The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Time for another football stat deep dive
As another winter season collides with fall in area high school sports, hopefully forgiveness can be afforded for this space if it’s devoted to another football statistical deep dive.
Mentor and Kirtland embark on respective quests for state championships this weekend in Canton — and winter sports aren’t going on hiatus — so time is at a premium. Perhaps these will make for interesting tidbits:
• Kirtland’s 44-0 domination of Nelsonville-York in a Division VI state semifinal Nov. 24 was impressive in every facet. It stands up historically, too.
It marks the 27th instance in a state semifinal all-time on the gridiron featuring a margin of at least 40 points.
The last occurrence of a margin that high in a state semifinal with a shutout for the opposition also belongs to the Hornets, when they recorded a 42-0 semifinal victory over Bucyrus Wynford on their way to the Division V state title in 2011.
Of those 27 routs at the state semifinal level, 11 have come by shutout.
The most lopsided shutout win in a state semifinal is technically 48 — accomplished by Cincinnati Moeller in a 1976 Class AAA game against Cardinal Mooney and Warren JFK in a 1991 Division IV game against Steubenville Catholic Central.
It would be 49, when Cincinnati Colerain blanked Brunswick in a 1995 D-I semifinal, but Colerain later had to forfeit the win due to use of an ineligible player.
Kirtland is one of four teams to appear on the list more than once on the winning side of such a rout, along with Warren JFK, Delphos St. John’s and the Hornets’ D-VI state final foe, Maria Stein Marion Local.
• This is the 10th season during which two current News-Herald coverage
area schools made it to the football final four from the same county. The first was in 1981, when Benedictine and St. Joseph each made the final four and the Bengals won the D-II state title.
Mentor and Kirtland each advancing to state finals is the third time in history two area teams from the same county got that far in the same year — 2003 (Benedictine and VASJ) and 2013 (also Mentor and Kirtland).
That 2013 campaign also featured the Cardinals and Hornets playing their state finals at thenFawcett Stadium. Mentor lost, 55-52, to Cincinnati Moeller, and Kirtland won its second state title with a
44-16 rout of Wayne Trace.
Mentor’s and Kirtland’s state final four berths this fall are the 56th and 57th all-time in football for current area squads. The area contingent has never had a year with more than one state champion on the gridiron.
This will also be the fourth time with multiple area football teams playing for a state title in the same campaign, the prior three being 1986 (Kenston and South), 2013 (Mentor and Kirtland) and 2014 (Benedictine and Kirtland).
• Kirtland now has 33 football playoff wins in 13 appearances. All have occurred since 2008, and 29
have been since 2011.
Among the 30 current area high school football teams, only Benedictine (43) and Lake Catholic (34) have more all-time playoff victories than the Hornets.
Mentor is up to 30 after its D-I state semi win over Olentangy Liberty, of which 25 have been since 2006.
• And finally, updating the area regular season leaders — since 1955 for scoring and 1977 for stats — there were two area standards set this fall.
Mentor’s offense became the second area squad in the modern era to surpass 5,000 yards in the regular season and vaulted 2010 South (5,006) for the most
yards with 5,042.
In a sign of the times, all 12 of the teams that have gone over 4,500 yards in a regular season have done it this decade.
Perry’s Jake Reid surpassed Perry’s Jim Adams (1986) and Hawken’s Tony Twymon (1990) with 12 interceptions during the Pirates’ 10-0 regular season.
Brush’s Godwin Joe (2,484) and Mentor’s Tadas Tatarunas (2,463) come in at fifth and seventh, respectively, in single-season passing yards. For scoring, Newbury’s Johnny Chambers led the area in 2017 with 146 regular-season points, but that’s a tough list to crack. There have been
eight 200-plus-point regular seasons by area players since 1955, with Chiefs running back and South graduate Kareem Hunt logging the top two (270 in 2012 and 240 in 2011).
One of these years — when time permits — my hope is to make the scoring and statistical leaders a little more complete. I won’t bore you with the reasons they’re relegated to those time frames.
But when winter mixes with fall once more, now won’t be that time.