MOUNT VERNON — The Mount Vernon football team will play the waiting game for a few more hours as the Ohio high school football regular season concludes.
The Yellow Jackets finished a fine turnaround season at 6-4 after a tough, 35-13 loss to Granville on Friday night.
Coach Mark Weber’s team came into the night controlling its own playoff destiny, and hung tough for a half, trailing just 14-13 at intermission. But the Blue Aces dominated the second half, and blanked the hosts in the process.
The defeat means MV can finish no better than ninth in Division II, Region 7, and could miss the postseason entirely depending on how other teams fared.
Only the top 12 teams in each region advance to Week 11.
“Six and four for a regular season, hopefully we did enough in season to get in the playoffs,” Weber said. “If that’s the case, that would be pretty darn good as a second year in the rebuild. We just have to continue to make progress.”
Mount Vernon finished the season 3-3 in the Licking County League, but riding a two-game losing streak after falling to Licking Valley 58-13 last week.
“We finished the season with the class of the league,” Weber said. “We finished the season with the two toughest teams in the league, so that kind of gives you a measuring stick of where we’re at in that process.
“We’re not last place in the league. We’re not second to last. We’re not third to last.”
The Blue Aces’ running game was the difference in this contest.
“(Granville’s) Kyle Kirby is just something special. He’s a special player, great kid, high IQ, behind a line that did a nice job, so I tip the hat,” Weber said. “I think he averaged 10 yards a carry, which is insane.”
The Ohio High School Athletic Association will announce the playoff pairings on Sunday. Until then, to monitor the latest information, check out Joe Eitel’s site at this link.
“The bottom line is this is a growing program that needs to be built. And we are in the process. It’s a construction in process,” Weber said.
“If anybody thinks that it happens in a day or a year, it’s not going to.”
(Photos by Cheryl Splain.)
