OHS gives Mancy a battle, but penalties again too much to overcome

The Onaway High School football team fell last Friday to visiting Mancelona, 28-7. The Ironmen are a perennial playoff squad and had defeated the Cardinals five straight times coming in.

 

The Cards battled Mancy throughout, keeping the outcome in question until the final minutes. But in the end, Onaway simply could not overcome what has been a consistent problem this season: penalties.

OHS committed 15 of them against the Ironmen, and the infractions cost the Red Birds 113 yards. On three separate occasions, the Onaway defense jumped offside with the Mancy offense facing fourth down.

On all three of those occasions, the penalties gave the Ironmen automatic first downs, extending drives and keeping the defense on the field. Mancelona would run 73 offensive plays in the game, while Onaway would run just 36.

“The boys played really hard,” said coach Jim Cleaver. “The final score doesn’t reflect how hard they played. But Mancy is a really good team, and you can’t give up all those penalties against a team like that and think you’re going to win.”

The Cardinals fumbled the opening kickoff, giving the Ironmen great field position, but the Red Bird defense made a great goal-line stand, stopping Mancelona on downs at the OHS one-yard-line.

The teams would take turns punting until late in the first quarter, when the Ironmen would begin a 16-play, 80-yard drive that culminated with an Austin Spires five-yard touchdown run with 5:13 left in quarter two.

The drive was aided by an OHS offside penalty on fourth-and-four from the Mancy 26. If that penalty is avoided, the Ironmen likely call timeout and punt, and the Cardinals get the ball back with pretty god field position.

Instead, Jake Winstead hit Cody Derrer with a two-point conversion pass following the Mancelona touchdown, making the score 8-0. Things then seemed to go from bad to worse when the Ironmen recovered an onside kick.

On the very next play, however, Tommy Auger blew through the Ironmen offensive line, hitting Winstead and forcing a fumble that was picked up by Cody Morell.

That gave the Cards great field position at the Mancy 29-yard-line, but a procedure penalty backed OHS up and a fourth-down attempt at a 45-yard field goal was blocked.

The Red Bird defense would again make a goal line stand, stopping Mancy at the OHS four-yard-line as time expired in the first half.

The Ironmen received the kickoff to open the second half. Early in that drive, facing fourth-and-four near midfield, Winstead again used a hard count to induce the Cardinal defense to jump offside, giving his team a first down.

Several plays later, Mancy completed a 13-play, 65-yard drive with an Eric Wheeler four-yard touchdown run. The conversion attempt failed but, with 5:09 left in quarter three the Ironmen led 14-0.

Onaway drove the ball to the MHS 22 but was stopped on downs. Two plays later, with the Cardinal defense clearly a bit worn down, Logan Borst sprinted 63 yards for a touchdown. The conversion again failed but the lead was 20-0.

The Cards, though, would get on the scoreboard on their next drive, as Matthew Tollini connected with Carlos Bautista on a 16-yard touchdown pass – a play set up by a 28-yard connection between Tollini and Joe Sigsby.

Bautista kicked the extra point and, with 10:34 left in the game, Onaway trailed 20-7. The touchdown seemed to change the game’s momentum, and the OHS defense quickly forced a three-and-out.

Things nearly got a whole lot more interesting, but consecutive deep passes to Bautista and Auger landed just beyond their fingertips, making what were nearly touchdowns nothing more than incompletions.

After Onaway was forced to punt, Borst completed a nine-play, 50-yard drive with a 24-yard touchdown run. Chase Wilcox ran in the conversion, bringing about the final score.

Tollini completed nine of 20 passes for 141 yards with a touchdown and an interception, while running the ball four times for 19

yards. Bautista had five catches for 96 yards and two carries for 13 yards.

Bautista and Chris Cleaver had 21 tackles each, Tollini had 17, Frankie Ramos had 13, Sigsby and Noah Bacon had 10 each, Auger had eight, and DJ Fenstermaker, Bradley Brewbaker, and Casey Watson each had seven.

Borst ran the ball 22 times for 177 yards, while Spires ran it 26 times for 127 yards for the Ironmen. Wheeler chipped in with 13 carries for 40 yards, while Wilcox had four runs for 27 yards.

The Cardinals, who dropped to 1-4 with the loss, will host Pellston tonight (Friday), with kickoff scheduled for 7 p.m.