QB Leads Ithaca Back to Legendary Level
November 27, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
DETROIT – At halftime of Friday’s Division 6 Final, Ithaca coach Terry Hessbrook told his quarterback Jake Smith he was the best player on the field and needed to play like it.
Or something like that – no doubt a little more directly, with a few more words that got right to the heart of Smith’s importance in helping the Yellowjackets avoid the disappointment of taking home the second-place trophy for the second season in a row.
Two quarters later, the list of Ithaca quarterbacks who have put up memorable performances at Ford Field grew by one.
Cementing his place in a line of signal callers who have led Ithaca to 83 wins in 84 games, Smith directed a second-half rally that pushed the Yellowjackets past Clinton 27-20 for their fifth MHSAA championship in six seasons.
A year ago, Smith and his teammates left the field after a loss to Monroe St. Mary Catholic Central ended a national-best 69-game winning streak. This time, Ithaca trailed 13-0 early in the third quarter before scoring 27 straight points over 15 minutes to take a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
“He knew he could get more out of me, and as an offense we definitely produced,” said Smith of his coach’s halftime cajoling. “I wasn’t really panicking. I knew if we get behind, we’ve still got to keep playing. I wasn’t going to let it happen like it happened last year. I didn’t want to experience that feeling again, so I just played as hard as I could.
“It means so much to everybody on our team. Everybody really just wants to go out on top. Everybody wants to be number one. We finished that climb this year and we stuck the flag in the mountain, and it just feels so great.”
And it surely was a bit of a relief too.
Many of the team’s 17 seniors saw the field for most of the 2014 trip to Detroit, perhaps offering a little more motivation to bounce back for the program’s fifth perfect season over the last six.
“It was immense pressure, and to be honest, that made me very nervous. I talked to the players about it before the game today, that I was so happy because since day one last year after we got beat their goal was to get back to Ford Field,” Hessbrook said. “And I thought we had a championship-caliber football team, but I think a lot of people had championship-caliber football teams and somewhere along the line they get caught up and something goes wrong.
“I was glad they were able to play their last game in an Ithaca uniform here at Ford Field and have a chance ... to play for a championship.”
The Yellowjackets (14-0) finished off their best defensive performance of the run in terms of points allowed, giving up only 107 this fall despite dealing the first and only losses to three contenders over the last four weeks.
That defense played a massive role Friday, holding a Clinton rushing attack that averaged 297 yards per game this season to only 179. The Redskins had only 14 yards rushing over five second-half possessions after taking the 13-0 third-quarter lead.
But while the Yellowjackets held Clinton’s offense in check, it came down to Smith to carry them over the top.
The Ithaca run of quarterbacks starring at Ford Field started with Alex Niznak, who ran for five touchdowns in 2010 to lead the Yellowjackets to their first title. Then came Jake’s older brother Travis Smith, who put his name all over the record book in 2011 and 2013 wins – sandwiched around 2012, when back-up Logan Hessbrook came in after Travis Smith was hurt and led Ithaca to another MHSAA Finals victory.
Jake Smith was decent in last season’s Final, running for 90 yards and a score and throwing for 147 yards and the other touchdown as Ithaca fell 22-12. But his first half Friday was not at all noteworthy – six yards rushing and 60 passing.
Then came Hessbrook's pep talk.
“The first half, we did what we wanted to do,” Clinton coach Scott McNitt said. “We kept him in front of us. We didn’t let him get loose. But the third quarter, he found something. And he showed he was the best player on the field.”
Four minutes into the third quarter, Smith scored Ithaca’s first touchdown on a 14-yard run. Three and a half minutes later, Smith connected with senior Spence DeMull on a 22-yard pass in the seam, and two plays later connected with DeMull on the same route for a score that put the Yellowjackets ahead 14-13.
The next possession saw Smith's performance climb toward another level.
With 14 seconds left in the third quarter, he dropped back and rolled left, spun away from a near-sack, down the left sideline – and just as it looked like he would dive at the near pylon, Smith side-stepped right and whirled into the end zone. Ithaca 21, Clinton 13.
Smith added one more touchdown run from a yard out to put the Yellowjackets up 27-13 with 7:47 to play. Noah Poore’s 4-yard run at 4:59 pulled Clinton back within seven. But after Ithaca ran the clock down to 1:47 on its next possession, Clinton went to the air and completed only one of four passes before Ithaca senior Derek Teed ended the threat with a fourth-down sack.
Teed had three of his team’s 11 tackles for losses. Senior linebacker Jace Demenov led the effort on that side of the ball with 10 tackles, and junior linebacker Lane O’Boyle had eight.
Smith ended with 126 yards rushing to go with three scores and 180 yards passing with a touchdown.
For Clinton, senior running back/linebacker Mathew Sexton ran for 141 yards and a score and had six tackles. Senior linebacker Ken DeShano had 11 tackles.
Sexton also played a major role when Clinton fell to Ithaca 41-22 in the 2013 Final, and ran for more than 2,000 yards this season as the Redskins (13-1) charged through this run toward the rematch, eliminating reigning champion St. Mary among one of the most impressive slates of playoff opponents in any division.
“The gauntlet we’ve gone through these past four weeks – St. Mary, Madison Heights (Madison), (Jackson) Lumen Christi, (Grand Rapids) NorthPointe Christian, may have taken some of what we needed in the tank out of us,” McNitt said. “But these kids battled to the end … and had a chance at the end.”
Coaches almost always decline to compare teams from year to year, and especially championship winners.
But Hessbrook admitted this run was a little sweeter than some of the rest because of what it allowed for the players who walked off sadly a year ago and the legacy they were able to finish on a winning note.
“It would be hard for me to put them into numerical order and say this one is my favorite one or that one is my favorite one,” Hessbrook said. “But I’ll say this about this group of seniors: I don’t think that any class at Ithaca has ever dedicated themselves to winning a championship more than this class has, and that’s why it was so important for them to do that."
PHOTOS: (Top) Ithaca quarterback Jake Smith breaks a tackle during Friday's Division 6 Final. (Middle) The Yellowjackets celebrate their fifth MHSAA title in six seasons.
Dedication Continues to Make Difference as Pittman Elevates Game, Shores' Offense
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
September 11, 2024
Jonathan Pittman lives by the acronym “PGF.”
“My mom gave me that life motto; it stands for 'Put God First,'” explained Pittman, the senior quarterback for Muskegon Mona Shores, which is off to a 2-0 start.
“That is the core of who I am.”
Those aren’t just words for Pittman, who starts every day – Monday through Friday, from 6 a.m. to 7, when much of the world and most 17-year-olds are still sleeping – by going to church to study his Mormon faith at the Spring Lake Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He heads directly from there to school, where he either practices throwing the football or shooting the basketball (Pittman is also a standout on the Sailors’ hoops team). Then it’s off to the classroom – where, by the way, he is a straight-A student in honors classes.
Only when all of that is completed does he switch his focus solely to football. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound senior is a three-year starter with a rocket arm and the power to run over linebackers like a fullback.
“Pitt is the hardest-working kid I have ever coached,” said 14th-year Mona Shores coach Matt Koziak, who has led the Sailors to four Division 2 championship games and won two, in 2019 and 2020.
“He is very critical of his own game. He identifies where he needs to get better, and he just keeps working at it.”
Koziak can track how much film his players are watching. One day, he checked and noticed that senior linebacker and film study devotee Solomon Robertson had logged two hours on that day. The only player with more was Pittman – with six hours.
Pittman’s work ethic appears to be paying dividends, as he’s led the Sailors to impressive road wins over Grand Blanc (28-26) and River Rouge (21-6) to open the season and heading into yet another road game this week at undefeated Flint Hamady.
He did it with his feet against Grand Blanc, running 25 times for 192 yards and throwing for only 43. Against River Rouge, it was just the opposite – he completed 9-of-13 passes for 127 yards, while rushing for just 30.
Pittman comes from good pedigree. His father, also Jonathan Pittman, is a California native and former standout receiver at Brigham Young University who went on to play three years in the NFL for Buffalo, Tampa Bay and the New York Jets. His mother, Quintina, was a three-sport high school star whose college sports dreams were cut short by a knee injury.
The Pittmans moved to Muskegon in 2014 when his father was hired as the general manager at The Lakes Mall, a position he held for five years. (The younger Pittman, who is the second oldest of four children, said his family is not related to any of the many Pittmans in the Muskegon area.)
Pittman has always had a big arm, which allowed him to earn the varsity starting role as a sophomore. Last fall, he completed 87-of-134 passes for 1,391 yards and 15 TDs. His main targets this fall are wideouts Jaeger Johnson and Micah Carafelle and tight end George Duggins.
Pittman is equally well-known for his power running, forming a tough-to-tackle 1-2 duo with junior running back Tomarion “Ike” Steward (5-11, 205).
The biggest improvement for Pittman so far this season has been his increased speed and agility, as he has slimmed down from 218 pounds to 205.
“I wasn’t as fast as I needed to be and couldn’t execute some of the things we like to run,” said Pittman. “I needed to work on that. Our offense is much more diverse this year. We have a ton of weapons, and we can hit teams from all angles.”
Koziak hopes his quicker quarterback will give his team the extra edge it needs in huge Ottawa-Kent Conference Green games at home against Byron Center (Sept. 20) and at Muskegon (Sept. 27) – both against likely Division 2 playoff opponents.
Shores made it to the Division 2 Final four times in eight years, losing to Warren De La Salle Collegiate in 2014 and 2018, then defeating Detroit Martin Luther King in 2019 and De La Salle in 2020. The Sailors have not advanced out of their District the past three years.
Right now, Shores is just waiting to play a game in West Michigan, and will have traveled 1,030 miles round-trip for their first three this season.
The most puzzling aspect of Pittman’s football career thus far is his surprisingly small number of college scholarship offers. Wayne State, Lawrence Tech and Siena Heights have made offers, while Eastern Michigan and Northern Illinois have made the trip to Muskegon to watch him throw.
Pittman, who plans to major in accounting, is not doing any lobbying – preferring to let his play on Friday nights speak for itself.
One thing is for certain: He has made a believer out of Koziak, who has been coaching football for more than 20 years, with prior stops as offensive coordinator at Muskegon Heights and head coach at Muskegon High in 2009.
“I will say this: Wherever he goes, by his junior year, he will be a team captain,” said Koziak. “You combine his athletic ability and his work ethic, and it’s magic. He’s a special kid; a generational kid.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Muskegon Mona Shores' Jonathan Pittman powers into the Grand Blanc defense during his team's season-opening win. (Middle) Pittman watches as a teammate carries the ball upfield. (Photos by Terry Lyons.)