talk to them this week.”

Kempe has been in coaching for the better part of four decades. He’s been at Ursuline for more than 10 years. Point being, he’s seen and experienced it all. So don’t expect the veteran coach to provide any sort of bulletin board material.

“The nice thing about our program right now is if someone leaves, we’ve got somebody to take their place,” Kempe said. “I think it’s decisions by people to go where they want to go, it’s a parental decision, and they can go wherever they want.”

DUAL-THREAT QUARTERBACKS

The Thursday night before Ursuline was to travel to Erie Strong Vincent for a Week 7 game last season, then-junior Vito Penza saw the Irish’s quarterback, Durkin, show up to practice in a walking boot.

“That night before the game was the first time I’ve ever taken quarterback snaps,” Penza recalled. “I remember my first throw [in the game] was probably five yards into the ground in front of my target.”

He’s settled into the position nicely since then. The 6-foot-3, 220-pound senior — who still wears No. 39 despite playing quarterback — has had an inconsistent year throwing the ball, but showed he can take over a game with his legs in a victory over Massillon earlier this season.

Penza ran for 176 yards and three touchdowns against the Tigers, despite not completing a single pass in the game.

That stat line should look familiar to Liberty. Bowden did the same thing in last week’s first-round win over Gilmour Academy, rushing for 232 yards and four touchdowns with zero completions.

“I’ve never coached their player,” Kempe said of the comparison.

“Our player I’ve had for two years and he does what you ask him to do.

“Sometimes he puts a little too much pressure on himself to carry the team. When he’s just there playing, and relaxed, he can be a real good player.”

Dual-threat quarterbacks can be difficult for defenses to prepare for. However when you see one in practice every day, the preparation becomes routine. Such has been the case for both the Leopards and the Irish.

“Ursuline’s seen it all,” Cylar said, “so I don’t think that we’ll bring anything that they haven’t seen yet.”

They’ll still be faced with the challenge on Saturday of doing something no team’s been able to do all season: stop Bowden.

Kempe knows that and plans to make sure his team does, too.

“You must contain their skill people,” he said. “They’ve got some good skill people and if you contain their skill, that may make it a different ball game.”

The Irish have seen their share of talented players this season. Ursuline’s regular-season opponents averaged a Division II ranking. The four losses the Irish suffered came against teams still playing postseason football.

Liberty’s opponents, on the other hand, averaged out to Division IV, and its one loss came to Division VI Cleveland Villa Angela-St. Joseph — which lost in the opening round last week.

“It really prepares us seeing great athletes,” Penza said. “We’ve seen Jerome Baker (Benedictine), Danny Clark (Massillon), Jordan Jones (Mooney) — the list goes on.

“Just seeing great athletes every week, tackling them, trying to put pressure on them if they’re at the quarterback position, has helped us tremendously.”

You’d be hard pressed to find a bad word said about the other team — publicly at least — leading up to Saturday night’s game. But that doesn’t mean these two teams are blind to the story lines that exist.

Cylar described what he expects the atmosphere at Mollenkopf Stadium to be like in five words: “The Catholics against the Classics.”

Penza may have summed up the neighborhood rivalry best: “This week you cut off all ties and friends turn to enemies,” he said. “It’s war come Saturday.”