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October 12, 2005 Roughrider Retrospective
Roughriders v. Kenton Wildcats, Series
ROUGHRIDER RETROSPECTIVE - by Buz Howard
This is the 16th of a series of articles recalling St. Marys football history. Installments are published in Ridertown twice each week during the season.
 The football series between St. Marys and Kenton began in 1926. The Wildcats won the initial meeting, 27-0, but St. Marys won eight of the first ten. Through the decades the Roughriders have reeled off two impressive winning streaks in the series—13 straight victories from 1949-1961, and 16 straight from 1970-1985.
St. Marys has dominated the overall series, 50-17-2, but Kenton has won seven of the last ten.
In the 1929 game, Carl Reilly, the Roughriders star player, was pulled from the game by Coach Bob Reed for taking it upon himself to pass when he was supposed to punt. St. Marys, without Reilly, still managed to win, 12-7.
The following season, in 1930, Reilly scored three touchdowns in a 38-0 victory over the Wildcats.
Carl Reilly (known around town as “Carlie”) was one of the colorful figures of early St. Marys football lore. Ed Noble, a few years younger than Reilly, remembers watching him on the gridiron. “He could do everything—run, pass, catch the ball, and really hit you on defense. He was our idol when I was growing up.” After his high school years, Reilly started a local semi-pro team that played on Sunday afternoons. The story goes that scouts from Notre Dame saw his talents and arranged to bring him to South Bend on scholarship to play for Coach Elmer Layden, who had been one of Knute Rockne’s famous “Four Horsemen.” Reilly, to avoid accusations that he had formerly been a professional, played for the Fighting Irish under the alias of “Chuck O’Reilly.” He is listed in the Notre Dame archives as a quarterback in the 1936 and 1937 teams.
In 1944 Kenton joined the Western Buckeye League, which chose that year to expand from six to seven schools. The Roughriders won their first official League encounter with the Wildcats, 24-0, behind two TD’s by Harry Miley.
The 1960 game, in which St. Marys routed a 6-0 Kenton squad, was the focus of the previous installment of this series.
In 1962 Kenton broke their 13-year losing drought to the Riders, 24-22, behind a four-touchdown performance by halfback Jim West. Also a track star for the Wildcats, West went on to a successful career as a cornerback at Ohio University.
In the 1975 game St. Marys, behind, 7-6, scored the winning TD with 58 seconds left on a pass from Tom Menker to Jeff Vossler.
The 1967 game saw the Roughriders unleash a devastating running attack that amassed 615 yards. Jeff Huwer gained 260; Dan Kile, 174; and Dave Thomas, 162.
The 1986 Kenton game is one that, because of its controversial final play, still dredges up bitter feelings with Roughrider fans.
The teams were evenly matched, and the score seesawed throughout the contest. The Roughriders’ chief weapons were five interceptions (three by Eric Sams) and the passing combination of Jack Grant and Mike Trogdlon. Grant threw a school record 28 passes, completing 15 of them. Trogdlon was on the receiving end of nine of the passes, still a MHS record for single-game receptions.
Kenton countered with their own traditional passing attack with quarterback Bart Boston effectively utilizing receivers Kevin Vaughn and Ted Rogers.
St. Marys eventually took a fourth-quarter lead, 28-27, on a 15-yard pass from Grant to halfback Preston Keith and the extra point by kicker Mark Schamp.
The Roughriders’ slim margin seemed likely to hold up when they stopped a Kenton drive on the St. Marys forty-yard line with only 1:23 to play. But the Wildcats used all three of their time-outs to conserve the clock, forcing a St. Marys punt, and were rewarded with field position on their own 43.
There were only 20 seconds left for Kenton to move into field-goal range. They did just that with a play from Boston to Vaughn, who made a spectacular catch and run, taking the ball to the St. Marys two-yard line. But Kenton had no time-outs to stop the clock. That’s when sophomore Tyler Boston went into a performance worthy of an academy award. He fell to the turf, writhing in agony. The referee, after the game, would tell St. Marys assistant coach Roger Duncan that he knew it was an acting job, but that he had no choice but to stop the clock due to apparent injury. It gave the Kenton squad enough time to get their offense into field-goal formation for a game-winning kick with two seconds to go. It was a routine kick from extra-point distance, giving the visiting Wildcats a 30-28 victory.
The Kenton team stormed the field to jump around and exchange high-fives. Among the most animated of them was the young man who had been so grievously injured just minutes before, now miraculously restored to health.
After the game Kenton Coach Mike Mauk discussed the “injury” with reporters. “Sure we faked the injury,” Mauk told Dave Stilwell of the Evening Leader. “We talked about something like that happening just before the game.”
In 1987 Derek Turner scored two touchdowns and Tony Neiter added another for a 21-14 win over Kenton on the Riders’ way to a WBL co-championship.
The following year, 1988, saw the classic running-vs.-passing match-up that has come to characterize the St. Marys-Kenton rivalry. Wildcat quarterback Britton Crates (whose career would earn him a scholarship to Michigan State) threw 48 passes, completing 23 for 316 yards. But the Roughriders got a big rushing game from workhorse fullback Scott Schlosser, who carried 31 times for 193 yards. Kicker Josh Bowman successfully executed all four extra points in the 28-27 St. Marys win.
The 1989 St. Marys team totally shut down the Britton Crates passing game, intercepting him four times (Josh Bowman, John Dysert, Tom Howard, and Greg Keith) and holding Crates to just 11 completions in 40 attempts. The 28-0 victory clinched the WBL title.
In the undefeated season of 1993, when Skip Baughman’s team won their third OHSAA State Championship in four years, a pivotal win came at Kenton in the second week of the season.
The Roughriders, performing dismally early in the contest, fell behind, 30-14. That’s when the defense drew a line in the sand and held the Wildcats scoreless the rest of the way. Coach Bob Priddy’s defensive unit was led all year by Ted Liette, who would be named an all-state linebacker and later a Division 1-A All-American at the University of Indianapolis.
The Roughrider offense did their part by scoring 24 unanswered points to win, 38-30. Shawn Lamb scored the game-winner from 18 yards out.
In 1994, Kenton’s 21-7 win broke a St. Marys 26-game victory streak, the longest in school history.
In 2002, Ben Mauk staged a dazzling aerial display, completing 34 of 51 passes for 564 yards. Kenton won, 49-21, on their way to the school’s fifth Western Buckeye League championship. It was just another day in the office for Mauk, who would go on to set the national high school record for total passing yards in a season (6230 yards).
Mauk led the Kenton program to the most productive years in its history, with both the 200l and 2002 seasons culminating with Division IV State Championships, the first coming over Licking Valley, 45-13; the second coming over Portsmouth West, 40-13. In 2003, without Mauk, who currently is the quarterback for Wake Forest in the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Wildcats advanced all the way to the Div. III State finals before losing to Cleveland Benedictine.
In 2003, Kenton dealt St. Marys its only loss of the season, though the Roughriders went on to win the league championship.
Last season, on their way to their second consecutive WBL crown, the Roughriders beat the Wildcats, 33-15.
Next week: Elida.
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