Jamie Baker posted on September 03, 2010 06:00
By SCOTT COTTOS
SPORTS EDITOR
FOSTORIA — St. Wendelin managed to round up enough players to embark on a football season.
That campaign just got shorter by a game, though.
This week’s scheduled opponent for the Mohawks’ home opener, Horizon Science Academy of Cincinnati, has canceled Saturday’s contest due to a low number of players.
St. Wendelin coach Bill Hrabak said Tremayne Banks, Horizon’s coach and dean of students, called him Wednesday afternoon to cancel.
“He explained to me that they have 11 freshmen,” Hrabak said. “He said three other kids said they’d come out, but they didn’t have the paperwork (from physical examinations). He was optimistic it would happen, but it didn’t work out.”
Banks did not return a phone message left at the school by the Review Times Thursday.
“We’re disappointed that we won’t have a game, but we understand the situation,” St. Wendelin Athletics Director Donene Smith said.
Hrabak said he attempted, to no avail, to find a replacement opponent from either Ohio or Michigan.
Like last week’s opponent, Michigan’s Washtenaw Saints, Horizon is not a state high school athletic association member, so the Mohawks would not have gotten computer-ranking points for a victory.
The Mohawks have had a small number of players out for football in recent years. The situation for playing a 2010 season was tenuous in the preseason, but administrators gave the go-ahead midway through the first week of two-a-day practice with 16 players in the fold. Another player has since joined the team, and no one was significantly injured in the 21-0 win over Washtenaw.
“I find it ironic,” Hrabak said. “We were the ones sitting around worried all year about not being able to play. Now we have one cancellation and we don’t know about next week.”
The Mohawks are scheduled to travel to Danbury next Friday, but they’ll have to await word on that game from the Lakers. Danbury nixed its contest with North Baltimore this week after two of the Lakers’ 16 players exhibited concussion-like symptoms from the Upper Scioto Valley game last Friday.
Hrabak said his team is treating this week as a win by forfeit, but it would have preferred to play.
“It was kind of a somber crowd,” Hrabak said of telling his players of the cancellation. “Then George Iannantuono looked up and said, ‘You know what, Coach? We’re 2-0.’”