News-Herald Senior Bowl: Chardon’s Louie Monaco’s sack clinches White win in Senior Bowl

For three years, Louie Monaco said he battled grades and other circumstances to get on the football field.

When the recent graduate of Chardon said farewell to his high school career on June 15 in the eight annual News-Herald Senior Bowl, he did so with an exclamation point.

Monaco sacked Riverside’s Nathan Sleek with 10 seconds to go in the game, clinching the White Team’s 7-6 win over the Blue Team in a game that was dominated by the defensive lines on both sides of the ball.

“It’s crazy, Monaco said, still out of breath from the postgame celebration. “I put in all the effort. Things didn’t work out my freshman, sophomore and junior years. But I got to play my senior year, and knowing that my last play was a sack is amazing.”

It was that kind of night at Mayfield’s Wildcat Stadium, with the defenses controlling the game.

The White team, coached by Brush assistant Paul Guhde, picked off four passes and held Blue to 124 yards of total offense.

The Blue team, headed by Lake Catholic coach Scott O’Donnell, held the opposition to 122 yards.

“Going into this game, if you woulda told me the score would be 7-6, I’d tell you that you were crazy,” O’Donnell said. “Marty Gibbons (the White defensive coach) did a great job over there. All the kids played their hearts out.

“We just went for two, didn’t get it, and they won.”

On the first play of the fourth quarter, Sleek hit D.J. Griffus (Lake Catholic) on a wheel route for a 32-yard touchdown that cut White’s lead to 7-6. After calling a timeout, O’Donnell went for the lead with a two-point conversion try.

Khalail Mitchell (Brush) knocked away the conversion attempt to preserve the lead.

It ended up being the game-clinching play.

“When you get down there (in the red zone) you never know what can happen,” O’Donnell said. “Guess what? We didn’t get down there again.”

That’s because the defensive front four of the White team made life miserable for the Blue offense. Seth Schrock (Madison), Manni Malone (NDCL) and Bradford Eason (Brush) all had six tackles in the box, with Malone and Eason each recording a pair of sacks.

“We worked hard all week pushing each other,” said Monaco, who was also part of the White front four of havoc. “It was an amazing experience all week.”

White came up with enough offense to win ­— barely. Its only touchdown came in the second quarter when Aubrey Shabazz (Euclid) hit Chris Boykin (VASJ) on a deep post pattern for a 7-0 lead when Brush’s Adam Turk hit the conversion kick.

“The chemistry never left,” said Shabazz, a former teammate of Boykin’s at VASJ. “I’m glad I got him the ball. The rest is history.”

Besides that, there wasn’t much offense for White. But it was enough.

As good as White’s defensive line was, Blue’s front rotation of Hayden Makad (Perry), Juan Tousel (Lake Catholic), Dan Garcar (Mentor), Cade Acitelli (Lake Catholic) and Nick Mason (Perry) was equal to the task in the trenches.

“The defensive lines were doing great on both sides,” said Guhde. “It made things tough offensively. On offense, we wanted to throw quick outs and get the ball out in space. They kept batting things down. Their D-line played with a lot of heart, and so did ours. It’s just a great group of kids.”

White’s rushing was led by Wickliffe’s Nick Fenton (27 yards), while Shabazz threw for 75 yards and a score.

Blue got 127 passing yards from Sleek, and a team-high 73 yards rushing by Griffus.

O’Donnell praised his team’s effort, especially Mason, who played both defensive line and center when his team had early struggles snapping the ball.

“The kid never played offensive line, went in there and did that,” O’Donnell said of the Lake Erie College signee. “What a great kid. I can’t say enough about him.”

The win gave Guhde his first head coaching victory. He will head into his fourth year as a Brush assistant coach this fall with a 1-0 head-coaching record ­— in the Senior Bowl.

“I give all the credit to the players and the guys I coached with,” Guhde said. “Braden Silders, Marty Gibbons, Alex Nicholson, Adam Mott ­— they all worked hard and took this game as seriously as I did.

“What an unbelievable group of players we had. Great kids, great character, great talent. I’m happy we were able to send our guys out with one last win in high school.”

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