Announcement
Whether you live in Valley City, Litchfield or Mallet Creek — or anywhere in Medina County, for that matter — if you run across a Buckeye High football player in the next few days, pat him on the back. Tell him thanks for an incredible season. Tell him you’re proud of him. Tell him, maybe, something as simple as, “Thank you” or “Great job.” After all, even when heartbroken beyond description, these classy kids said all that to you Friday night after suffering an incredibly devastating 35-28 triple-overtime loss to West Geauga in a Division III, Region 7 first-round playoff game. “I just love these guys, this community, this school, these fans,” tearful quarterback Nathan Polidori said moments after throwing an interception that ended an epic game that lasted almost three hours. “Thanks to everyone for all the support. I’m happy this season happened. I’m not going to say I regret anything.” Except, of course, that the 2015 season is over. But it won’t be forgotten.
Never, ever, ever will it be forgotten. All year, this Buckeye team talked about going 10-0 in the regular season and becoming the first squad in school history to win a playoff game. The Bucks did the former and came about as close as you can come to doing the latter. There is absolutely no shame in that. “This is just devastating for us,” receiver Justin Canedy said after catching two touchdowns. “We played our hardest but we didn’t come out on top. But we take pride in leaving it all out there.”
A team that had a number of key performers play both ways all season, the Bucks lost talented slotback/defensive back Nathan Scott early against West Geauga. Even bigger star slotback Trevor Thome played most of the night with a bad hip and Polidori was limping around on a bum ankle, and still the Bucks almost made history. They were close.
So close.
So, so close.
“We left everything on the field,” coach Mark Pinzone said. “There’s no regrets. They made one more play than us. That’s what it came down to.” It ended, quickly and in heartbreaking fashion, when Polidori threw an interception on Buckeye’s first play after the Wolverines had scored in the third overtime. “Can we not talk about that?” the classy senior asked politely. We won’t. We’ll talk about linebacker Dustin McCullough, all 5-foot-7 of him, making an incredible 13 tackles, three of them behind the line of scrimmage. We’ll talk about Bruce Barnby causing a fumble and Brad Calta, who skipped prom as a junior so he could work out, recovering it.
We’ll talk about 10 tackles for Jaret Yohman and nine for Kyle Svagerko, who added a few pancakes as a blocking fullback. We’ll talk, too, about the pain these kids felt as they walked off Edwin Steingass Field, which had about 4,000 fans packed around all parts of it, many of them standing, four-deep, throughout. “It feels like I’m stung inside,” McCullough said. “I’m shocked. It hurts. We worked hard. We wanted it. We were right there.”
That the Bucks came so close ultimately made their pain worse Friday night, but that will be replaced in a few days by justifiable pride and satisfaction. “We played hard and we played well,” Thome said. “They just made one more play than we did. We had a great year, but if you lose, you lose. There’s nothing good about losing, especially in the playoffs. You have to survive or you go home.”
The Bucks went home Friday, the seniors for the final time as high school football players, but they did not exit as losers. They went home, quite simply, as the team on the wrong end of the final score in an amazing high school football game.
“We didn’t get the job done, but we came so close,” Polidori said. “We worked so hard. We couldn’t have done anything more. It just didn’t go our way at the end.”
That it did not, but not for lack of trying, not for lack of talent, not for lack of heart. And, most of all, not for lack of class.
So thank you, all members of the Buckeye football team, for a great season.
