A year to remember in sports

Staff report

From January to December, Youngstown-area sports teams consistently captured the Mahoning Valley’s imagination.

There were multiple national and state title runs.

One area athlete won a huge honor, but other familiar Valley athletes lost their lives.

Old made way for the new while a favorite son may try and get back into the national spotlight.

As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Cleveland’s professional sports were a disappointment.

Here are the really important local sporting moments of 2017:

111Youngstown State’s football team made its first Football Championship Subdivision National Championship appearance since 1999 while also snapping a 10-year postseason drought.

Cardinal Mooney graduate and Penguins head coach Bo Pelini led a team with two future NFL draftees in defensive ends Derek Rivers and Avery Moss. Hunter Wells went from starting the season as a the fourth-string quarterback to the starting quarterback in the national title game.

The follow-up to that season was a bit of a dud. The Penguins went 6-5 and missed the playoffs. The Penguins started out 3-1 with an overtime loss to FBS Pitt as the only blemish. Then YSU lost to South Dakota and North Dakota State by three points in each game and dropped a road contest to Northern Iowa. Pelini’s first shutout loss of his career, a 35-0 drubbing by Illinois State on Homecoming, killed the Penguins’ season. YSU lost defensive coordinator Carl Pelini — Bo’s older brother — as he takes the same gig at Bowling Green. Less than a week later, offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery left for the same job at UNC Charlotte.

111Austintown Fitch graduate Billy Price was an indispensable part of the Buckeyes for this season and his career.

Price capped his final season with Ohio State by winning the Rimington Trophy, which is given to the best center in college football, and is set to play in tonight’s Cotton Bowl against Southern Cal. He was also named a first-team All-American this year. This was his first year playing center after spending the last three as a guard.

Price holds the school record for consecutive starts with 53.

111Walter Reyes died unexpectedly on Nov. 26. The Struthers graduate and Syracuse legend was 36. The cause of death hasn’t been released.

At Syracuse, Reyes ran for 3,424 yards, ran for 45 touchdowns and caught 50 passes for 550 yards. His numbers place him ahead of football legends like Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and Larry Csonka.

Campbell graduate and former YSU running back Shawn Patton died on May 2.

Patton led the Red Devils to a state final appearance in 1989 and helped the Penguins win the 1994 Division I-AA national championship.

Patton ran for 1,626 yards, scored 17 touchdowns and averaged five yards per carry during the ’94 season.

Patton rushed for 140 yards on 27 carries — including a 55-yard touchdown — in the title game against Boise State.

Bob Carlson, a former basketball standout at Wilson and YSU, died unexpectedly of a heart attack on April 13 in Sarasota, Fla. He was 61.

Carlson taught at Campbell for 35 years and was a long-time coach for the Red Devils and with other Valley schools. Scholarships were established in his name at Campbell, Boardman and YSU.

111Local sports teams were great in 2017. South Range and Canfield high schools’ football teams had undefeated regular seasons. The Cardinals eventually fell in the regional final while the Raiders made their second state semifinal appearance.

On the softball diamond, Poland’s 13-14 softball team won the Junior League World Series in August. To call that team a Poland softball team wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Canfield’s KaiLi Gross joined up with players who are her rivals in high school to form an unstoppable pitching tandem with Poland’s Brooke Bobbey.

Champion High School was the champion of spring sports. The Golden Flashes baseball and softball teams became the second team in the history of Ohio high school sports to win state titles in the same seasons.

There also was a family connection to the title. Michael Turner was the starting catcher on the Champion baseball team and his sister Megan was the starting shortstop for the softball team.

Softball coach Cheryl Weaver guided Champion to its seventh state championship and her fourth. Baseball coach Rick Yauger helped deliver the school’s first baseball title. The Flashes upset the tournaments’ No. 1 seed in both games.

On Feb. 28, McDonald freshman basketball player Zach Rasile got into the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s basketball record book when his 10 3-pointers in a 106-15 win over Heartland Christian gave him 123 for the season. The previous mark of 122 was set by J.T. Hoyng of Sparta Highland in 1997-98.

But Rasile wasn’t nearly finished. He ended the season with 140 3-pointers, including two games inn which he made 11 3-pointers, which put him in a tie for the fifth-most in a game in state history. Hoyng holds the single-game mark with 16.

111Eddie DeBartolo Jr. emerged as a possible buyer for the Carolina Panthers, according to ESPN and NBC.

The Youngstown native and former 49ers owner has yet to declare his intentions, instead releasing a statement that said per the wishes of current Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, he would not discuss the issue until after the 2017 season.

111YSU men’s basketball underwent a long-awaited changing of the guard. Head coach Jerry Slocum retired after producing two winning seasons in his 12 years in charge. His swan song was exciting. Despite entering the Horizon League tournament as the No. 9 seed, the Penguins upset No. 8-seed Cleveland State and No. 1 seed Oakland before falling in the semifinals.

East Liverpool native Jerrod Calhoun replaced Slocum and has started the process of rebuilding the program. Fourteen of the team’s 20 players are in their first season with the team. The rebuild is currently in some growing pains as the Penguins (2-10) have yet to win a game against a Division I team.

111Cleveland’s professional sports teams broke fans hearts. Stop us if you’ve heard this before.

The Cavaliers returned to the NBA Finals, but having the Golden State Warriors blow a 3-1 lead for two straight years was a big ask. The Cavs won Game 4 to avoid a sweep, but Golden State won the series, 4-1.

The Indians — coming off a World Series appearance in 2016 — put together a 22-game win streak, the longest in American League history. But after taking a 2-0 lead against the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series, the Indians lost the next three games and were eliminated.

Then, when expectations for the Browns couldn’t get any lower, they’re poised to become the second NFL team to go 0-16 in a single season. The Browns are winless entering Sunday’s regular-season road finale against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Rookie QB DeShone Kizer leads the league in interceptions and has been benched three different times by embattled head coach Hue Jackson, who has presided over the worst two-year stretch by a team in NFL history.

The Browns made a midseason change, firing front-office head Sashi Brown — he of the analytics approach — and replacing him the same day with general manager John Dorsey.