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From The GAZETTE, by Adam Ferrise, Special to The Gazette
YORK TWP. — The acronym M.A.P. has been stenciled on Buckeye senior Cory Reisner’s black eye patch since he was a junior. It reminds the tailback to “Make A Play,” something he did on the first play of his final game and throughout his career. Reisner’s final carry went an unfitting minus-2 yards, bringing his rushing total to 268 yards on 15 carries in the Bucks’ 47-0 demolition of Patriot Athletic Conference opponent Brookside on Friday.
With the performance, Reisner stenciled his name near the top of Buckeye’s record book and gave his school its sixth win in a row. His five touchdowns - on runs of 65, 15, 55, 46 and 5 yards - tied for the most in school history, which he’s accomplished four times in his career.
He also scored on a twopoint conversion, which gave him 32 points for the game, matching the Bucks’ mark he set last week against Keystone. And he did it without lining up for a single offensive snap in the second half. “He probably could have scored 15 touchdowns,” Buckeye coach Billy Burke said. “What do you do? It’s a difficult call. Nobody wanted to say ‘No, you’re not going to get it.’ We tried, but you always want to do that within the context of the game.”
Reisner said he was “a little bit” upset that he didn’t get a carry in the second half.
“I know why he did it, so forgive and forget,” Reisner said. His five first-half touchdowns - three in the first quarter - were complemented by quarterback Mike Kelly’s 71-yard TD run as the Bucks took a commanding 41-0 lead at halftime over their winless foe.
Chad Gatt added a 54yard touchdown in the third quarter to round out the scoring.
The Cardinals crossed midfield twice, once because of a bad Buckeye kickoff, and the other because of a holding penalty on a punt, which pushed the Cardinals to Buckeye’s 44. The Bucks held the Cardinals to 85 yards of offense. Buckeye ran 35 plays, all of them runs, for 445.
“That was no surprise,” Brookside coach Keith Grabowski said. “We knew they want to run the football and they do it very well.” Reisner was the main reason, setting Buckeye’s all-time record for career touchdowns with 59, topping Ron Brant’s 54 (1977-79). He also tied Brant’s record for all-time rushing scores (54). Not to be outdone, the senior back matched Brant’s record for 100-yard rushing games in a career (17).
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Reisner also set a singleseason record for points in a season with 164 (Brant, 158, 1979) and the singleseason touchdown record with 25 (22, Brant in 1979 and Dustin Supan in 2005). “It means a lot because I’ve worked my butt off to get this far,” Reisner said. “My team has worked its butt off to get me this far. If my line isn’t blocking and my wide receivers aren’t blocking, I’m nothing. We’ve all worked really hard this year.”
Burke said Reisner has set the bench mark for all Buckeye players with the way he has carried himself. “What really sticks out is the benchmark he has set on being a player,” Burke said. “It’s not that he has all these records or what he can do on the field, but he set the bar by being a kid who loves football and (shows) that this is how hard you play and this is how hard you work.” Ferrise may be reached at sports@ohio.net.
From The GAZZETTE, by Brad Bournival, Staff Writer
BUCKEYE (5-4, 5-1): A Patriot Athletic Conference Stars Division title already in tow, the Bucks still have something to play for. With a win over Brookside, Buckeye will finish with its eighth straight winning season. The Bucks had just two winning seasons in the 1990s and finished with a non-losing record three times. “There’s no what-ifs because it’s déjà vu from last year for us,” said Buckeye coach Billy Burke, whose Bucks were 5-4 in Week 9 in 2007. "We have to get our young kids ready to go. We had two games against our biggest rivals (Wellington and Black River). Last week was a character builder for us.”
..…Buckeye knows how to get in the end zone; it’s what happens after that that has the squad concerned. The Bucks have missed six extra points, four two-point conversions via the pass and another from the run. Add two missed field goals and that’s 22 points Buckeye has left on the field.
…...Brookside has won just two of its last 24 games and has fallen 10 times in a row. LW: W, 39-19 at Keystone. TW: Brookside (0-9, 0-6). NW: Eliminated.
From The GAZETTE, by Adam Ferrise, Special to The Gazette
LaGRANGE — Cory Reisner scored five touchdowns, set Buckeye’s alltime record for points in a season and lifted his football team to a Patriot Athletic Conference title Friday. Reisner rushed 17 times for 171 yards - 156 in the second half - and scored two 70-yard plus touchdowns in the game-changing third quarter to lead the Bucks to a 39-19 win over Keystone.
It is Buckeye’s second consecutive PAC title and its third in four seasons. Reisner also moved into third place in Medina County history in career points after his schoolrecord tying 32-point perf ormance. He added a two-point conversion in the fourth quarter.
“That’s been a goal since my freshman season,” Reisner said. “Every time I touch the ball, I’m thinking about the end zone.” It was his third career five-touchdown game, which also tied a school record. After the first half, it didn’t look like the Bucks (5-4, 4-1) or Reisner would accomplish anything.
Keystone (3-6, 2-4) held Reisner to 15 first-half rushing yards and went into intermission tied 6-6. “They were playing good hard tough physical football,” Buckeye coach Billy Burke said. “It was their senior night, they wanted to go out winners. First half we matched it, second half we took over a little bit.”
In the third quarter, however, Reisner and the Bucks took control, though they only ran six plays from scrimmage. After Keystone took the lead 12-6 on a Ryan Clement 19-yard rush, Reisner took the ensuing kickoff 72 yards for a touchdown.
The ball was kicked low, which Keystone coach Rob Clarico said was to keep the ball out of Reisner’s hands. The ball ricocheted off three Buckeye players, until it found Reisner, who broke four tackles on his way to the end zone. The Wildcats punted after three plays.
On the Bucks’ third play of the following drive, Reisner dashed 73 yards for a touchdown, giving Buckeye its first lead of the night with 4:59 remaining in the third. The teams traded 42-yard TD passes, from Keystone quarterback Tyler Minnich to Matt Herb and Buckeye’s Mike Kelly to Darren Boulton, which gave the Bucks a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
Reisner added two more touchdowns in the fourth quarter. He also scored the Bucks’ first TD. “We knew that their quarterback or Reisner was going to take it off-tackle,” Clarico said. “Whenever they meshed, we had our linebackers go off tackle and we had them covered. That worked in the first half and then they started running in between the tackles, that’s what started to hurt us a little bit.”
Keystone jumped out to a 6-0 lead after a fumble by Buckeye’s Shawn Cordes gave the Wildcats the ball at the Bucks’ 28. Kyle Smith found the end zone on fourth and goal from the 2. Callari eluded to the fact that Keystone was playing with heavy hearts after Molly Weber, a junior at Keystone, was killed in a car accident Tuesday.
Callari said there were a handful of players on his team that were close to Weber. Donations were taken for the Weber family at the game, which raised over $3,000. “One of the reasons they played so hard was that everybody wanted to step up for them,” Clarico said. “It’s a tough situation for anyone to go through at any age and I think they’ve learned that there are things more important than football.” Ferrise may be reached at sports@ohio.net.
From The GAZETTE by Brad Bournival, Staff Writer
Mike Kelly didn’t have just one choice following a Week 4 loss to Clearview; the Buckeye quarterback had three picks. That’s how many times the junior was intercepted in a 14-7 loss to the Clippers, prompting a wake-up by the Buckeye signal caller and a completely different attitude for the Bucks.
Since then, the school has won four straight and is perched atop the Patriot Athletic Conference Stars Division as it heads into tonight’s action with Keystone. “I wasn’t playing good and needed to be smarter with the ball,” Kelly said. “I went at it with the wrong attitude. I needed to go with an attitude of reserve the right to punt.” Not that the Bucks have had to do much of that since Week 5.
Kelly bounced back from his colossal collapse against the Clippers with a 4-of-7, 53yard performance in a 34-18 win over Lutheran West. It was that game against the Longhorns where Kelly got his legs under him. Literally. The 5-foot-11, 162-pound quarterback rushed for 81 yards on seven carries and has never looked back.
Coincidentally, he’s joined Medina County leading rusher and Buckeye teammate Cory Reisner as a cornerstone of the Bucks. “He has become the leader of the offense,” Reisner said. “He’s a big threat. He’s athletic like me, but they have no idea where he’s coming from.” Opponents have no clue because Kelly isn’t Option A for the Bucks. Heck, he’s not B or C either with Ryan McCormick and Shawn Cordes getting looks more often than not. Yet Kelly sits at No. 10 in county rushing with 454 yards on 52 carries and five touchdowns.
“Mike has learned how to hide the ball,” Buckeye coach Billy Burke said. “He knows when to pull it in and go. He ran for close to 300 yards the last two weeks because he can get himself downfield and follow his blocks. He can turn a 4-yard run into a 60-yard gain because no one accounts for him.”
Black River found that out the hard way last week in a 42-14 Buckeye win. Kelly torched the Pirates to the tune of 165 yards on eight carries.
Three of those carries went for scores. Not surprisingly, they weren’t short spurts either, as Kelly found the end zone on runs of 80, 56 and 30 yards. “The way he fakes, he does a hell of a job,” Black River coach Al Young said. “When you throw Reisner in there, he’s very deceptive. “He just hung our kids out to dry. When a kid has that much confidence, he feels comfortable in that role. He didn’t throw the ball that much but the ones he did looked good.”
The last two weeks, Kelly has attempted just three passes - all against the Pirates - and relied more on intuition to avoid interceptions. Add it up, and it’s not hard to figure out why the Bucks are looking at becoming league champs for the third time in four years. “When he sees an opportunity, he takes advantage of it,” Burke said. Because of Kelly, so have the Bucks. Bournival may be reached at bournival929@sbcglobal.net or 330.721.4045.
