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.
'Gamer' Helps Shores Gut Out 1st Finals Win
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
November 29, 2019
DETROIT – Brady Rose walked into Ford Field on Friday carrying the backup quarterback tag.
After a performance that showed he was a backup in name only, the Muskegon Mona Shores junior walked out with the Division 2 Football championship.
Rose, who was starting in place of injured all-stater Caden Broersma, accounted for 212 total yards and four touchdowns as he led the Sailors to their first Finals title with a 35-26 win over Detroit Martin Luther King.
“He looked like an athlete,” King coach Ty Spencer said when asked if Rose looked like a backup. “He looked like a very good athlete that just helped his team win a state championship.”
A year after coming up one win short of the program’s first title, Mona Shores (12-2) pulled off what most considered to be an upset against a King team that featured three Division I college committed recruits and several other players who hold Division I and II offers. Not only were the Sailors without Broersma, but they had to replace nine defensive starters from a year ago.
They suffered a 53-0 loss in Week 8 to Division 3 finalist Muskegon and played two of their first three playoff games on the road. In the Semifinal victory over Walled Lake Western, Broersma injured his back on the first series, and the Sailors used a 2-point conversion in the final minute to pick up the win.
“People go back to our whoopin’ (against) Muskegon … I know it sounds crazy, but that was one of the best things that happened to us,” Mona Shores coach Matt Koziak said. “It obviously humbled us, made us dig a little deeper and understand that we might not be as good as we think we are without doing the little things. I understand that we were picked to lose, and we probably should have been picked to lose. But I told them after last game, I would never bet against them in anything – in life. They just find a way.”
There was no comeback needed Friday, as the Sailors not only never trailed, but were never tied after taking a 7-0 lead on their first drive. But they were certainly pushed, and responded with an 8-minute, 40-second drive in the fourth quarter that put the game away.
After King’s Peny Boone scored on a 66-yard run with 10:45 remaining, the Crusaders unsuccessfully went for two to try to tie the game at 28.
Mona Shores responded with a 14-play, 72-yard drive that was capped off by a two-yard touchdown run by Rose, his third of the game. The Sailors converted two third downs and a crucial 4th-and-1 at the King 12 to keep the drive alive and essentially put the game away.
“That last drive was 8:40, almost a 9-minute drive, when things weren’t going our way,” Koziak said. “King just kind of came out and was kind of like, ‘Bam. Bam.’ Kind of punched us in the mouth. (Rose) just didn’t get rattled by it. It’s almost like he’s playing on a middle school field; he doesn’t get caught up in the moment.”
Rose was 8-of-11 passing for 122 yards and a touchdown and added 90 yards on 21 rushes.
“Coach has confidence in me being the backup quarterback, so he just did the same thing as we would be doing if Caden was quarterback,” Rose said. “We just chipped away – 3rd-and-1, first down. 3rd-and-1, first down. We just chipped the clock away.”
Broersma also had confidence that his teammate could get the job done.
“I’ve said before that Brady Rose is just a gamer,” Broersma said. “You can put him in any situation and he’ll handle it better than probably 90 percent of this Earth. There’s really no question having him play quarterback. There’s total belief in him, there’s total belief in every play call and the coaching he gets. I’m super happy to see him succeed.”
Broersma’s No. 4 did make its way onto the field, and made quite an impact, as teammate Kolbe Trovinger wore it and finished with seven tackles and the game-sealing interception with 36 seconds play.
The two interceptions and a fourth-down stop ultimately made the difference, as they were the stops the Crusaders were unable to get on the other side of the ball.
Also, it was the first time since 1993 and second time in Finals history that neither team punted.
“Really it just came down to getting the big stop,” Spencer said. “We had one of them, but then we turned the ball over on that drive. We had to get that big stop and make a play and I think it would have turned our way, but we didn’t.”
The Mona Shores offense was nearly unstoppable in the first half, scoring on all three of its drives. Rose had a pair of one-yard scores, while Tre’Shawn Hatcher – who rushed for 95 yards on the day – added an 18-yard touchdown. The Sailors rushed for 130 yards on 23 carries in the half and added just enough passing – Rose was 5-of-7 for 64 yards during the first two quarters – to keep King honest.
King’s balanced offensive attack kept it in the game. Justin Whyte scored on a 42-yard screen pass from Dante Moore on the Crusaders’ second drive, and Boone added a one-yard touchdown run in the final seconds of the first half. A missed extra point and failed 2-point conversion kept King two scores back at halftime, but the offense did manage 200 total yards – 81 on the ground and 119 from Moore’s arm – during the opening 24 minutes.
Even on its first possession King managed to get to the Mona Shores 24-yard line, but a Cam Sobich sack on fourth down ended the threat.
The King offense stayed hot to open the third quarter, marching 73 yards in five plays, and pulling within one of the Sailors following a nine-yard Boone touchdown run and 2-point conversion pass from Moore to Marshawn Lee.
A big fourth-down stop at its own 14 gave King momentum and the opportunity to take the lead, but Rose stepped up near midfield, intercepting Moore. Seven plays later, Rose hit Jaylen Hopson for a 17-yard touchdown on fourth down. The point after put the Sailors back up eight at 28-20 with 16 seconds remaining in the third quarter. Hopson finished with five catches for 103 yards.
Boone, who has committed to Maryland, finished with 198 yards rushing, while Moore was 15-of-29 for 209 yards. Joe Frazier and Jaylen Reed each had 11 tackles for King (11-3), while Rishad Hence had eight tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and one forced fumble.
“I thought the team’s character was outstanding to go from 0-2 to battle back and play in the state championship game and put yourself in a position to win it,” Spencer said. “We came up short, but I’m proud of these guys, proud of the seniors, proud of the way (Moore) has played all year long.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Mona Shores’ Brady Rose follows a block by Tre’Shawn Hatcher into the end zone Saturday. (Middle) A Mona Shores defender gets an arm around King quarterback Dante Moore.