The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Big day by Kipnis leads Tribe past Kansas City
Cardinals present framed jersey to Rago family; Jacob would have been a senior this season
The Mentor Cardinals’ game against visiting St. Edward on Aug. 24 would have been the first game of Jacob Rago’s senior season.
The Cardinals wanted to make sure no one forgot that.
Prior to the Mentor-St. Edward game, the Cardinals’ captains presented the Rago family with a framed jersey with their son’s No. 84 encased.
The capacity crowd at Jerome T. Osborne Stadium clapped and roared their approval as Jacob’s parents, Chris and Jean, and his brother Danny accepted the jersey.
Jacob Rago died in January 2017 from a rare form of cancer.
“It’s been a very long road,” said father Chris, holding the jersey case in his hands. “It’s coming up on two years in January. This was unexpected. I just found out today that they were going to do this, and I was a little taken back.
“It’s very nice to look people in the face and see that they still remember our son.”
Mentor captains Ryan Jacoby, Nick Samac, Brady Benz and Daniel Adams joined Coach Steve Trivisonno in the presentation. After the jersey was handed to the family, each hugged the Rago family members.
“This means a lot to us,” mother Jean said. “It means so much to know that everybody is still remembering our son.”
Assistant AD pays up
As the final moments on the clocked ticked off in Lake Catholic’s 31-7 win over visiting Stow-Munroe Falls in the season-opener on Aug. 23, Adi Taraska continuously glanced up and the scoreboard.
She knew she was going to have to pay off a bet.
Earlier in the day at a pep rally in front of the student body, senior quarterback Matt Slowey was asked his prediction for the game later that night.
His response — Cougars win, 31-7.
Taraska promised then and there that if he picked it correctly, she would dress up in the Cougars’ mascot outfit.
When the clock hit zero — there were hundreds of Lake Catholic students in the student section reminding Taraska of her bet.
“It’s currently 31-7 with a minute-thirty left to go in the fourth,” she said prior to game’s end, embracing the inevitable. “I’m a woman of my word. So I’ll be in that uniform sometime
soon. I just hope it’s a cooler, fall day.” It wasn’t. Taraska paid up her bet the next day, Aug. 25, at the school, donning the Cougar mascot uniform.
“I’ll take it, of course,” she said of the payback. “It was a great first game. Scott (O’Donnell) and the boys did great work. It’s phenomenal. I love it.”
Runnin’ Rangers
North coach Shawn Dodd said all preseason his team needed to be able to run the ball this year. He didn’t lie. The Rangers opened their season with a 52-43 win over visiting Westlake. In that game, North ran for 348 yards.
Not only did running back Brett Payne run for 218 yards and two touchdowns, but quarterback Jimmy Arnold ran for 122 yards and three scores.
“We knew we could run the ball,” Dodd said. “Our line is pretty good, and Brett is just a man. Our line did a great job and Brett had an amazing game.”
The trump card was Arnold, in his first year as starting quarterback.
“Jimmy was a huge surprise,” Dodd said of his signal-caller’s big running game. “He’s faster than people think. He’s not real big — more tall and lean. He can dunk a basketball, so he’s crazy athletic.”
Heading into the season, Dodd sounded worried about his team. After getting shut out in the final scrimmage of the season against NDCL, Dodd said his team “had a lot of work to do.”
The scrimmage season, in general, was tough on the inexperienced Rangers. Among the teams they squared off against were not only NDCL, but also Kirtland, Perry and Cleveland Heights — all playoff teams a year ago.
“I like scrimmages like that,” Dodd said. “Those are great programs coached by great men. They’ve had a lot of success. When you face teams like that and put your kids in that environment, it shows us, ‘OK, what do we really have?’”
With a Week 1 win over their belts, the Rangers turn their attention to a home opener against Richfield Revere on Aug. 31. Dodd warned his team that not all is perfect after the high-scoring win over Westlake.
“It’s a huge win for us, first because we’re young, but secondly because we made a ton of mistakes,” he said. “We didn’t play a clean game. So while we have a lot of confidence because we won, we can see we didn’t play well and still won. What’s going to happen when we put it all together?”
Coach’s corner
Coaches are reminded to have their statistician report box score information for their games as soon as they are complete, whether they win or lose. They can be emailed to score@newsherald.com, faxed to 440951-6731 or called in to 440-951-0000.
Deadline for player of the week nominations is 8 p.m. on Mondays They can be reported in the same manner as box scores. Tidbits, milestones or story ideas are welcomed as well.
Weekly compiled stats will begin after the third week of games.
For more information, email JKampf@News-Herald.com.