John Raffel
Sport Scene
Going 14-0 and winning a football state championship once can produce a lifetime of memories.
That’s why the Ithaca Yellowjackets decided to double their pleasure and go 14-0 and win another state title. Now they’ve created enough memories for two lifetimes.
Travis Smith threw for 299 yards and a touchdown and rushed for two other scores, as Ithaca overcame a powerful Constantine rushing offense to post a 42-14 victory over the Falcons and won the Division 6 state championship for the second straight season on November 26 at Ford Field.
“I can’t even put it into words,” said coach Terry Hessbrook. “Everybody that’s here had a chance to see what kind of community Ithaca is and the support they give us in a small town. It’s amazing. I know it’s awfully sweet. These kids had this goal since last year when we were at this [postgame press conference]table. I think Garrett [Miniard] was the only one here now who is sitting at this table again.”
After being tied 14-14 at halftime, Ithaca enjoyed a 28-0 scoring binge in the second half.
“I think what we really needed to do was be more physical at the point of attack,” said Hessbrook, who has an 8-year record of 73-17 at Ithaca. “I can’t sit here and tell you we made a ton of changes. We had some adjustments and went to our Falcon defense, which was the defense we put in there this week against them. We ran that quite a bit. To be honest, we just had to be more physical.”
Both teams scored on their first two possessions.
Constantine went to quick work on the first drive of the game. Ben Mallo gained 13 and 55 yards on his first two carries with Jake Greene making a touchdown-saving tackle. Two plays later, Mallo rushed for the 2-yard touchdown.
The Yellow Jackets responded with a 70-yard touchdown drive of their own. The touchdown run of 1 yard was scored by Smith, who had a key fourth-down pass of 31 yards on the previous play to Zach Allen. Luke Rayburn’s extra point made it 7-7.
Constantine started at its own 33 and did not give Mallo the ball until the fourth play from scrimmage. He roared 56 yards for the score and Constantine was up 14-7.
Smith passed 22 yards to Allen to spark another Ithaca drive. Smith passed 18 yards to Jared Evers, who made two nice moves to escape would-be tacklers and score. Rayburn’s PAT made it 14-14.
Mallo, who had 155 yards rushing in the first half, had another big gainer on third down to keep a drive going to the Yellow Jacket 35 to open the second quarter. On third down at the 7, Jeff Steiner carried it to the 3. On fourth down, Payton White was stopped at the 3, and Ithaca took over following its first defensive stop.
That stop began to turn the tide in Ithaca’s favor.
Smith got the Yellow Jackets out of the hole with a 23-yard pass to David Brown. Ithaca moved to its own 45 but was forced to punt, and Constantine took over at its own 44 but could not, for the first time in the game, move the sticks.
Smith had key passes to Jared Evers and Charles Schnetzler to get Ithaca inside Falcon territory, and Miniard bolted for a 9-yard run to the 18. Smith tossed an 18-yard touchdown pass to Evers, but Ithaca was called for holding. The Yellow Jackets couldn’t put the ball in the end zone, and with 1:23 left in the half, Constantine took over on downs. The Falcons decided to run out the clock for a 14-14 tie.
“It was a tremendous effort in the first half,”’ said Falcons coach Shawn Griffith. “We came out of the locker room and did some things we wanted to do. But we were short a few plays. There were some fourth-down attempts by us, including one by the goal line when we decided to go for it, thinking points were going to be needed to win that track meet. In the end, our players are why we’re here.”
Mallo acknowledged that his team had reason to feel confident after scoring against Ithaca on its first two drives.
“We were happy but knew we’d have to go out there and play defense,” Mallo said. We struggled in the secondary. We knew to keep this game going, we had to keep our offense going, but we couldn’t do it.”
“Their offense takes awhile to get used to,” Hessbrook said. “You get stuck looking for the football, and the next thing you know is the fullback goes by you.”
Mallo had 171 yards in the first half but was held to 18 in the second half. Smith passed for 202 yards on 14 completions.
Both teams were stopped on their first possessions of the third quarter. Smith passed 29 yards to Allen and then scored on a 21-yard keeper the next play to give Ithaca a 21-14 lead.
White returned the kickoff to the 50-yard line for Constantine, but the Falcons couldn’t take advantage.
A pass interference call against Constantine and Smith’s 32-yard pass to Brown put Ithaca deep in Falcon territory. Garrett Miniard’s 3-yard run gave the Yellow Jackets a 28-14 lead with 15 seconds left in the third quarter.
Early in the fourth, Lucas Slater returned a fumble 55 yards to clinch the win. Jacob Barnes had an interception later to stop the Constantine offense. David Brown added a 2-yard rushing touchdown for Ithaca.
Ithaca wound up with 429 offensive yards compared to 302 for Constantine. The Falcons had a 287-130 edge in rushing yards, but Ithaca had a 299-15 advantage in passing yards.
Constantine’s regular quarterback, Tommy Reed, was out with an injury and replaced by sophomore Andres Montoya, who did a credible job of faking handoffs.
“It’s tough when the focus of our week was if Tommy Reed would be able to play,” Griffith said. “Andres did a tremendous job of filling in. He put us in a position to battle for a win. You could see our heads fall last week when Tommy went down.”
In receiving, Brown had six catches for 122 yards, Allen had four for 92, and Evers had four for 52. Miniard led the ground game with 56 yards on 10 attempts.
Miniard had another big game defensively with 14 tackles, followed by Tyler Gibson with 13 and Jacob Barnes with 12.
Constantine’s season ended at 11-3.
“We played an awfully good team here today,” Griffith said. “We were probably outmanned a little bit size wise. They were pretty physical up front. We did everything we could think of to slow them down. We had our ups and downs.”