Turnover bug doesn't cost Flyers in win

"He is a special player and the best kick returner I’ve ever seen in high school football. I feel bad for him in a way that nobody gives him an opportunity to do what he can do, but at the same time you can’t blame a coach for trying to take the ball out of his hands.”- Crestview head coach Sean Conway on not kicking to St. Paul senior Joe Graziani after the Flyers 21-6 win.

OLIVESBURG – St. Paul committed five turnovers, including four inside the Crestview 35-yard line, but lived to tell about it as they still had enough left to pull out a 21-6 win over the Cougars Friday night in a matchup of traditional Firelands Conference powers.

With the win, St. Paul improved to 4-1 overall and 2-0 in the FC while Crestview fell to 2-3 overall and 0-2 in the FC.

"Crestview is a tough team to play," St. Paul head coach John Livengood said. "I don't care where it's at...a football field is 100 yards long and has goal posts on each end, but Crestview is a good program and a tough team to play no matter where it's at. But when it comes down to it, they have a great coaching staff and had their kids prepared and they played really hard and our kids made a lot of stupid mistakes and left a lot of points on the field."

For the first time since the 2004 season, the Flyers did not score on the first play from scrimmage against the Cougars. In fact, it was just a 1-yard run by Joe Graziani, but if that didn't make it clear this wouldn't be an easy win like the previous three seasons, the Flyers showed that when they turned it over on downs at the Crestview 34 on it's opening possession of the game. On its second possession, quarterback Eric Schwieterman fumbled while looking to pass and Crestview's Steven Jewett recovered at the St. Paul 26 to put the Cougars in prime position for an early lead and momentum.

The St. Paul defense did it's part, however, as four plays later the Cougars had just four yards to give the ball right back to the Flyers, who scored on their fourth possession when junior Matt Wilde scored on a 1-yard run to cap a 6-play, 69-yard drive at the 11:30 mark of the second quarter. Wes Stein added his first of three extra points for a 7-0 lead.

After Alex Welfle recovered a Tyler Haubiel fumble at the Crestview 37, the Flyers squandered another scoring chance by turning it over on downs at the Cougar 22-yard line. After the defense forced a punt, the Flyers were marching again when Haubiel intercepted Schwieterman at the Crestview 15 and returned it to their own 44. Mark Masser then answered with an interception of Cougar quarterback Anthony Easterling, and working out of the spread Schwieterman went 3-of-6 for 67 yards in 52 seconds to set up an 18-yard field goal attempt by Stein with five seconds left in the half.

"We drove the ball well but we turned it over and didn't finish off drives or get any points," Livengood said. "We have got to a better job in that area. It was very frustrating because of the mistakes. Whatever we could do to shoot ourselves in the foot offensively we did, and that is something we need to improve on. I don't think we dominated up front, and that had been one of our strong points this year was controlling the line of scrimmage and we didn't do that very well tonight."

The Cougars lone scoring drive came off the opening drive of the second half, as they marched 70 yards in 10 plays that was capped on a Easterling 1-yard run with 6:57 left in the quarter. However, the Cougars went for the surprise and elected a fake extra point attempt, but the holder Haubiel never was able to get the pass attempt off to leave the Cougars down 7-6.

"Our kicking game has struggled this year and we knew St. Paul was well-tuned in special teams," Conway explained of the surprise attempt. "And to this point, our offense has struggled as well so we weren't sure how many more opportunities we were going to get at that point."

After both teams exchanged punts, running back Adam Pugh went in for a cramped Graziani and followed solid blocking into the end zone for a 28-yard run with 1:37 left in the third quarter to give St. Paul a 14-6 lead. Graziani then got an interception off Easterling on the following possession at the Crestview 46 and quickly picked up 22 yards to end the third quarter, but the drive ended when Easterling at defensive back intercepted Schwieterman inside the Cougar 5 to again deny St. Paul from delivering the final dagger.

That final dagger eventually did come, however, as the Cougars were forced to punt from inside their own 10, and as has been the case for three weeks, each opponent is no longer kicking to Graziani after the senior returned three punts and a kick for a touchdown in the first two games of the season.

The angled punt gave the Flyers the ball at the Crestview 39, and on the very first play Graziani scored his 14th overall touchdown and 10th rushing after making one move and outracing the Cougar defense with 7:48 left for the final margin. St. Paul looked to add more points in the final three minutes, but Stein came up empty on a 30-yard field goal attempt.

"He is a special player," Conway said of Graziani, "and the best kick returner I've ever seen in high school football. I feel bad for him in a way that nobody gives him an opportunity to do what he can do, but at the same time you can't blame a coach for trying to keep the ball out of his hands."

"They are more than a tough defense and they do great things," Crestview coach Sean Conway said of the Flyer defense. "You can line up every play from my team against every layer on the St. Paul team and think that they are going to have an obscene advantage. Tonight we competed hard, as some things went our way and other things didn't. We have a lot of things to work on but I think we have a lot of heart and can still win a lot of games. And St. Paul played very good, Coach Livengood is an extremely good coach and they are the most disciplined team we play every year and you can't make mistakes against them, and we did."

The final stats showed how frustrating it was to only finish with 21 points, as St. Paul held a 408-174 advantage in total offense. The Flyers ran 43 times for 220 yards with Graziani picking up 97 yards on 11 attempts and Wilde getting 81 yards on 20 attempts. Schwieterman despite the two interceptions had arguably his best game of his young career, as he completed 11-of-17 passes for 188 yards with senior Dominic Dellisanti catching five passes for 110 yards. Meanwhile, the Cougars ran the ball 27 times for just 57 yards and completed 11-of-22 passes for 117 yards with three interceptions.

"I think we played a great game defensively," Livengood said. "Offensive line-wise, I don't think we played very well but in the second half we were able to do some things but I think it was more of some second efforts from our running backs part and they were able to get some long runs. I thought we had some good blocking on Adam Pugh's run, he got through there pretty clean and on Joe's he made a nice read and a nice cut and was able to make some guys miss and take it the distance.

"All in all, a great effort by Crestview, but I wish we had played better and I think we left a lot of points out on the field. And the turnovers, the missed field goals, the dropped passes, things of those nature...those are things we should have done better. They were really packing it on on us early and our kids did a nice job of adjusting and we were able to spread them out with the pass and loosen things up a little bit and did a decent job with that, but we didn't turn that into points and that's what I was disappointed with."

The Flyers stay in the Ashland area next Friday night when they travel to Mapleton (1-4, 0-1). The Mounties have dropped 11 straight to the Flyers and have been saddled with numerous injuries, including a nagging, reoccurring shoulder injury to 2006 first-team FC running back Cameron Brant.