By BOB ETTINGER

sports@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Boardman football coach Joe Ignazio knows the perception when the Spartans battle Cardinal Mooney each year.

It doesn’t keep him or the Spartans from fighting as they did in an 8-6 victory of the Cardinals at Stambaugh Stadium on Friday night.

“Every year coming into this game, I’m sure everyone in the community feels we are the underdogs,” Ignazio said.

“The kids fought their butts off the whole night. This is what northeastern Ohio football is all about. The odds were stacked against us, but we came out and fought our butts off.”

The Spartans (4-1) used a fortuitous bounce to take the win.

After being pinned deep in his own end, a ball was snapped over Mooney quarterback John Murphy’s head. He raced to the back of his own end zone and batted the ball over the end line for a safety, giving Mooney (2-3) a 6-2 lead with 9:12 to play in the first half.

“That was a phenomenal play by their Q, knocking the ball for us to get the safety or we were going to come out of it with six,” Ignazio said. “Early in the game, we didn’t execute. We played football in their end the whole first half and we didn’t make it pay off. We need to go in there and take care of the mistakes, but we’ll take this one.”

Mooney forced a punt on the ensuing possession following the free kick, but the Spartans intercepted on a halfback pass, taking over at the Cardinals’ 35.

A pass interference call against Mooney moved the ball to the 18 before Joe Ieraci carried to the 5. On third-and-goal from the 3, Michael O’Horo hit Kareem Hamdan in the flat for a touchdown. The extra point was partially blocked and Boardman led, 8-6, with 2:36 to play in the first half.

“Obviously, the safety, any time you give points away like that, it never helps matters,” Mooney coach P.J. Fecko said. “Then we had taken it all the way down the field and didn’t get points [following a lost fumble on the Boardman 4 on the game’s opening possession]. That’s a difficult situation. Anytime we captured momentum, we faltered somehow.”

Neither squad mounted much of a scoring threat in the second half, though the Cardinals thought they were going to get one final crack after they’d gotten a hand on a punt. Nico Marchionda, trying to move the ball up the field, attempted to pick up the rolling ball, but muffed it.

“It’s simply this,” Fecko said. “The game of football does not come down to a single play. No single person wins a game and no single person loses a game.”

Nate Thompson recovered for the Spartans as he fell out of bounds sealing the win.

“It’s a good thing, in all of that, our kids were right there to the end,” Ignazio said. “My hat’s off to [Mooney]. I know some of their coaches and they’re a good team. They’re physical up front. I know they’ll get back after it.”

The Cardinals had taken a 6-0 lead on Murphy’s plunge from the one with 5:01 to play in the first period. Marchionda returned a punt to the Boardman 7 to set up the score.