Team

Austintown Fitch

Record	Div.	Conf.
6/4	Div. I	All-American Conference Gold Tier

Team

Cardinal Mooney

Record	Div.	Conf.
7/5	Div. IV	Independents

Fowler’s TD passes help Falcons improve their postseason status

By John Bassetti

sports@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Sophomore Nate Fowler threw touchdown passes to senior Earl Scott and junior Marquis Barbel in the second quarter and engineered a 68-yard fourth-quarter drive to break a tie as Austintown Fitch beat Cardinal Mooney, 21-14, at Stambaugh Stadium on Friday night.

The win elevated Fitch (7-3) to a better position entering the Division I, Region 1 playoffs next weekend and knocked the Cardinals (4-5) out of postseason contention in Division IV, Region 11.

Fitch sophomore Jakari Lumsden scored from a yard out with 2:33 remaining to finalize the score that had Mooney with a lopsided 17-7 advantage in first downs.

“Our game plan was simple: Throw the ball,” said Fitch coach Phil Annarella, whose Falcons have beaten Mooney fourth straight years.

“They’re good defensively, but we knew that the teams that had the most success against them this year have been teams that threw the ball,” Annarella said. “We had nothing to lose; we can’t run the ball worth a darn. We thought maybe we could exploit them and, fortunately, we executed some things that we practiced all week.”

Mooney recovered from what could have been an early back-breaking play when Fowler — who passed for 195 yards — hit Scott on a pass play covering 93 yards in the second quarter.

Fitch scored again a little over three minutes later when Fowler threw a 12-yard TD to Barbel.

Mooney had its first touchdown when Jack Lynch connected with Andrew Armstrong on a 13-yard TD before halftime. The Cards knotted the game when Devon McNutt ran 5 yards with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter.

Then Lumsden’s TD was the clincher.

Annarella explained: “When we were huddling during timeouts, I said, ‘We’re going to move the ball and score and win this game, so smile at me.’ They all got a big grin. Then I said, ‘Relax because we’re going to do what we need to do. That’s what they did.”

Like his coach’s simple game plan summarization, Fowler’s synopsis of his big heave to Scott was also simple.

“Trust your arm and let it fly,” Fowler said. “I trusted the line and just let it go.”

On the game-winning drive, ball security was the key.

“Our focus was to keep getting yards and ball security,” said Fowler, who looks forward to his first playoff

“That’s a good football team,” Annarella said of Mooney. “I’m hoping that our players’ confidence has improved now. We’ll see. We’re going to get a tough draw, no matter what, next week, but at least there’s a next week.”

Mooney coach P.J. Fecko said that although the Cards controlled the game’s tempo, that didn’t result in touchdowns.

“On the offensive side, we did a really good job controlling the line of scrimmage and moving the ball up and down the field, but we didn’t do a very good job of finishing,” Fecko said.

“We had some opportunities and, somewhere along the line, we’d falter — with a penalty here or there or a miscue. When you control the ball as well as we did, you have to finish and come up with points and we didn’t do that. Obviously, on the defensive side, we did a decent job up front against the run, and, other than some big plays, we did a decent job,” he said of the 93-yard pass play for a touchdown and a fumble in Mooney territory on the first play after Fitch took a 7-0 lead.

After a 7-yard gain by Mooney, the Cards could have had second-and-3, but Alex Sepesy fumbled.

“It was a 14-point swing on those two plays,” Fecko said. “We came up on the short end of big plays.”