OUTRIGHT champions and IN the playoffs!

By JON KLEINKNECHT

Inquirer Sports Editor

sports@galioninquirer.com

ONTARIO — “We’re gonna make some new goals,” a beam­ing head coach Chris Hawkins said Fri­day night after watch­ing his Galion Tigers defeat the Ontario War­riors 15–6 here at Copeland Field.

Hawkins said the top two goals every sea­son for his teams are to win an out­right league title and make the play­offs. In beat­ing the War­riors, the Orange-and-Blue wrapped up an uncon­tested North Cen­tral Con­fer­ence cham­pi­onship and punched their ticket to the Divi­sion IV playoffs.

The Tigers fin­ished the reg­u­lar sea­son with a nine-game win­ning streak after falling 14–7 in the non-conference, season-opener to Mans­field. The locals ranked fourth in Region 14 enter­ing yesterday’s con­test. The top eight teams in the region after last night’s games move on to the play­offs, with the top four host­ing games next Fri­day. Although as of this writ­ing, it was uncer­tain if the Tigers will play a home game, it is cer­tain they advance to the tournament.

By los­ing to the Tigers, the War­riors fin­ish the sea­son 6–4 over­all and 5–2 in the NCC. Had they won, they would’ve fin­ished as co-champions with the Orange-and-Blue and would have had a chance of mak­ing the playoffs.

How­ever … the Tigers weren’t in a shar­ing mood.

Time and time again the Orange-and-Blue made defen­sive stands against the threatening-to-score War­riors. On the first pos­ses­sion of the game, the hosts drove 60 yards in seven plays, only to turn the ball over to Galion on a fum­ble at the 1-yard line.

With 4:21 remain­ing in the open­ing period, the Tigers began what would be a 15-plays, 77-yard touch­down march that cleared nearly 7:30 off the clock and cul­mi­nated at the 8:58 mark of the sec­ond quar­ter with a 1-yard keeper by quar­ter­back Dareian Watkins. David Nay — who car­ried the ball on 12 con­sec­u­tive plays cov­er­ing 52 yards in the drive — fol­lowed Watkins’ score with a 2-point run to make it 8–0.

Ontario cut the gap to 8–6 2:41 into the sec­ond half on a 58-yard touch­down run by Jor­dan Camp­bell. The ensu­ing pass for two points failed.

Like a cham­pi­onship boxer who was punched in the mouth, the Tigers responded to Ontario’s shot with one of their own.

After Nay returned a kick­off 22 yards to the Tigers’ 41, he car­ried the ball for gains of 19 and 5 yards on Galion’s first two plays. Watkins then broke free on a 36-yard TD keeper. A Con­nor Kempf extra point kick fol­lowed, putting the win­ners up by nine points.

“When we answered that score, that was the game,” Hawkins said. “When they made it 8–6, we answered. Con­nor kicked the extra point and know­ing we were up by nine instead of eight was huge.”

Ontario threat­ened to score early in the fourth period. A fourth-and-goal-to-go at the 17 play was a 16-yard com­ple­tion. How­ever, the receiver fum­bled the ball at the Galion 1-yard line and was recov­ered and returned by the Tigers to the 10.

Six min­utes later, the Orange-and-Blue defense came through big again. After recov­er­ing a Galion fum­ble at the Tigers’ 2, the War­riors ran four plays that totaled minus-16 yards and included a pair of incom­plete passes, the sec­ond on fourth-and-goal at the 21.

The hosts got the ball back one last time with 1:59 to play. They took the ball down to the Orange-and-Blue’s 21, but the game ended with an incom­plete pass.

“Our defense just played extremely well,” Hawkins stated. “I said that’d be the strength of our team.”

The 17-year head coach then com­mented about the hor­ren­dous field con­di­tions. The sec­ond half was played in what could best be described as a mud pit because of a non-stop heavy rain­fall that began before the game started and con­tin­ued even when it was done.

“I’ve never played in con­di­tions like this,” he said while shak­ing his head. “We just gut­ted it out. Our kids were run­ning on fumes. We played hard. We made a lot of mis­takes, but we played hard and over­came our mistakes.”

Sta­tis­ti­cally, the Tigers had 159 yards in total offense, all rush­ing. They car­ried the ball 42 times and were zero-for-2 pass­ing. The War­riors net­ted 140 yards on the ground on 40 attempts and com­pleted 4-of-10 throws for 53 stripes.

Nay had 111 yards rush­ing on 26 car­ries for the cham­pi­ons. Watkins added 45 on 11 rushes, Austin Chap­lin picked up a blocked punt and ran for 5 yards, and Austin Prosser had minus-2 stripes on 4 carries.

Save Campbell’s 58-yard scor­ing burst, the Tigers did a phe­nom­e­nal job on con­tain­ing the star of the War­riors. He entered the night as the top rusher and scorer in the NCC with 1,702 yards and 198 points. He fin­ished with 82 yards on 17 car­ries, mean­ing he totaled only 24 mark­ers on his 16 non-touchdown runs ver­sus the winners.

TIGER BITES: The Tigers improve to 3–0-2 all-time against the War­riors. Ontario will play in the North­ern Ohio League next year and drop off of Galion’s sched­ule. … Ontario had the ball inside Galion’s 25-yard line on 6 series. … The “Orange Crush” has held 8 of 10 oppo­nents to 14 points or less and allowed just 20 points in the last 18 quarters.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Oct 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.