Team

Youngstown East

Record	Div.	Conf.
1/9	Div. II	All-American Conference Red Tier

Team

Liberty

Record	Div.	Conf.
8/3	Div. V	All-American Conference Blue Tier

By John Bassetti

sports@vindy.com

LIBERTY

One thing was certain coming into Friday’s game: one team would win for the first time, while the other would be 0-3.

Leon Bell and Larry Reed scored rushing touchdowns as East (1-2) went home happy following its 14-0 win over Liberty (0-3).

With senior quarterback James Boatwright III at the controls, East had 185 total yards to Liberty’s 107 in the Panthers’ first victory since a 2014 season-ending 32-0 win over Ashtabula Edgewood.

“He’s climbing up in our [quarterback] race here,” coach P.J. Mays said of Boatwright, who was 4 of 9 for 45 yards passing, while Bell ran 16 times for 70 yards, followed by Mike Lawrence’s 33 yards on six carries and Reed’s 32 yards on 10 carries.

Boatwright, Reed, Bell and Lawrence owed some of their success to the blocking of sophomore center Marcus Caudill, junior left guard Arthur Ford, freshman left tackle Chris Fitzgerald, junior right guard Keyshon Childs and senior right tackle Raquon Taylor.

“They’re a young group trying to come into their own by doing some things they can do mentally and physically,” Mays said of his offensive line.

Reed, as outside linebacker, Reed recovered a fumble that led to East’s first touchdown: Bell’s 7-yard run in the second quarter.

Reed also scored East’s second TD, a 1-yard run in the fourth quarter. Caudill made both point-after kicks.

Mays said many of the running plays were “some basic off-tackle, [Jim] Tressel football.”

Mays played for the former YSU coach in the 1990s.

“We’re trying to get us an identity up front because we have backs like Reed and Bell and Lawrence, who was used in the late third quarter and fourth quarter,” Mays said.

Mays said that Reed, a fullback, gets the tough yards. He scored in each of East’s first three games so far: losses to Ursuline and University School.

Reed’s fumble recovery came before East drove 54 yards to go up, 7-0.

“The defensive line was fired up and I got to the ball,” Reed said. “It feels good, but we’ve got to put this win behind us and focus on next week.”

East will visit Niles in its first All-American Conference Red Tier game. It will be East’s first league game since the City Series disbanded.

Boatwright had his first win at quarterback.

“In the first half I was messing up, but coach [Mays] told me to hang in there, so I loosened up and played better,” he said.

Liberty’s Andree Bowers made his first start at quarterback in place of JaShaun Whitman, who was a better fit at receiver, where he had five catches for 48 yards.

Bowers is playing football in high school for the first time.

Asked if anything positive could be extracted from Friday’s loss, Liberty coach Chet Allen said, “Our kids didn’t stop and kept fighting. We’re getting closer to the team we want to be and, when we do that, we’ll get the first ‘W’.”

Junior Blair was the Leopards’ top rusher with 37 yards on eight carries.

“He’s a battering ram,” Allen said. “If he would have come into the season in shape, we would have been better off, but we’ve got to use him any way we can. He’s a big body, so why not?”

Liberty, which has only scored seven points in 12 quarters so far, has had its back up against the wall too much this season.

“We keep liking to defend our red zone and it’s getting kind of old,” the coach said. “We’d like to defend the long field, which we did in the second half [when the Leopards made East work during its nine-play drive for its second TD], but it kind of wears us out.”

Liberty, which is starting a season 0-3 for the first time since 2011, plays Brookfield next.