MILLERSBURG – The only thing Galion didn’t take home from Knights Stadium on Friday was a win.
Dealt West Holmes in the second round of the Division IV playoffs – a team carrying a 24-game, four-year home winning streak into the night – the Tigers took a 19-14 lead with less than 3 minutes left on a 1-yard Gabe Ivy touchdown run.
But on a third-and-15 play just two minutes later from the Galion 16-yard line, Knights quarterback Morgan Smith launched a pass that tipped off the fingertips of receiver Lynn Cline and fell into the arms of receiver Graham Martin in the end zone.
A 2-point conversion run from Nate Fair made the score 22-19 with 29 seconds left and West Holmes secured the win when Fair intercepted a last-ditch-effort Galion pass near midfield.
“What a great game, just to be a part of it,” Tigers coach Matt Dick said. “This team, we talked all week about how fun it is to be around them and just try and get more time with them. It was a fun night.
“I wish we would have gotten that last stop to win it but, hey, that’s football,” he added.
Despite the agonizing finish, the fifth-seeded Tigers (8-4) closed the book on one of the best seasons in program history.
Galion entered Friday having won a playoff game for just the second time since its state championship season in 1985, going blow for blow with West Holmes on a night that seemed to have every kind of momentum swing imaginable.
“I wouldn’t want to lose to anybody else,” said Ivy, a senior who finished with a game-high 151 yards on 24 carries, including a 44-yard TD run that put Galion ahead 13-7 early in the fourth quarter. “They’re fighters and they earned it. They had a crazy play at the end and at least we went down swinging.”
The fourth-seeded Knights (10-2) will carry their home winning streak into 2024 and now take on undefeated Sandusky Perkins at a neutral site next week. They also will attempt to build on a rich recent playoff history that included a run to the state semifinals in 2021.
Since 2020, West Holmes is now 11-3 in the postseason, including a perfect 7-0 playoff record at home.
“I think it really helped that we’ve been in this position so many times in the last four years,” Knights coach Zach Gardner said. “I thought that was a major factor, even with losing (No. 1 receiver Kyle Maltarich on Friday) and not having (No. 2 receiver Logan Zollars due to injury coming into the night), our kids have played so many tournament games before and I think that experience, we were able to lean on that tonight and make some plays.”
The Knights came into the game boasting the last two Ohio Cardinal Conference Offensive Players of the Year in Smith and the Yale-bound Maltarich.
But on what was a game-altering play early in the second quarter, Maltarich fumbled the ball through the Galion end zone after a 39-yard catch and run that ended with a Tiger defender knocking the ball loose near the goal-line.
West Holmes had scored on the game’s opening drive and a touchdown there would have made it 14-0. Instead, Maltarich – who has over 2,500 yards and 37 touchdowns as a receiver the last two seasons – lost the fumble, was injured on the play and never returned.
The Knights were left trying to get their offensive feet back under them the rest of the first half and Galion tied the game at 7-7 on its last possession before halftime when quarterback Braxton Prosser scored from six yards out.
That play helped lessen the impact of a Prosser fumble forced by Maltarich inside the West Holmes red zone in the first quarter. The junior QB finished a gritty night with 93 yards rushing on 15 carries and also passed for 36 yards.
On another critical play – after Ivy’s touchdown with 2:39 to play – Prosser was dropped just short of the goal-line by Martin when trying to punch in the 2-point conversion, which would have made it 21-14.
“It’s a bang-bang play,” Dick said. “He missed it by an inch.”
The huge hit forced the quarterback to stay on the sidelines for Galion’s final drive.
West Holmes took its 14-13 lead when Smith ran in a 4-yard score with 7:57 left, and they needed the quarterback to come up big again on their final drive, trailing 19-14 with 2:30 to go.
Smith hit Cline (13 catches, 103 yards, TD) for a pair of first downs on the drive, then dragged Tiger defenders down the sideline on a 30-yard run to the Galion 11. It was his longest run on a night he finished with 30 carries for 148 yards, putting him over 1,000 rushing yards for the season.
A West Holmes penalty – one of many for both teams in the game – moved the hosts back to the 16-yard line, setting up the tipped, game-winning catch by Martin. Before that catch, the senior had just two catches for 16 yards all season.
Smith was 22-of-33 for 244 yards and two scores through the air in the game, helping add to his West Holmes records for single-season passing yards (3,948), passing touchdowns (43) and completions.
“(Smith) is a special, special young man,” Gardner said. “He’s tough as nails. … He plays the game the way it’s meant to be played and obviously the results and the accolades that he gets from that are well-deserved.”
“That’s a good program over there,” added the coach of Galion. “That’s a program on the rise doing stuff the right way and their kids were game and came to play. … It was an honor to share the field with a program like that tonight.”
The Knights had scored 70 points in their first-round win over Bryan (70-50) and were averaging 42 points per game, so limiting them to just 14 until Friday’s final minute was a testament to the Tiger defense.
Galion junior linebacker Jimmy Hardy was a nuisance all night, notching a pair of first-half sacks for the Tigers and adding multiple key tackles limiting West Holmes to short yardage.
Senior defensive lineman Landon Campbell added 1.5 sacks and fellow lineman Linkon Tyrrell – the MOAC leader in sacks in the regular season (17) – was all over the field, knocking down multiple Smith passes and turning in a variety of key tackles.
The senior said this was a season Galion and its coaches had envisioned being a memorable one years ago.
“This senior class, the coaches have loved us for six years – they loved us in middle school, too,” Tyrrell said with a laugh. “They were excited for us to come through, and it went fast. It went real fast.”
“We knew coming in (Friday) we were the underdogs and we had nothing to lose, and we were playing like it,” he added. “… There’s not a week that I’ve gone (into a game) thinking that we were going to lose.”
Galion finished the season with a 6-0 record at home and five wins against playoff-qualifying teams, playing nine of its 12 games against postseason qualifiers.
The Tigers were anchored on the line by 6-3, 290-pound senior Holden Hunter, who Dick said was the best lineman he’s coached and will be playing NCAA Division II football in the future.
“I’m proud of how they care about each other, I’m proud of what we’ve built upon,” Dick said. “… They just kept fighting.”
