By Craig Dunn
Logan Daily News
GALLIPOLIS — That 800-pound gorilla you might have seen running away from Gallia Academy High School’s Memorial Field Friday night was the monkey that jumped off the collective backs of the Logan Chieftains.

The Chiefs, facing the possibility of an 0-6 start to a football season for the first time since 1929, rode junior halfback Cory McCarty and their defense to a 14-3 Southeastern Ohio Athletic League victory over the host Blue Devils for their first victory of the season.

“It all comes down to Cory McCarty and our defense,” lauded a happy — and relieved — Logan coach Kelly Wolfe after the Purple & White (1-5 overall, 1-1 SEOAL) broke what amounted to a six-game losing streak, including the final game of the 2010 season.
“A lot happened this week (four players quit the team), and I told our kids when we go down there we need to show up with an attitude,” he added. “I told them that when I walk around in pre-game, I’m going to be looking in your eyes… and I want to see kids who are ready to play football.”

With a surprisingly sparse Logan crowd looking on — likely a combination of the 0-5 start, the rainy, dreary weather and 80-mile trip — the Chiefs were, as Hank Williams Jr. might say, ready for some football.

In their first five losses of the season, the Chiefs only played one good first half and were pretty much out of the running by the time the second half rolled around.

Not Friday night.

“We came out and took it to them,” Wolfe said. “We scored quickly, but our defense really took it to them in the first half.”

McCarty rushed for 207 yards on 30 carries for the Chieftains, who only had four skill-position players touch the ball on offense all night. He broke a 57-yard touchdown run up the middle with 6:03 remaining in the first half to put the Chiefs ahead.

It was a precarious lead the Purple & White defense protected the rest of the way against a Gallipolis team that very easily could have entered the game 5-0. The Blue Devils (3-3, 0-1) had lost by five points to Athens and by six points to Ironton.

But Friday night, Gallipolis lost three fumbles and several times committed key mistakes or penalties that, along with the Logan defense, kept them off the scoreboard except for a Brandon Taylor 19-yard field goal at the end of the first half.

“We put ourselves in position to get on track, but whether it was a mental mistake or a physical mistake from a penalty to a turnover… just uncharacteristic things from this group of kids,” Gallipolis coach Mike Eddy said. “We haven’t played that way all year long. I think you have to credit Logan’s emotional play. Coach (Alex) Penrod, being a (Logan) historian the way he is, (the Chiefs) haven’t gone 0-6 in 82 years, so you know coming in they’re going to bring their best.”

Penrod, the Blue Devils’ defensive coordinator, is a Logan High School graduate and a former Chieftain football player.

“They’re not an 0-5 team,” Eddy said of the Chieftains. “They just were in that situation (with a tough schedule). They’re a team that has good athletes.

“We kind of played their game,” he continued. “That seemed to be their Achilles’ heel all year: they would get in a situation to score, or be ready to put a drive together, and they would make a mistake. For whatever reason, the roles were reversed tonight.”

Five times the Blue Devils drove into Logan territory in the first half, only to turn the ball over twice on downs. They also had to deal with Chieftain defensive end Caleb Branson, who was in the Gallipolis backfield most of the night.

“We changed our defense up this week when Michael (Simpson) went down (with a broken collarbone in last week’s game at Nelsonville-York) and made some adjustments,” Wolfe revealed. “We felt we had more linebackers than anything else and put four linebackers out there instead of three.”

Logan even had 4-4 and 6-2 formations.

“I don’t know how many tackles for loss our defense had tonight… it had to be eight or 10,” he added. “Our defensive line had a great game.”

Late in the first half, the Chiefs gave the Blue Devils an opening by shanking a 6-yard punt deep in their own territory, giving GAHS the ball on the Logan 31 with 72 seconds left.

Two first downs later, Gallipolis was at the Logan 10 and quarterback Wade Jarrell connected with Taylor on a swing pass. Taylor was tackled inside the 2-yard line with the clock running out and Gallipolis called its last timeout with 5.2 seconds left.

The Blue Devils attempted a quick pass that Branson batted down, forcing Gallipolis to settle for Taylor’s 19-yard field goal as time expired.

“At that point, points were points for us,” Eddy said. “We had no time-outs left, five seconds on the clock and had one shot. If you run the ball in that situation you’re not going to get any opportunities for points. You have to throw a pass… and the wide receiver was open, but their end (Branson) got up the field and knocked the pass down. We were at least able to come away with some points.

“One score after that and we’re in the lead. That’s how I looked at it,” he added. “We had to get something on the board. The points themselves were more important than how we got them. We’d had opportunities, and there was no reason to believe we wouldn’t get another.”

“At halftime everybody felt we needed to line up and let Cory do what he does,” Wolfe said. “I think it was pretty obvious in the second half. I told Cory at halftime to just run the ball, look for the hole and not put pressure on himself. It wasn’t anything fancy… I must have called the same play 25 or 30 times.”

McCarty accounted for 21 of the Chiefs’ 27 running plays in the second half. Logan couldn’t get its passing game going, completing just 1-of-6 passes in the second half and 2-of-13 for the game.

The Logan defense again came through several times in the second half, stopping Gallipolis on fourth-and-1 at the Logan 40 midway through the third period and forcing a pair of fumbles on the next two series, which were recovered by Garrett Tutwiler and Sean Wotring.

Wotring’s play was the biggest. Early in the fourth quarter, Jarrell hit Taylor with a swing pass in the right flat and Taylor found some running room down the sideline and crossed midfield. But Wotring stripped the ball from Taylor, it popped into the air, and Wotring caught it for a huge turnover.

“You could see as the game went on (the Logan players) were playing with energy, with confidence and believing in themselves,” Wolfe said. “There was a lot of enthusiasm on the sidelines. When Wotring got that strip, you just felt (the monkey) was off their shoulders and we were winning this game. That was a huge play.”

And that, for all intents and purposes, was it for the Blue Devils. After turning the ball over on downs on their own 21-yard line — defensive back Josh Fridley got a hand on a deep pass that bounced out of Cody Russell’s hands — McCarty broke a game-clinching 21-yard TD run off right tackle.

Wolfe said the Chiefs took a different approach to pregame preparation Friday night.

Assistant coach “Pat (Walsh) came to me on Thursday (and said) ‘when we go in after pre-game, before you talk and we come out, they get their pads on, they sit down, it’s dead silent in here, and they do nothing but think about the game and what they have to do to help us win’ ,” Wolfe revealed. “So we made some pre-game adjustments to get our minds right. I think we came out with a better attitude to start the game tonight.”

Make no mistake about it, there was a huge exhale of relief from everyone in Chieftain Nation — players, coaches and fans alike — Friday night in Gallia County.

“I can breathe,” Wolfe said with a relieved laugh. “Now my family will love me again.”