Ed Puskas: Irish earn high Marx in victory

Dakota Hobbs need not worry about Jeff Marx taking his job as a receiver and return specialist with the Ursuline High School football team.

Hobbs returned a kickoff 85 yards for a touchdown and also caught a 36-yard TD pass from Jared Fabry as the Irish outlasted Cleveland Benedictine 33-32 in double-overtime Saturday night.

But Marx — who made the game’s final and decisive play — had his own memorable sprint. It went for about 90 yards, and Ursuline coach Larry Kempe was impressed.

“I’ve never seen him run so quickly,” said Kempe, who watched Marx sprint from one end of the field to the other at Bedford Bearcat Stadium after clinching the Irish victory by blocking the Bengals’ extra-point kick at the end of the second OT.

“All the kids followed him and smothered him in the other end zone,” Kempe said. “It was comical, but it was a great team- building moment.”

Marx’s heroics ended a game Kempe likened to a prize fight. Both teams delivered and took haymakers all night — with the exception of a 94-minute lightning delay — but neither could secure victory.

At least not until Marx broke through the line and effectively tore out Benedictine’s heart. The funny thing about it was that Marx’s job on Ursuline’s middle-block play is to use his 6-foot, 292-pound body to create an opening so 6-6 teammate Anthony Howell can get to the ball.

“Jeff just blew through and made the block,” Kempe said.

Marx had lots of help.

Hobbs scored on two big plays and fullback Spencer Warren scored three touchdowns, including the go-ahead score — a 20-yard run on Ursuline’s first and only play from scrimmage in the second OT.

Beating a defending Division III regional finalist on the road is even more impressive when you consider what happened to Ursuline a week earlier.

“We came out of a pretty good licking in our last scrimmage against Canton McKinley, but our kids worked hard last week in getting better and better,” Kempe said.

Perhaps as impressive as anything, Kempe said, was his team’s physical conditioning.

“I think we played football for about five hours and we didn’t have one cramp, and we didn’t have one kid go down,” he said.

Lightning stopped the game from about 7:30 p.m. until just after 9.

“We had to play three quarters in a very short period of time,” Kempe said.

“I can’t say enough about our kids. They were focused during that entire delay, and when we started up again at 9, they were great. ... It’s all up to the kids. We’re young in a lot of ways, but we have some veterans and the seniors took over.”

Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.