Pymatuning Valley shuts out Windham 44-0

Photo by Ashleigh Mccune

This has been the worst Windham season since 2011, when the Bombers went 0-10 to duplicate their winless season of two years previous. In fact, between 2007 and 2014, an eight season stretch, Windham won only 14 games.

No prognosticator actually felt that Windham had a chance to win Friday’s game against Pymatuning Valley, one of the powerhouses of the Northeastern Athletic Conference.

But nobody told the Windham Bombers. Head Coach Jake Eye posted a mid-week video of the boys practicing in the rain, under pitch black skies, and not one of them thought they did not belong on the same field as the Lakers.

The Bombers wore pink and black uniforms for Cancer Awareness Night, and charged onto a beautifully painted field, with the words HOPE, FAITH and STRENGTH matching their symbolic garb.

That they ran into an aerial display from an opponent that was the equal of last year’s playoff drubbing by Hillsdale was what they didn’t anticipate.

Py Valley did not run a single play on the ground for the first nine minutes and fourteen seconds.

By that time, they had compiled enough points to invoke the running clock 30-point mercy rule, with a score of 34-0. It may be a state record for the quickest invocation of that dreaded contingency.

Maybe it was a mercy, then, that the slaughter was conducted in front of the smallest crowd of the year, with many worried about the plunging temperatures as true fall arrived.

Both teams had about two dozen players. The difference was that Py Valley was bigger, stronger, faster, and above all, more experienced than the Bombers, laden with underclassmen and players who had been off the gridiron for a year or more.

The Lakers, securely ensconced in a Division V playoff spot despite last week’s brutal defeat by Mogadore, came in hoping to duplicate last year’s 40-8 whipping of the Bombers.

DeJuan Ramsey took the opening kickoff to the 27, and the tiny workhorse lugged the first two carries for five yards. An incomplete screen pass to Matt Kolczek stalled the drive, and Bryan Smithberger’s pooch punt gave the ball to the Lakers on their own 35.

Two passes later, the score was 7-0 as the Py Valley receiver simply outran the Bomber secondary.

Ethan Thornton demonstrated his flashy hip27-yardng on the return of the ensuing kickoff to the 37, but it was followed by perhaps the worst four play series of the season: a bad snap lost 10 yards, an incomplete pass, a blown blocking assignment yielded a sack, and yet another bad snap on fourth down equaled a 27 yard backward march.

Py Valley took over on the five, and two seconds later sat on top 13-0. Four minutes had elapsed on the clock.

On the next drive, Jake Eye debuted the strangest backfield combination ever seen on Ed Liddle Field. Massive tackle Azeon Davis joined DeJuan Ramsey, whom he outweighed by nearly 200 pounds, in the backfield. He might have had the jitters, because on his first carry he fumbled on the Windham 20.

The Bombers looked like they were ready for the Lakers passing game this time, as Smithberger knocked down the first attempt, the entire secondary batted away the second, the third fell short…but on fourth and ten, almost inevitably, the Py Valley passing tandem hooked up for their third TD of the first six minutes of the quarter.

Windham’s fourth drive was just as impotent, ending with a Smithberger interception, and despite a Ramsey last ditch tackle, Py Valley took less than a minute to convert its next touchdown.

Two minutes later another interception ended up in the end zone, and with a 34-0 lead, it was just a matter of time before the running clock began.

Ian Carmen and Alex Eye took their turns as cannon fodder, with no more success than their predecessors, and despite Py Valley eschewing the aerial attack for ground and pound, it took only two minutes of the second quarter to achieve the final score of 44-0.

There were some highlights during the rest of the time-shortened game. Bomber defenseman Devin Sherman recovered a Laker fumble, and the Bombers achieved their sole first down of the game with a bizarre tush push of Azeon Davis by Ethan Thornton and DeJuan Ramsey. Since Azeon has arguably the largest tush in Portage County, it was a massive effort by those two smaller running backs!

In the second half, the fans were stunned to see the shortest player on the team, Blake Cottle, in a four-point stance at nose guard, and darned if he didn’t submarine the Laker center and plug the gap effectively.

The Lakers drove the ball for the entire third period but failed to score. In a truly lost cause, it struck this fan as a real profile in courage by the Bombers.

If anything, positive can be drawn from this game, it was the tough defensive line play of Devin Sherman, Jacob Dallner, and especially senior Jaiden Arnone when Py Valley went to their running attack in that third stanza.

Next up on the Bombers schedule is a home game against independent foe Richmond Heights, which snapped a long losing streak last night against St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the worst teams in Ohio. Still, a victory gives them momentum coming into the game, but Senior Night should be an impetus for the Windham gridders to be up for the game.

Because it’s winnable if everybody still pulls together as a team.