The Bellwood-Antis junior high football team set a school record with their ninth straight victory of the season on Thursday night at Bishop Guilfoyle on Pleasant Valley Boulevard. The Little Blue Devils finished the season undefeated with a come-from -behind 22-18 win over the BG junior high that also clinched the first junior high MAFC title for Bellwood-Antis. Going into the game, Bellwood-Antis was 4-0 in the conference, while Bishop Guilfoyle was 3-0-1, meaning the title was on the line with the victor collecting the spoils.
Actually B-A had to come from behind twice, thanks to the Blue Devils own mistakes.
While dominating the Marauders in the first half, Bellwood-Antis dug itself a 12-0 hole they had to overcome in the first quarter. After stuffing BG on the first series of the game, B-A muffed the punt and Bishop Guilfoyle recovered and took the mistake and marched to a quick touchdown. A series later, the Blue Devils botched a handoff and again BG recovered and matched their earlier score off the turnover to jump out to a 12-0 advantage.
Bellwood-Antis responded at the end of the first quarter, with Randy Pfahler racing 32 yards for a score and Levi Hollen adding the two-point conversion run to slice the deficit to 12-8.
That would be all the scoring, until the fourth quarter.
“The kids seemed down at halftime,” said Bellwood-Antis coach Charlie Burch. “We told them it was a one-score game, ‘you got to believe.’ and we dodged a bullet in the fourth quarter when they were at our five-yard line. We had to play smash-mouth football due to all the injuries that forced us to be pretty conservative, but we caught them off-guard on the pass to Trey Mock. We tried it twice before in the game and were offsides the first time and missed it the second. The third time worked because they were putting 11 men in the box to try to stop our run.”
Bellwood-Antis drove for a go-ahead touchdown early in the final quarter, when Hollen took a knock play up the middle and brook loose for a 47-yard score, to jump into their first lead of the game 14-12.
Bishop Guilfoyle, who finished 6-2, with a pair of tough losses to Mount Union (14-12) and Bellwood-Antis, came right back to take the lead again, converting a key third-and-11 pass play along the way to score on a 22-yard TD run by Sully McConnell.
With under three minutes left in the game, Bellwood-Antis drove to the BG-10. After missing the pass play twice, the Blue Devils capitalized with eighth grader Nate Plummer tossing a pass to Mock alone in the end zone for the TD. Tyler Geis grabbed a Plummer pass for the Two-point PAT and a 22-18 Bellwood-Antis win.
“It was a simple “split end pop” to Trey,” described Burch. “They had everybody up in the box to stop the run and didn’t believe we would throw to anybody but Tyler Geis.”
“I am extremely proud of these guys. They overcame adversity, with more injuries than I can ever remember and had to scratch for every one of our last four wins, after starting the season like they would just blow everybody away. Our kids found out it doesn’t always come easy, but that is a good life lesson for them for the future. This is the first junior high team to go 9-0, because we didn’t play that many games until now. The MAC championship made this game really tough. BG knew this was for the title, give them a lot of credit, they fought hard. We will take in the great feelings of a league championship and undefeated season for awhile and then get these kids in the weight room and start working for next year.”
