By Mark Hazelwood

MASSILLON- Just one play.

Twenty weeks of practice and 15 games later, it came down to one play for St. Paul in Saturday’s Division VI state championship game against Delphos St. John’s in front of 5,850 fans at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.

Trailing 21-17 with seven seconds and no timeouts left, quarterback Eric Schwieterman plowed in from a yard out for the winning points as the Flyers claimed their first-ever state championship with a 24-21 victory.

St. Paul had made three trips to the championship game — 1997, 1999 and 2004 — but came out on the losing side each time.

That ended Saturday when the Flyers rallied from 11 points down with less than 15 minutes remaining in the game.

“It’s been a fun road for 19 years, and we’ve had a lot of success,” St. Paul coach John Livengood said. “I’m very proud of these kids. That is what I’m feeling right now. It hasn’t really sunk in about a state championship. You say it to yourself, and it’s just like wow. It’s always been our ultimate goal.”

It didn’t look good for the Flyers (15-0) with just more than four minutes left in the game. The Blue Jays (14-1) had second-and-goal at the St. Paul 1-yard line with a 21-17 lead. However, the Blue Jays committed their only penalty of the game with a costly false start that pushed them back five yards.

Three plays later, the Blue Jays kept the offense on the field looking to put the game away on fourth-and-goal from the St. Paul 3. Quarterback Wes Ulm pitched the ball to 208-pound running back Jordan Leininger, who upped his touchdown total to 31 with a score earlier in the game.

Leininger bounced outside to his right, but was forced out of bounds for no gain with 3:22 left by St. Paul senior Justin Wilde, who tips the scale at 145 pounds.

“The kids made some big stops and those were key,” St. Paul coach John Livengood said. “Justin Wilde on the fourth-down play being able to force him out of bounds to get the ball back was huge.”

The Flyers still had 97 yards in front of them to score the winning points, but a 36-yard pass to Justin Wilde on the second play quickly put them in business at their own 41. 

Three plays later, the Flyers had to convert a fourth-and-3 from their own 48, and Wilde came through again as he caught a short pass and turned it into a 37-yard gain to the St. John’s 15 with less than 90 seconds left to get the Flyer faithful believing.

Schwieterman then scrambled for five yards the next two plays to set up a third-and-goal at the Blue Jays 9, and he was forced out of the pocket again and bolted eight yards up the right sideline to the 1-yard line with 40 seconds left.

After being stopped dead in his tracks twice and with the clock rolling inside 10 seconds left, Livengood elected to send Schwiterman down one gap to his right for the winning points.

“We knew they were bringing everyone up the middle like they had the two times before,” Schwieterman said of the final play. “So we figured if we bounced outside, there would be a little better chance in there with that gap that we tried squeezing it into.”

Schwieterman barely got the ball across the line, but as he said after the game “I did get the ball across the line.”

St. Paul opened the scoring when Schwieterman electrified the Flyer faithful with a 73-yard run on a speed option play, streaking up the sidelines on third-and-22 with 4:30 left in the opening quarter. Jim Roth added his first of three extra points for a 7-0 lead.

The Schwieterman run was a new record for longest touchdown in Division VI championship game history.

After the Blue Jays recovered their first two fumbles earlier in the game, Flyer senior Brian Roberts finally made them pay by falling on a loose ball at the St. John’s 40-yard line with 8:57 left in the first half. St. Paul drove inside the St. John’s 3-yard line, but settled for a 19-yard field goal by Roth for a 10-0 lead with 5:09 left in the half.

The Blue Jays got right back in it with an 86-yard kick return by Jordan Bergfeld, and the kick from Josh Rode quickly made it a 10-7 game at halftime.

St. John’s took the lead for the first time at 14-10 on a 24-yard run by Ulm with 8:21 left in the third quarter to cap a 9-play, 60-yard drive. Special teams then bit again as Tyler Bergfeld fielded a St. Paul punt inside his own 5 and returned it 89 yards to the St. Paul 7.

It took Leininger just two plays to cover the distance for his score, as he went in standing up from two yards out with 2:52 left in the quarter for a 21-10 lead.

The Flyers regrouped, marching 85 yards in 11 plays that took 4:26 off the clock. Similar to the winning score, Schwieterman bulled in from a yard out with 10:19 left in the game to make it 21-17 and set up the thrilling finish.

“We all just kind of huddled together and realized what we had to do,” Dan Tracht said of the 11-point deficit. “We got it done. I’m not sure how much time was on the clock at that point, but we were all determined to get our one goal.