Soaring to the title

Marion Local rolls to capture 14th state football championship

CANTON - Marion Local asserted itself early on Saturday and turned in another sterling performance on the way to its third straight state championship.

Griffin Bruns stopped Dalton's best chance to rally with an 80-yard interception return touchdown in the second quarter, and Marion took control from there on the way to a 38-0 win in the Division VII state championship game at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton.

"It didn't go exactly how we thought," Marion coach Tim Goodwin said. "We respected Dalton for what they showed us on film. Couple plays made a big difference."

Marion (16-0) won its 14th state title and its 48th straight game.

"We don't really try to look at that," Flyers senior Kyle Otte said. "We try to take every week week-by-week and one game at a time so we don't get too wrapped up in it. We just try to focus on what we have to do that game, and we can think about it at the end."

Dalton finished at 14-2 in its first trip to the state tournament.

After getting backed up with penalties on its first drive, the Bulldogs got a big play when Colin Pearson found Kaden Russell alone down the right seam and Russell rumbled 37 yards into Marion territory.

But Pearson's first down pass into traffic was off target and fell incomplete, Simon Partington and Kamden Eifert stuffed a second down run, and Pearson missed an open pass over the middle on third down before another incompletion on fourth handed the ball to the Flyers.

"The beginning of the game was very interesting to me," Goodwin said. "Here you have us that are used to playing here, and then you have Dalton, who aren't used to it, but they're 20 minutes away and they're going to be all excited. So I was really curious how that was all going to play out.

"We were prepared to take a couple punches early," he went on. "They put together a nice drive there, and we came up with that stop. But we liked our matchup going into it, our offense against their defense."

Marion went 63 yards in eight plays to dent the scoreboard first, starting with a jet sweep to Drew Lause picked up 34 yards. Otte added a 10-yard catch-and-run, then took a screen to the left sideline to pick up fourth-and-5 at the 17, and three plays later, it was Otte who ran through a sea of tacklers and dove over the goal line to put Marion in front with 5:18 left in the first quarter.

"Now we can open up the playbook, throw some first down passes, because we've shown that we can run the ball fairly effectively," Goodwin said of the advantage of an early lead. "So as a playcaller, it's much nicer when you know you can call a first down pass, and if it's incomplete, second-and-10, you've still got a shot. Whereas some games, it's like, 'We can't waste a play.' You can't waste a play, it's too hard. It's weird because that's probably the opposite of what you should do, but that's life. The playbook just condenses.

"That's what happens a lot with us defensively," he went on. "Our reputation, our starts, it does the same thing to them. All of a sudden, 'Why aren't they trying this?' Well, it's because they can't waste a down."

Another false start put Dalton behind the chains on its second drive, and the Flyers' defense forced a three-and-out. Aided by a 13-yard punt return by Otte, the offense needed to go just 36 yards to add on.

Justin Knouff threw a 21-yard pass to Victor Hoelscher, his pass narrowly beating safety Jace Eberly, and on third-and-8, he stepped in as Otte's lead blocker for an eight-yard run. Two plays later, Ethan Heitkamp followed Partington and linemen Kyle Ungruhn and Adam Winner for a one-yard touchdown run that gave Marion a 14-0 lead at the end of the first quarter.

"I've been there before," Goodwin said. "I've had plenty of games where we jump out maybe too fast, and the air comes out of the balloon. We've had some state championship games where either we held on or we lost where we shouldn't have lost, and it's a bad feeling. I'm 180 degrees the opposite now. I'm screaming at everyone, yelling at the coaches, and anyone that's smiling on the sideline, I'm trying to kick them off the sideline.

"I've got to talk to our junior high coaches," he deadpanned. "They were smiling way too much on the sideline."

Dalton followed with its longest drive of the half, running 10 plays and 4 ½ minutes, including a fourth-and-2 conversion from the Marion 35 when Pearson threw a screen to Eberly for 13 yards. But on the next play, Pearson tried to sneak a screen pass to Greyson Siders on the left side, and Bruns jumped the route.

Pearson caught up to him at the 20, but Bruns juked him and ran through the arm tackle to finish off an 80-yard interception return that made it 21-0 with 8:18 left in the half.

"The pick-six was a backbreaker, when they'd had that nice drive," Goodwin said. "Griff had a great read on that."

It was the second straight year the Flyers got a pick-six in the state title game, and the first time ever there was a pick-six in the Division VII state championship game.

Bruns almost had another one on the next drive, as Pearson was chased by Lause back into the end zone and floated a pass to Cade Mullet on the right side, but Mullett outwrestled him for the ball. It was still a five-yard loss, and Winner caught Pearson from behind as he tried to scramble on the next play, forcing a punt.

Victor Hoelscher caught the ball over his shoulder at the Flyers 36, spun around and took off down the left sideline, making a jump-cut past Siders at the 32 on his way for a 64-yard punt return touchdown, the longest ever in a Division VII title game.

"Special teams-wise, they're one of the best teams I've seen on our level from a schematics standpoint," Dalton head coach Broc Dial said.

The Flyers finished with 108 yards on returns, while kicker Carson Bills delivered three touchbacks.

"The special teams in the MAC are just so much better than what we see in the playoffs," Goodwin said. "We've got some athletes this year, let's not pooh-pooh that - we've got some guys that can cover some grass. But special teams are way different during the regular season. We've got to scheme them up, we've got to work them."

Knouff was intercepted at the Dalton 23, but again the defense pushed the Bulldogs offense backward, aided by a low snap that Pearson dropped to a knee to grab. Otte took the punt back to the Dalton 28, then ran a screen pass down to the 3, but fell short on third down.

Dalton called timeout with 18 seconds left, allowing Bills to kick a 19-yard field goal to make it 31-0 and set up the running clock for the second half.

"At halftime, a lot of us had our heads down a little bit, but we tried to keep everybody's heads up," Siders said. "We didn't care what the scoreboard was, we just knew that we had one half left with this team."

Marion got the opening kickoff of the third and went 65 yards in 4:19. Knouff scrambled up the middle for 20 yards, Heitkamp found a big lane on the right side for a 19-yard carry, and Otte took a screen pass the final eight yards to make it 38-0.

Dalton answered with another sustained drive. Pearson stretched the ball out on a broken play for a fourth-down conversion, and the Bulldogs' run game finally got going, even with the Flyers' first team defense still in the game. Siders brought the ball up to the 15 before Dalton ran out of steam, with three straight tackles by Landon Arling before Lause shoved Pearson out of bounds on fourth down, with Pearson's outstretched arm fully two yards short this time.

"They had a couple drives there in the third quarter, I don't think our run fits were very good," Goodwin said. "I'll look at it, figure out what happened. But effort was great."

Marion rattled off 15 plays to drain almost 12 minutes, but the drive came up empty after Siders tackled Brayden Pavelka for a seven-yard loss and Knouff's fourth down pass from the 10 was incomplete.

Marion finished with 321 yards of offense, 119 through the air by Knouff. Otte racked up 98 total yards and 44 more in the return game, but in the postgame press conference, he was sure to give credit where it was due.

"I'd just like to thank our O-line and our tight ends for blocking today," he said, then added, "My mom told me to say that."

Dalton's offense was held to 177 yards and nine first downs.

"It's still the same Dalton team," Siders said. "Yeah, we had some mistakes, but it's the same team. … In 2022, we got our butts whipped in the regional semifinals, but in the opener we came out and lost by a touchdown. The rest of the season, we just had our heads up. We knew what we were striving for, and we tried to take it."

Goodwin, who won his 300th game earlier in the season, now has a career record of 309-48 and 14 state titles as a head coach, all at Marion.

"I'm a coach's son, so he brought me to all these games, and I really, really wanted to do it," Goodwin said. "As a coach, that's what I dreamed of doing, and then when I did it, it was empty. If that's your goal and that's everything, it's just, 'All right, that was fun, but…' Then you've got to switch gears. It's about, like Kyle said, the week, and the journey and the grind. These guys spend a lot of time in the locker room and the weight room, and as I get older, it's like, 'That's what football's all about.'

"The locker room, the weight room, the bus rides, that's what they're going to remember. Yeah, they're going to remember some games, but just the brotherhood - that, to me, is everything."