By Craig Dunn
Logan Daily News
LOGAN — Shortly after players and coaches alike had waded through family, friends and well-wishers and made their way to the locker room Friday night, Logan coach Dale Amyx addressed his football Chieftains.

While the Chiefs had just clinched another outright Southeastern Ohio Athletic League championship and finished off a second-straight perfect regular season, Amyx wanted to remind them the season is actually only two-thirds of the way complete.

“We’re in this for 15 weeks,” he stressed. “We’re in it to win it.”
Such is the workmanlike attitude the Chieftains, to a man, have taken along their way to another conference title and undefeated regular season.

The Purple & White routed visiting Chillicothe 51-14 on Senior Night in Logan Chieftain Stadium to officially cap off a 10-0 regular season and clinch a fifth-straight outright SEOAL championship, their sixth-straight overall.

Those accomplishments are all well and good. However, while taking nothing away from the SEOAL or their non-league opponents, this group of Chieftains admittedly has bigger fish to fry this fall — a run at the state Division II championship — and they make no bones about it.

“We still have a long way to go,” said center and co-captain Bobby Russell. “We have the state playoffs and five more weeks of this. We’re going to bring a state championship home to Logan.”

That’s the attitude this team has taken for several months now. In all honesty, the rest of the SEOAL all but conceded the ‘09 title to the Purple & White a long time ago, and a 10-0 record was certainly well within the realm of possibility.

“You’re never sure going into a season if you’re that good, and you don’t know your competition that well, but I think once we got past Zanesville (in week five), in my heart I knew we could run the table,” Amyx admitted. “The kids got better and better, and the defense really got better.

“(Defense) was my biggest concern early in the year, with all the replacements,” he continued. “We knew what we had offensively and what we were capable of doing offensively, but defensively was a big surprise. The way they played at Lancaster was the first sign that we really had something going… and it gave them some confidence.”

That defense limited Chillicothe to just six first downs and 125 yards of total offense Friday night. The Cavs never crossed midfield until late in the second quarter, when they were already down by 38 points.

So with the regular season complete, the Chiefs enter the Division II playoffs as a No. 2 seed in Region 7 and will probably take on Canal Winchester (8-2) in an opening-round game next Friday in Logan Chieftain Stadium.

Unofficially, the Region 7 pairings look to be Columbus Marion-Franklin (8-2) at Louisville (10-0), Canal Winchester at Logan, Columbus Walnut Ridge (8-2) at Columbus Brookhaven (8-2) and Dresden Tri-Valley (9-1) at Lewis Center Olentangy Orange (8-2).

Region 7 teams such as New Philadelphia (9-1), Columbus St. Charles (5-5), Zanesville (9-1) and Athens (9-1) didn’t make the cut.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association will announce official playoff pairings this Sunday afternoon. But no matter who the Chiefs play, the focus remains the same.

“We don’t change anything, really, once we know who we play and we get game film,” Amyx said. “We do the same thing we do with every other team. We break it down, put it on the board, and try to find some tendencies, how we’re going to attack them with our offense and how we’re going to stop them with our defense.

“There are things that we have already built in that we can use,” he added. “I don’t think there’s anything out there we haven’t seen yet… we’ve seen just about everything this year.”

And despite having a day off from classes on Monday, the Chiefs will still come in and begin digesting the opponent.

“The kids will come in Monday, watch the film from the (Chillicothe) game, and then study the film of our opponent and go over what we have on the board,” Amyx said. “Really, nothing changes. Football is a routine thing. You have to keep the kids in a routine, and playoffs are a routine. We play (playoff games) on Friday nights, so we just keep them in that routine.”

Truthfully, the Cavaliers (1-9), who entered Friday night’s game on an eight-game losing streak, weren’t expected to give the Chiefs much trouble. And they didn’t.

Chillicothe finished in a tie for last place in the SEOAL with Marietta, and Bill Davidson, the Cavs’ longtime head coach, announced earlier in the day he was stepping down.

So amid the backdrop of Senior Night, the Chiefs kept their emotions in check and, other than a three-and-out on their first offensive series, went on to dominate the Cavs.

Patrick Angle threw three touchdown passes, Mason Mays scored three touchdowns, and the Chiefs took care of business in general.

The Chiefs scored on their next seven possessions… and on one of Chillicothe’s when Korey Swaim picked off a pass and returned it 35 yards for a second-quarter touchdown, Logan’s first defensive score of the season.

Mays capped off a seven-play, 55-yard drive with a 1-yard touchdown dive to put the Chiefs in front to stay at the 6:07 mark of the opening period.

Then, two plays after forcing a Chillicothe punt, Angle hit Jordan Rutter with a pass over the middle and the slick senior receiver did a complete 360 pirouette to shake four tacklers, cut down the left sideline, and complete a 49-yard touchdown pass… more than 30 of it on his own.

“I just bounced off them and turned on the jets, I guess,” Rutter said with a sheepish grin. “You just do it. It’s instinct.”

It was something the Chiefs did all night. Angle completed 16-of-23 passes for 245 yards, and his understudy, Jordan Jurgensmier, was 2-for-3 for 33 yards. But the Chiefs picked up every bit of two-thirds of those passing yards with terrific runs after catching the ball.

“How about some of the runs after the catch tonight? Wow!” Amyx exclaimed. “And that’s getting better every week. Our receivers did a real nice job making catches, breaking tackles and making runs. Jordan Rutter, Mason Mays, Zach McDaniel… they were impressive.

“I would hate to have to defense us because there are too many things (the Chiefs can do),” he added. “That’s why we run the offense we’re running… we’re getting our skills people out in space with (the opposition’s) skills and we think our kids can match up with pretty much anybody we play. For the most part, we’ve done that this year.”

A 19-yard field goal by Derek Montgomery made it 17-0 early in the second quarter and was the first salvo in what would be a 30-point second period.

Swaim followed with his interception return — he stepped in front of a Chillicothe receiver in the right flat, picked Chillicothe QB Shay Netter clean and had nothing but green turf between him and the goal line — then Mays made an electrifying 64-yard return of a punt down the right sideline, eluding and breaking tackle after tackle, before being hauled down at the CHS 1.

Offensive coordinator Kelly Wolfe then called Mays’ number on the next play and he came through with another 1-yard TD leap into the end zone.

The Chiefs weren’t through. A 39-yard catch-and-run from Angle to McDaniel got the Purple & White deep into Chillicothe territory, then moments later Angle teamed up with Mays — as the duo had done 24 times before — on a 10-yard touchdown pass.

The Chiefs then kicked their two-minute drill into overdrive when they again took possession with 53 seconds left in the half. Angle hooked up with McDaniel and Rutter on a couple more nifty catch-and-runs to quickly drive deep into Cavalier territory, then Angle hit senior Ryan Sigler in the back of the end zone on a 7-yard scoring pass with 2.6 seconds left to make the score 44-0.

It would have stayed that way at the intermission, except that Chillicothe executed some razzle-dazzle on the kickoff return. Isaac Beverly ran it back a few yards then handed it to Casey Oates sweeping around from the opposite direction. Oates caught the Logan defense going the other way, and went 80 yards for a touchdown to end the half.

It was the highlight of the night for the Cavs.

Isaac Lindsey scored Logan’s final touchdown on the opening drive of the third quarter, going 24 yards to paydirt, as the Logan starters played just the first half.

These Chieftains are a close group… especially the seniors, who were honored in pre-game ceremonies, most of whom have been together in athletics for many years.

“You can’t ask for anything greater than a 10-0 season,” said Mays, who has enjoyed a spectacular senior season. “I just hope we can keep this thing rolling and go 15-0. That would mean the world to me and to my teammates.

“We’ve been a tight-knit group for a long time,” he added. “It actually goes back to third grade with the Tomahawks (youth football team). We’ve always played together… and I just can’t believe this is our last year. There was a lot of emotion in this game. I couldn’t see myself being a senior, but I am. I had a lot of emotion in me and I played with a lot of emotion tonight. We got it done.”

“Anytime you can go undefeated, it means you gave it your all, 100 percent, and you did what you had to do,” said linebacker and co-captain Michael Snider, the team’s leading tackler. “The coaches helped us stay focused, and kept putting ‘one week at a time’ into our heads.

“Now this is where the real season starts,” he continued. “I think there have been a lot of expectations (from this senior class) from seventh grade up. We had a pretty good record when we were younger kids, too, in middle school. Some of us have been together since second or third grade in Tomahawks. We all grew up together and we have some real camaraderie going.”

That feeling of togetherness is crucial, according to Russell.

“The key to our success this year has been our closeness, studying the films all week, knowing our opponent and going out there and executing every Friday night,” he said. “Expectations every year for Logan football are 10-0, league championship and (making the) state playoffs.

“So far we’ve got those three,” he added. “We have more to go.”

McDaniel agreed.

“I’m not satisfied until we win state,” said the Logan co-captain. “That’s what we’ve been working hard all season for, (and) we won’t stop till we get it.”

He was asked what it would take to reach the Dec. 4 state championship game in Massillon.

“Just keep practicing hard like we’ve been doing,” he noted. “Keep improving. Every week that passes, the teams get better, and that means we have to get better. We don’t want to quit till we go all the way. It’s been good so far, but we won’t be satisfied till we win state.”

Rutter wants the Chiefs to continue their one-week-at-a-time approach.

“I expected 10-0 at the beginning of the season, and that’s what we got,” he said. “We had great potential at the beginning of the season, and we followed through. (But take it) one week at a time. It’s what we said at the beginning, and that’s what we’ll keep doing.”

Angle said all the achievements are nice, but there’s much more to accomplish.

“We’re definitely glad to have this part of the season end the way we wanted to,” the Chieftain co-captain noted, “but now we want to go all the way to state. We just need to focus on the team in front of us like we have all season. We can’t get ahead of ourselves and just need to keep getting better.

“We need to stay focused and keep working hard in practice every day… take care of business,” he added.

Still, he also plans to savor the back-to-back perfect regular seasons as well.

“Finishing undefeated has been our expectation the last two seasons… and now we’ve accomplished that both years,” said the All-Ohio quarterback. “We’ve been playing together since seventh grade, and this has been our goal. Going 10-0, winning league titles, and making a run for a state championship. It’s been great playing with this group of seniors.”

You can bet it’s going to be business as usual for the Chiefs come Monday.

“I told the kids this last year, too… we expect 10-0,” Amyx said. “This was expected, so we’re not having a (league championship) party or playoff party or anything like that. We’re going to get back to work one game at a time and try to take care of business on our field first, then go from there.”

As the second season dawns, Amyx again recalled the expression he passed along to his players in the locker room.

“One of the things I learned from Ron Hinton over at Amanda-Clearcreek: he’s got a little saying… ‘If you’re in it, you can win it.’ And that’s what we are hanging our hat on,” Amyx said. “We’re in it, and we can win it, but we have to take it one game at a time.

“And yes, we’re in this thing for 15 weeks. We said that from day one,” he added. “This is a 15-week thing, and the 11th week starts now.”

Let the playoffs begin.