Marion Local’s Max Ranly intercepts a pass over Fort Loramie’s Logan Eilerman. A few plays later Ranly caught a 55-yard touchdown pass from Brennen Hess. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Logan Howard)
From the first snap, top-seeded Marion Local kept coming up with the football, turned their good fortune into lots of points and set up a rematch with Minster.
Maria Stein, OH – Marion Local’s 61 football players stewed for two weeks. They wanted to hit someone other than themselves.
So did their head coach.
But as the No. 1 seed in Division VII, Region 28, the unbeaten Flyers earned a first-round playoff bye.
Minster Bank is the official banking resource for Press Pros Magazine.com.
“I don’t like it,” Tim Goodwin said. “That was long and boring.”
But head coaches don’t make the rules. The OHSAA does. And starting in 2025, the home office in Columbus changed the regional part of the tournament from 16 teams to 12 and gave the top four seeds a bye. Goodwin remembers the good old days of eight teams per regional and no byes.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com. Follow on X @jw_gilbert
He might grow to enjoy the extra week to get players healthier and prepare because, as long as he coaches, the Flyers are an astronomically good bet to earn a bye.
But Goodwin’s not there yet.
“I’ve said this a million times they’re high school kids,” he said. “You can’t give them three days off or else they’re not going to remember. You got to practice almost every day anyway … so might as well play.”
When the Flyers finally got to put on the home blue and gold Friday, they were beyond ready for Fort Loramie. To say anything less would be as big of an understatement as saying the Flyers win a lot of football games.
The turned-loose Flyers forced a fumble on the first play from scrimmage. They scored four touchdowns in the first quarter. They created six turnovers. They dominated.
Since 2013, Moeller Trucking sponsors MAC sports on Press Pros Magazine.com.
Fort Loramie, a big underdog, could do nothing about Marion Local’s grip on the game and the football, succumbing as many Flyers opponents do, 49-0, on the first cold night of the season.
“You want to get momentum,” Fort Loramie coach Spencer Wells said. “When we beat Anna and we pulled off an upset, we had some momentum early. We got into halftime and it was tight, and that was the goal tonight. But it just did not go our way from the get-go.”
Camden Griesdorn rushed for three touchdowns and 146 yards to provide run support to the defense’s tide of turnovers.
Momentum is hard to gain when the opponent grabs it on the first play and values it enough to never let up no matter how easy they make the game look.
Flyers senior linebacker Seth Heitkamp, the Midwest Athletic Conference defensive player of the year, was so happy to finally play football again that nothing was going to make or his teammates complacent with a 21-0 lead less then five minutes into the game.
“Really gave us a lot of motivation to keep on hitting them every play, keep on playing every down, just keep on going at them,” said Heitkamp, who made the game’s final interception in the fourth quarter.
And the turnovers that kept leading to points?
“I just love it,” he said. “It’s part of the game. It’s probably one of the best parts for me.”
The Flyers next game is back at Booster Stadium on Friday against MAC rival Minster, a team the defeated 28-7 in Week 9. The fourth-seeded Wildcats hammered Fort Recovery 49-7 on Friday.
Minster Dental is proud to sponsor the best in area sports stories on Press Pros Magazine.com.
“It’s going to be a hard game,” Flyers quarterback and safety Brennen Hess said. “It’s hard to beat a team twice, and they’re very sound on defense. And they got a very good quarterback in [Carson] Kaylor, who can make plays. We got to be locked in defensively that night, too.”
On Friday, Marion’s defense locked up Fort Loramie’s passing game and the Tanner Heckman to Tanner Eilerman combination with double coverage. Eilerman didn’t catch a pass, and Heckman completed only one pass to a Redskin in 10 attempts. But the trouble for the Redskins started on the ground.
Marion Local’s defense pressured Fort Loramie quarterback Tanner Heckman repeatedly and controlled the game by creating six turnovers.
Heckman fumbled on the first play from scrimmage. Marion’s Camden Griesdorn immediately got started on his 146-yard, three-touchdown night with a 10-yard score at the 11:11 mark of the first quarter.
At 10:37, Marion cornerback Mitchell Fleck plucked the first of four Heckman interceptions and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown. Max Ranly made the next interception on a ball targeted for Eilerman. Three plays later, Hess threw deep on a post pattern to Ranly for a 55-yard touchdown and a 21-0 lead with 7:26 left in the first. Hess didn’t have to throw much, but he was 5 for 6 for 123 yards and an interception.
“We watch film and we see what we think we see,” Goodwin said of the early shot down field to Ranly. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Obviously, it was a very good pass and good catch.”
Heckman tried to hit Eilerman downfield again, but the ball was a little too tall for the 6-foot-3 Eilerman. The 6-6 Hess intercepted the third straight pass thrown by Heckman. This time the Flyers needed more of a drive, and Griesdorn scored from the one for a 28-0 lead with 4:24 left in the first quarter.
Wilson Health/Orthopedics proudly sponsors the best in area sports and the Ohio State Buckeyes on Press Pros.
“You have a little less pressure, I guess you could say,” Hess said. “When they’re just fumbling the ball left and right, and you’re getting good plays on defense, you feel like you can do anything.”
The Redskins were shell shocked, their heads were spinning and every other cliché for the moment.
Marion Local’s Brennen Hess showed the Flyers’ explosive tendencies with 123 yards in just five completions.
“They’re very explosive, they’ve got some outstanding players, great scheme,” Wells said. “They were able to break some tackles, get behind us a few times. Credit to them.”
The Flyers added a special teams touchdown to their resume late in the first half to lead 35-0. The Redskins punted out of the end zone, and Andrew Schmackers returned the kick 28 yards for a touchdown on one of the shortest punt-return scores anyone has ever seen.
Not happy with not finishing a second-quarter drive, the Flyers opened the running-clock second half with a nine-play drive that ended with Griesdorn’s 26-yard touchdown run.
“We’re super sound on our defense, first of all, so we’re not going to give up anything big,” Hess said. “But then that second quarter for us, especially offensively, we were not on top of it. Came into the locker room, realized we got to change things. Came out second half and were a lot better.”
Dorsten Contracting proudly supports Shelby County League sports on Press Pros.
The Redskins (6-5) won four straight after a season-opening competitive loss to Minster. Then they lost four of five in the meat of their Northwest Conference schedule. But getting a playoff at home last week and learning from this loss to Marion Local will only benefit Wells’ young team.
“I just told them we doubled our win total from a year ago, got a playoff win at home, probably one of the biggest regular season wins that we’ve ever had in the history of our program over Anna,” he said. “They definitely got us going in the right direction.”
The direction the Flyers want to go is back to state for what would be a 16th state title. Last year St. Henry beat the Flyers in the region final and ended their reign of four straight state crowns.
“Last year I don’t really think about it too much, but I still have that grudge,” Heitkamp said. “I don’t want to lose. I want to keep on winning because it was so heartbreaking last year.”
To win it all, the Flyers must win four more games. And they get to do it over four weeks.
No more byes.
EB Real Estate, Darke County’s sales leader, proudly sponsors the best area sports on Press Pros Magazine.