Ground-and-pound Bellbrook buries Bellefontaine under five-touchdown, second-quarter avalanche

Gaining its footing after a slow start, Bellbrook offered big plays in bunches to bely its offensive reputation and spoil Bellefontaine’s home debut.

Bellefontaine, OH — If real-life experiences best ingrain classroom lessons then a sideline full of Bellefontaine Chieftains will show up for school Monday with a much more robust understanding of the Great Depression.

Nothing the Chieftains study over the weekend could better illustrate the boom-to-bust freefall of the 1929 stock market crash than what Bellbrook unleashed in a 35-point second quarter over the span of just nine offensive snaps.

“They got the momentum against us and it went downhill fast,” Bellefontaine coach Jason Brown said of the flipped script in an eventual 49-17 defeat. “They found some seams out there on the edge and put our young players in some tough situations. We just let one mistake turn into two and couldn’t get it stopped.”

Bellbrook, which opened eyes in the season opener with a 27-14 victory at Tippecanoe, fell into a 10-0 hole in its second straight road game before roaring back with explosiveness NASA would envy.

Without benefit of a turnover, or a special teams TD, the Golden Eagles (2-0) scored three touchdowns in three plays and five in a span of 8:54 before the blitzkrieg subsided.

“Once we got the hang of it and found their weak spot, we were fine,” Bellbrook running back Bronson Epifano said. “But I don’t think we should have waited around to find their weak spot.

“We should have been sharp from the start, but once we found it and started firing, every play was money.”

The time-of-possession dominance Bellbrook’s Wing-T offense used to stifle Tipp showed itself only briefly, on a 64-yard scoring march that ended with Eli Edwards’ 9-yard TD catch from quarterback Grant Diorio one minute into the second quarter.

From there, the Eagles forced a three-and-out and rode Epifano’s 52-yard run on the next snap to a 14-10 lead, then scored again on Jack Kosins’ 72-yard toss sweep toward the right sideline immediately after a Bellefontaine punt.

Unlike Epifano the possession before, Kosins had to cut back to the left to find daylight, but once he did there were no defenders with back-side contain.

“Great teams have to respond and we’re fortunate we were able to respond quickly,” Bellbrook coach Jeff Jenkins said. “I didn’t like the start at all, which we’ll talk about a lot more tomorrow, but I’m really proud of the way our guys bounced back.”

Bellefontaine put the Eagles on their heels immediately, taking the opening kickoff and unnerving the defense with a no-huddle attack.

Quarterback Blake Loomis hit C.J. Butler on a seven-yard slant to convert an early third-down and then found Dillon Jones over the middle in the seam with a step on the secondary and license to go 61 yards for the TD.

After a Bellbrook punt, Loomis went right back at the Eagles’ secondary, lofting a perfect throw against double coverage on Butler, whose spectacular, tumbling catch worked for 44 yards.

Noah Torsell’s 26-yard field goal salvaged three points for Bellefontaine after the drive stalled, providing the Chieftains’ soon-to-vanish 10-0 margin.

“Our plan was to get them off guard in the beginning and we ended up doing that,” Loomis said. “Then they adjusted a few things and that really made it hard for us.”

A senior, Loomis is starting for the third straight season, but he might be the only quarterback in Ohio whose two previous seasons as a starter were on the offensive line.

“I played right tackle my sophomore year when I was about 180,” Loomis said. “Then I played right guard last year when I was about 190.”

That’s where Loomis figured he’d remain until Brown approached him last spring with the news that 2025 starter Reign St. Clair – the brother of former Chieftain and Ohio State QB prospect Tavion St. Clair – was moving to Upper Arlington.

“Coach Brown came up to me one day in eighth period and said, ‘How would you like to be the quarterback of the Bellefontaine Chieftains?’ “ Loomis said. “I didn’t hesitate a bit. I was like, ‘Yes, sir. Absolutely.’ I started throwing right away to get my arm right.”

Prior to this season, Loomis last played quarterback as an eighth-grader. While his transition from offensive line to QB is unusual, he wasn’t the only player on the field at Acuview Stadium in a different role from the previous fall.

Bellbrook’s entire backfield – deep and talented as it is – played most of its snaps on defense a year ago in what wound up a disappointing 6-5 season.

“We came into this year with a different mindset,” Diorio said. “We were pretty mad about how we finished last year and we knew most people didn’t expect much from us this year. We’ve really dedicated ourselves to getting vengeance on the teams we lost to a year ago.”

Bellbrook accomplished that in Week One at Tipp, and now points toward its first home game Friday against Valley View and another score to settle from 2025, a matchup the Eagles lost, 31-14.

“We kind of had the feeling that a lot of people were doubting us going into this season,” Jenkins said. “We’ve kind of worn that chip on our shoulder for a long time, which is what irritated me about the way we started tonight.

“We can’t lose that chip on our shoulder. We have to be that hungry team that’s ready to play from the first snap every night.”