Monday, December 5th, 2022
New Bremen rolls past Warren JFK for second crown
Cards bring back gold
By Tom Haines
Photo by Paige Sutter/The Daily Standard
New Bremen quarterback David Homan works his way toward the end zone during Saturday's Division VII state championship game against Warren John F. Kennedy.
CANTON - From the first drive on Saturday, it was clear that New Bremen was the best team in Division VII.
David Homan led the Cardinals on a long touchdown drive to open the game, then ripped off two long touchdown runs as New Bremen raced out to a big first-half lead on the way to a 38-6 victory over Warren John F. Kennedy in the state championship game at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium.
The Cardinals are state champions for the second time after beating JFK 31-0 at Massillon's Paul Brown Tiger Stadium in 2020 in their first trip to Canton.
"Being able to experience it with others will make something special, and to be here for me as a high school head coach, that's what you want to try to accomplish," New Bremen coach Chris Schmidt said. "To be able to do it with them, as I said, makes it special.
"It was neat because as we were getting close to the stadium, you could kind of see the top portion of the home side there, and you could just hear everybody on the bus go, "Oh!" Like, 'This is awesome.' So just a treat to be here, and thankfully we were able to come away with a victory at the same time."
New Bremen (13-3) started with back-to-back negative plays before Homan rolled right, stopped on a dime just before the sideline, and fired back across his body to Aaron Poeppelman for 22 yards and a first down. On the other side of the 50, Homan dove for a first down on fourth-and-1 and ran three straight times into the red zone before Hunter Schaefer took the ball off the left side for a 13-yard touchdown to open the scoring.
Photo by Paige Sutter/The Daily Standard
New Bremen's Hunter Schaefer (28) tries to break free from a Warren JFK defender.
"Our motto is, 'WIN,' " Homan said. "Not in a bad way, just, 'what's important now?' If you have a bad play, what's important now? The next play. If you have a good play, what's important now? The next play."
After the Cardinals' defense forced a punt from just past midfield, Homan muffed the punt and JFK started in the red zone with a chance to tie the game. Caleb Hadley found Aiden Rossi for 16 yards to get to the 10, but from there New Bremen held up again.
Evan Eyink blew up a first-down run, and after an incompletion and a short run, a false start pushed the Eagles back to the 13. Hadley tried to roll left but was tracked down by Dylan Bambauer, who had him in his grasp before Hadley managed to throw the ball away for a turnover on downs.
"We've talked about battling through adversity in the playoffs," Schmidt said. "Whether it's the weather, we were down a couple of touchdowns last week, and so it was just one of those that we had to try to weather the storm. The defense, I thought it was huge there to not allow any points."
Four plays into the second quarter, Homan slipped through an arm tackle and raced 67 yards for a touchdown to make it 14-0.
Antonio Smith got two big runs to bring the Eagles back into New Bremen territory before Hadley missed two passes, Hayden Zeller batted down the third-down pass at the line, and Bambauer chased down Hadley on a scramble to force another turnover on downs.
"I think a lot of the stunts that the coaches were calling, it was helping our D-linemen and linebackers to open up gaps on the o-line that they could shoot through," Eyink said. "They just made plays when they had the opportunity to."
Photo by Paige Sutter/The Daily Standard
New Bremen's Evan Eyink (56) gets a block from Hayden Zeller after intercepting the ball.
After a New Bremen punt, Eyink made a lunging grab for an interception near midfield, and Homan found daylight on the left side again for a 41-yard touchdown run to make it 21-0 with 4:02 left in the half.
"We have what you call quick guards and quick tackles, strong guards and strong tackles," Homan said. "So they go to left, right, both sides. It doesn't matter which side we run it to, our linemen do a great job of staying on blocks, opening up holes for me and Hunter to get some breathing room and then make open-field cuts."
JFK went three-and-out and Homan led 12-play drive in the final two minutes to the 18, scrambling out of bounds with two seconds left to give the Cardinals one last play. Despite the wind blowing straight on, Schmidt sent out Schaefer to try a 35-yard field goal, and he put it inside the right upright as time expired to extend the lead.
"To be honest with you, when we played at Massillon a couple years ago, there was a situation where I thought I probably should've kicked it and I didn't," Schmidt said. "So I was thinking in the back of my head, if I get a chance to send Hunter out there, we're going to try to give him a shot at it. Boy, that was a great kick, with the wind, to knock that through."
Photo by Paige Sutter/The Daily Standard
A group of New Bremen defenders swarm a Warren JFK ballcarrier during Saturday's Division VII state game.
JFK showed some life to start the third, converting a fourth down in Cardinals territory before Hadley found Rossi down the middle for a 27-yard touchdown. New Bremen responded with a 14-play, six-minute drive capped off by a seven-yard Homan touchdown run to make it 31-6 with 3:34 left in the third.
The Eagles muffed the ensuing kickoff and Homan took the ball 27 yards to paydirt on the first play from scrimmage to start the running clock.
"We picked a bad night to miss tackles and we picked a bad night to turn the ball over when we did," JFK coach Dominic Prologo said. "Obviously New Bremen's a heck of a football team, their quarterback had a great game today. I take my hat off to those guys. But I'm not sure we played our best game tonight."
Homan finished with 234 yards rushing and 77 yards passing, and New Bremen finished with just one penalty for five yards, an intentional delay of game penalty before a punt in the fourth quarter.
Carter Elking added a leaping interception at the line of scrimmage in the fourth, stifling JFK's last promising drive.
Photo by Paige Sutter/The Daily Standard
New Bremen's Nolan Kuenning (57), Hayden Zeller, back, and Dylan Bambauer (25) bring down Warren JFK quarterback Caleb Hadley.
