ASHLAND — Avon coach Mike Elder had preached before every one of the Eagles’ playoff games how the team that made the least mistakes would come away with the victory.
That theory was proven true Saturday night as Avon’s mistakes cost them a regional championship and ended their season. Defending state champion Sunbury Big Walnut turned an Avon fumble and interception into a pair of touchdowns and came away with a 24-15 victory in the Division III, Region 10 final.
“They made less mistakes than we did, it’s that simple,” Avon coach Mike Elder said. “I think we proved that we are capable of playing with Big Walnut. If we play this game 10 times, I think we’d probably go 5-5 with them.”
That equality showed during much of the first half, as the teams traded three-and-outs and worked on field position in snowy conditions.
The Eagles (12-1) finally seemed to find a way to move the ball, using running back Marquis Harrell on sprints around the ends of the line and fullback Zak Wearsch for blasts through the middle of it.
But the drive ended in disaster when quarterback Ryan O’Rourke, who had been wrapped up by Big Walnut linebacker Will Studlein, tried to dump the ball to Harrell on the left side.
The ball fell short and was ruled a fumble by the referees, allowing Big Walnut’s Jacob Walaszek to pounce on it. Both Avon players believed the ball was a forward pass.
“It was definitely a forward pass,” O’Rourke said. “But that’s a tough call for a referee to make.”
“I know for a fact it was a forward pass,” said Harrell, who never went after the loose ball. “But the refs, I don’t know, didn’t make the call. But that’s why I didn’t jump on it. I knew it was a forward pass.”
The sting hurt all the more once Big Walnut (11-2) deepened the wound as Patrick Daugherty took an end around and appeared to complete a reverse that all the Avon defenders went after. But Daugherty kept the ball and found clear sailing down the right sideline for a 67-yard touchdown.
“We’ve run the reverse play several times this year and we just switched it up,” Big Walnut coach Scott Wetzel said. “Patrick Daugherty runs that play better than anyone else we have. That play provided the spark we needed at that point. It seemed we couldn’t do anything on offense.”
The teams traded touchdowns in the third quarter — Big Walnut quarterback Johnny Cannell hitting Nick Heiden for a 35-yard score and Harrell scoring from 3 yards out for Avon — before A.J. Fleak gave Big Walnut a 17-7 lead with a 27-yard field goal early in the fourth.
Avon, needing a quick score to stay in the game, saw things go from bad to worse when Big Walnut’s Colton Griffis — a 6-foot-6, 280-pound nose tackle — stepped in front of O’Rourke’s pass on the first play of the ensuing drive to hand the Eagles quarterback his first interception of the season. The big man managed to return the ball 11 yards to the Avon 9-yard line.
“Old Colton was rumbling along down there, wasn’t he?” Wetzel said with a smile. “I always said Colton was a skilled athlete trapped in a lineman’s body.”
It took Big Walnut two plays to make the score 24-7 with just over six minutes left in the game, the TD coming on a 7-yard bootleg from Cannell.
But the Eagles moved the ball quickly down the field with strong passes by O’Rourke, and cut the lead to 24-13 when the quarterback found Brett Jensen from 6 yards out.
Then things got interesting as the Eagles successfully recovered an onside kick and once again moved the ball quickly into the Golden Eagles’ red zone. But facing fourth-and-10 from the 14, O’Rourke was picked off for the second time when Studlein hauled in his pass at the 4-yard line.
“You can’t be gun-shy because you don’t want to throw a pick,” O’Rourke said of his 12 games of interception-free football. “It happened tonight and it cost us the ballgame.”
“I wouldn’t say anything negative to Ryan O’Rourke,” Elder said of the two interceptions. “We’re not here if it’s not for Ryan O’Rourke. He had a tremendous season for us and he’s going to go on to have a great college career somewhere.”
Contact Shaun Bennett at 329-7137 or sbennett@chroniclet.com.

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