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September 6, 2005 Roughrider Retrospective
Defiance Series
ROUGHRIDER RETROSPECTIVE - by Buz Howard
This is the sixth installment of a series on St. Marys Roughrider football history. Each week during the season Ridertown will recall a memorable game from the Roughrider series with the upcoming opponent.
There will be a follow-up article each week that will overview the series.
 St. Marys has played Defiance yearly since 1973, when the Bulldogs replaced Coldwater in the Western Buckeye League. However, the series actually dates back much further than that.
The first meeting between the two schools was in 1922, Defiance winning, 46-13. The schools met again in 1924, Defiance again winning, 13-12. They did not meet again until the 1950’s, a decade in which they split four games.
Since Defiance’s entry into the WBL the Roughriders have dominated the series, currently leading, 24-14.
The high point in Defiance football came in 1997 when the Bulldogs became the second WBL School to win a State Championship, the Riders having garnered three such titles earlier in the decade.
In 1956, behind the running of Dick Hollman and Dave Cook, the Roughriders eked out a one-point victory under Coach Tom Vincent. Cook scored from two yards out late in the third quarter, and Bill Blew added the extra point.
Defiance’s single-wing running back, John Schlosser, experienced a roller-coaster ride of odd circumstances on that particular evening. It started with Schlosser’s faithfully carrying out his duties as team captain by crowning the Defiance homecoming queen. Then, in the second quarter of the game, he incurred a knee injury and was carried from the field on a stretcher.
Schlosser returned the game in the second half, only to literally butt heads with Dick Hollman. According to the newspaper account, Hollman “was out before he hit the ground.” Schlosser also was knocked unconscious.
But the durable Schlosser responded to the smelling salts, stayed in the game, and scored a 10-yard touchdown with only 27 seconds left. With St. Marys leading, 7-6, Defiance chose to run Schlosser for the extra point (there was no two-point rule in those days). The Evening Leader report of the game gives credit to two Roughrider defensive linemen, Ken Hinkle and Ed Stepleton, for sniffing out the play and forcing Schlosser to reverse his field on the extra-point try. Desperately trying to find running room with the game on the line, Schlosser retreated all the way back to the 18-yard line, where he was finally tackled.
John Schlosser would eventually, in 1974, move his family to St. Marys, where his two sons, Tim and Scott, both running backs on later Rider teams, would gain over 4500 career yards between them.
The 1976 game saw junior halfback Ron Keith set the St. Marys single-game scoring record. Keith, on his way to a 250-yard game at Defiance, scored five touchdowns and two extra PAT’s for a total of 32 points. The Roughriders won, 47-36.
In a three-year span from 1977 to 1979, the Riders, with three of their all-time greatest teams, outscored the Bulldogs by a combined score of 137-7.
In the ninth game of the 1981 season, St. Marys clinched the WBL title against Defiance, 14-6, in a hard-fought defensive struggle. It was a year in which the Roughriders allowed only 47 total points, paving the way for a 10-0 campaign. Linebacker Rusty Krugh and defensive linemen Aaron Silver and Don Johnson (later of the University of Louisville) were among the leaders of a rock-solid defense, with the punting of quarterback Damon Goodwin giving them good field position all season long.
In 1985 the St. Marys-Defiance battle turned out to be the Roughriders’ first overtime game. The new overtime rule, implemented that season, had been designed to eliminate ties.
The score was 21-21 at the end of regulation. St. Marys scored in their first overtime possession, speedy Mike Henkle taking it in from nine yards out. Coach Skip Baughman then elected to go for two points, but a pass play went awry. Defiance fullback, Mike Lantow, then promptly ran 2O yards to tie the score, and the Bulldogs added the extra point for a 28-27 Defiance victory.
After the Roughriders reeled off seven straight easy wins from 1987 to 1993, Defiance put together a four-year streak of their own, culminating with a 38-13 triumph in 1997, the year in which they would beat Uniontown Lake in the State Championship game.
The 1998 game was the three-overtime affair discussed in the previous installment of this series.
In 2003, with the Roughriders on their way to another championship, the Defiance contest became one of six victories in that year by a margin of seven points or less. A play which St. Marys fans remember vividly was a touchdown-saving tackle by defensive back Kyle Vossler.
Defiance led 15-13, in the fourth quarter when Bulldog speedster Dan Orta broke loose for a 52-yard gain. Vossler, who would be the WBL 400-meter champion later in the school year, caught Orta at the five-yard line. After a dramatic goal-line stand that kept Defiance from breaking the game open, the Riders scored the winning touchdown on a 24-yard run by Eric Sullivan.
Currently St. Marys is riding a four-game winning streak against the Bulldogs.
Next week: Wapak
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