By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

 
Pete Thompson believes in his offense.

And he trusts his senior quarterback.

To understand his level of confidence, all you needed to do was watch the first possession of the game on Friday at Kenneth Lohr Stadium in Brimfield.

After a spirited Falcons defense brought waves of tacklers to the ball on three consecutive running plays, the Rockets stared at a fourth-and-2 deep in their own territory on the 28-yard line.

On the road.

On the first drive of the first quarter in a championship game.

Nearly every analytical review of the situation would point toward punting the ball.

Thompson turned his back on the idea.

He lined up his Rockets to go for it and not just to try to pull the Falcons offside with a hard count.

Instead, Thompson kept it simple and put the ball in the hands of the player he trusts the most.

“In those situations, we let 7 keep it,” said Thompson, referring to his three-year starting quarterback Cohen Klimak.

Klimak delivered again, pushing across the line to gain for the first down to keep an opening drive alive that eventually turned into a 2-yard touchdown run by Klimak.

It was the first of 49 unanswered points for the Rockets, who captured at least a share of the Metro Athletic Conference championship with the 49-0 victory over the Falcons.

Streetsboro is now 9-0 overall and 6-0 in the MAC. They will play for the outright title in Week 10 at Cloverleaf (5-4, 3-3).

“I think we are always pretty confident with what our offense can do, but I think a lot of that decision to go for it on fourth down was to challenge our offensive line,” Thompson said. “We were not happy with what they did to get us into that situation, so we challenged them.”

Furthermore, Thompson said his decision for the early game gamble was based on the trust he has in his defense, which authored its sixth shutout of the season on Friday and has allowed only 41 points all season. On Friday, the defense held Field (7-2, 4-2 MAC) to only 110 yards of total offense (33 carries for 69 yards and 8-of-12 passing for 41 yards).

As dominant as Streetsboro’s defense was, it was a special teams play that quickly pushed all the momentum to the Rockets.

After Klimak’s opening-drive score, Rockets kicker Logan Sadowski chip-kicked the kickoff toward the left sideline. Just as it appeared that the ball was going to roll out of bounds, it didn’t, and senior Jackson Gula, who was speeding down the sideline dove to secure possession for the Rockets on the Falcons’ 18-yard line.

“We work a lot on our kicking game,” Thompson said. “We work on it more than any other part of our special teams. We have about 10 different kickoff styles that we can execute. We walked the field before the start of the game tonight and that chip kick was one that our kickers thought they could pull off.”

Four plays later, Streetsboro was back on the board on a 4-yard run by Klimak, lifting the score to 14-0, before Field’s offense had even stepped onto the field.

Once the Falcons’ offense had a chance to get involved, they looked good initially. The team’s first possession went 52 yards and had Field on the brink of the red zone on a third-and-6 play. However, on the play, the shotgun snap soared over the Falcons’ quarterback’s head and resulted in an 18-yard loss to set up fourth-and-24 and eventually a turnover on downs.

“That was a tough play, because we felt that we were in four-down territory, and we felt like we had two plays to get six yards,” Field head coach Matt Furino said.

The Rockets took advantage of the mistake and marched down the field for their third score, an 18-yard run by Janiere Cook. The Sadowski extra point made it 21-0 with 5:49 left in the second quarter.

It was a score that Thompson said his team was prepared to take into halftime, but two other golden opportunities presented themselves to the opportunistic Rockets.

The first was a 68-yard touchdown pass from Klimak to Manny Gibson on a play that dictated how the rest of the first half went.

“We had decided that if we missed on that throw, we were just going to run the clock out to end the half,” Thompson said. “But Cohen threw a great pass and Manny was there to make a play for him.”

The score made it 28-0, but the Rockets weren’t done.

On Field’s final possession of the first half, as it attempted to push down the field quickly to get into scoring position, advanced to the 50 with about 20 seconds left in the first half.

It proved to be enough time for Klimak to strike again.

This time defensively.

On a throw to the edge, designed to help get the Falcons’ receiver out of bounds near the right sideline to stop the clock, Klimak read the route, jumped it and turned it into a 53-yard interception return.

“Those two scoring plays before the half really broke the game open for us,” Thompson said.

The second half featured a running clock and the Rockets’ two scores were scored by Klimak on a 54-yard run in the third quarter and Gibson on a 9-yard run in the fourth quarter.

Klimak finished the game with 130 yards on 13 carries and three touchdowns. Marcus Council added 62 yards rushing, while Cook had 68 and Gibson 53 for a Rockets ground game that totaled 313 yards and five touchdowns.

It was Senior Night for the Falcons and an emotional night as the team and community remembered football senior Blake Samego, who died on Sept. 27.

“Our team has had a hard three weeks, and I think our kids have handled things as well as could be expected for such a horrible tragedy and sometimes things can catch up to you,” Furino said. “We knew that we needed to play a flawless game tonight, and we just simply didn’t, and as soon as a team like us, who wants to run the ball and control the clock, gets behind 14-0 and 21-0, the gameplan is out.”