Mooney wins Holy War

Mooney v. Ursuline football

Gallery

By Greg Gulas

sports@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Jason Santisi rushed for 231 yards and three touchdowns, John Murphy added 92 yards and two scores and Cardinal Mooney racked up 475 yards in a 47-14 rout of arch-rival Ursuline in the 65th renewal of their Holy War Friday night at Stambaugh Stadium.

With the win the Cardinals (4-5) opened a 42-20-3 advantage over the Fighting Irish (1-8) in the series.

“I need to give credit to my offensive line because they opened great holes for me the entire game,” Santisi said. “I’ve been around this series my whole life and it’s an absolutely tremendous feeling when you win. We had a great game plan and I was just elated to get as many touches as I did tonight.”

To appreciate the rich tradition of both football programs, all one needs to do is look back to the 2001 campaign to find the last time both teams failed to make the playoffs.

Both teams played as if an 11th week were in the offing.

The Fighting Irish took the opening kick-off, held the ball seven minutes and 12 seconds and gained 59 yards, but saw the drive stall on the Mooney 26 yards line when Brady Shannon’s pass fell incomplete.

The Cardinals couldn’t mount a drive either on their only possession of the period as the teams battled to a scoreless deadlock heading to the second quarter.

Murphy got Mooney on the board first at 5:08 of the second period when he found Nico Marchionda from 25 yards away, capping an 11-play, 89-yard drive for a 7-0 advantage.

“This was probably our most complete game of the season,” Murphy said. “The mindset was to finish drives and hold them to three-and-out. We felt like our front five could dominate them up front and that would open up our ground attack.”

Mooney extended the lead to 13-0 when Santisi scored the first of his three scores with 1:56 remaining before intermission. Mooney made it 19-0 0 when Ursuline punter Matt Ferree’s punt was blocked and Luke Felton fell on it for Mooney’s third score of the opening half.

“I felt like we needed to get points off that opening drive, but we came up empty,” Ursuline head coach Larry Kempe said. “We played really hard, but not for four quarters. In high school football, if you don’t play good defense then it’s going to be tough to win and we didn’t play well defensively in the second half.”

Davion Jones, who rushed for 102 yards on 27 carries, finally got the Fighting Irish on the board at 4:59 of the third period on a 3-yard run, his first of two touchdowns, to cut the deficit to 19-7.

The Cardinals answered just 95 seconds later on Murphy’s 8-yard TD to make it 26-7.

Jones’ second TD 20 seconds later came on a 75-yard reception from James Phillips made it 26-14, but Santisi added his second score and Mooney went back on top, 33-14 with 12 minutes remaining.

In all, the teams combined for four scores over a 3:03 stretch in the third period.

“Jason played a really good game and he’d be the first to credit the guys up front because they controlled the line of scrimmage,” Mooney head coach P.J. Fecko said. “Murph did a great job of managing the game, getting us into good situations and picking up some key first downs.”

The Cardinals made it 40-14 on another 8-yard run by Murphy with 9:13 remaining. Santini’s 3-yard run closed out the scoring with 6:58 to play.