By ERIC FORTUNE

sports@vindy.com

COLUMBIANA

Before the season started, this game looked to be one that would determine the league champion of the Eastern Ohio Athletic Conference.

Things didn’t exactly go as planned like last season when both the Columbiana Clippers and the East Palestine Bulldogs met for the league title and to determine playoff seeding.

On a wet and soggy track, the Clippers pulled away from a halftime tie for a 33-14 win to capture a piece of the EOAC title.

“We stubbed our toe last week,” Columbiana coach Bob Spaite said. “We found out what kind of character we have. You saw that tonight. We were explaining to the kids all week. Our seniors did a great job of rallying around the idea that we were playing for something. We can’t make the playoffs, but we still have a championship. We had a winning season.”

Early on though, the Clippers (6-4, 6-1) were haunted by the big play just like last week as the Bulldogs’ Dominic Posey had runs of 51 and 83 yards for leads 7-0 and 14-7 leads in the first half. Posey finished with a game-high 138 yards rushing, but was held in check in the second half with just six yards.

Parker Sherry finished his illustrious career at East Palestine with 121 yards rushing. But the Clippers made adjustments to hold the Bulldogs (5-5, 4-3) to just 59 yards of offense in the second half.

“Our lack of consistency is what we showed up with,” East Palestine coach Tony Foster said. “When we had our head on straight with a good week of practice, we typically played very well. We had some ups and downs. We just lacked that consistency. Week to week, it kind of showed.”

The Clippers felt it was necessary to run the ball more tonight than they had all season lining up in different sets with wide receiver Chase Franken under center and quarterback Jakob Cross lined up in the background.

“We felt we needed to do that to control the clock.,” Spaite said. “We wanted to keep Posey and Sherry on the defensive side of things. The plan was to run it more than we have all year. When the weather turned what it did, it kind of became a circus. It was slick. We’re very blessed to have a great offensive line that was able to do a lot of good things.”

Cross led Columbiana with 117 yards passing and added another 97 on the ground.

Steven Anderson that did the dirty work in between the tackles that opened lanes for Cross and jump-started the passing game.

Anderson finished with 77 yards rushing and two first-half scores.

“We realized with the weather conditions, we wouldn’t be able to run sweeps because it would be hard to make cuts on this track, so we just ended up manning up and running it down their throat,” Anderson said.

It took an East Palestine fumble at the Bulldogs’ 18 to give Clippers the field position they needed after both teams had drives stall in the other’s side of the field.

Franken ran it in from 6 yards out two plays later to give Columbiana the lead for good with 26 seconds left in the third quarter.

The Clippers then put the game away with a nearly s-xminute drive capped by Cross’ 5-yard score to make it 27-14.

“Words can’t describe how this feels right now,” Columbiana linebacker Erik Hopfenziz said. “This is so unreal after starting the season 0-3 and getting into the league and running off five straight games. Losing to Southern and coming back to win your rival game to get a piece of the EOAC title, I can’t put into words how I feel right now.”