REPEAT BID IS UNSUCCESSFUL
Mustangs’ 2019 season ends with loss to St. Bernard’s in section semifinals
LAKE COUNTY >> Middletown’s bid to win a second straight North Coast Section football championship came up well short as the Mustangs fell 35-7 to the St. Bernard’s Crusaders in the semifinals of the North Coast Section Division 6 playoffs in Eureka nearly a year ago today.
Until the COVID-19- delayed 2020-21 sports season starts, the Lake County Record-Bee will take a look back at the local sports happenings of a year ago and the teams and athletes who were making the headlines.
Football
Middletown (8-3), the No. 3 seed to St. Bernard’s No. 2 in the original eight-team Division 6 field, didn’t play anything close to its best game on a day when it needed almost everything to go right against a battle-hardened St. Bernard’s team that would go on to win not only the Division 6 section title, but a state championship as well.
“We got outplayed,” Middletown head coach Bill Foltmer said. “We weren’t able to stop stop their athletes and they were able to stop our running game. St. Bernard’s outplayed us, no doubt about it.”
Four turnovers didn’t help the Mustangs’ cause even though they were able to dominate time of possession. But while able to move the ball, they couldn’t sustain drives that were hurt by ill-timed penalties that left a running team like Middletown in second-andlong and third-and-long passing situations.
St. Bernard’s was able to strike quickly, including a 60yard pass for a touchdown and a 55-yard TD run that gave the Crusaders a 21- 0 lead late in the second quarter.
While standout Middleown senior running back Nico Barrio would go on to have a big day — 166 yards on 35 carries — the St. Bernard defense prevented the speedy back from breaking off big gains — a bend-but-notbreak approach that relied on Middletown’s offense making a mistake at some point, which the Mustangs uncharacteristically did.
Even more impressive, according to Foltmer, was that the Crusaders didn’t have to pack the box to slow down Middletown’s running attack.
“They were able to stop us with eight men in the box,” Foltmer said. “They still still had their corners and safety free to make plays.”
The Mustangs were finally able to crack the scoreboard early in the fourth quarter after driving 80 yards in 11 plays, a 37-yard pass from quarterback Isaac Perez to Barrio setting up a 7-yard Dillon Tingle touchdown run on the next play to make it 28-7 early in the fourth quarter.
The momentum that touchdown provided proved shortlived when the Mustangs, who were about to get the ball back, jumped offsides on a fourthand-one play to give the Crusaders a first down. They parlayed that huge mistake into their final touchdown drive.
“They were able to run right at us and we couldn’t stop them,” Foltmer said. “That hasn’t happened to us very much.”
The Mustangs ran the ball 46 times for 205 yards, often choosing to keep the ball on the ground even late in the game when they needed to make up a lot of ground in a hurry. Foltmer said the reason for that is pretty simple.
“This team is not built to come back (from a big deficit) and throw the ball,” he said. “That’s not the type of team we are.”
The game marked the curtain call for Middletown’s seniors, including its four captains, all of them three-year varsity starters — Barrio, Tingle and linemen Jared Pyzer and James Hernandez.
Middletown was trying to reach the section finals for a third year in a row after winning it all in Division 5 the previous season against Salesian.
Added Foltmer of the 2019 finale for the Mustangs, “We lost today but it wasn’t for a lack of effort. They (Crusaders) took it to us. I give all the credit to them.”