Chardon vs. Riverside football: Beavers dominate Hilltoppers in 21-7 WRC clash
Sep. 9—The state's longest high school football streak has come to an end.
Displaying a ferocious defensive effort and picking apart the Chardon defense with a precise run-pass option offense, Riverside defeated the visiting Hilltoppers, 21-7, in front of a packed house at Riverside Stadium on Sept. 9.
The win not only puts Riverside (3-1, 1-0) in the early driver's seat in the Western Reserve Conference, but it ends Chardon's state-best 31-game winning streak. The loss is Chardon's first since falling to Aurora, 22-19, in a regional playoff game in 2019.
"That," Chardon coach Mitch Hewitt said, "was a thorough ass kicking they gave us."
When the final seconds ticked off the clock, the players and coaches celebrated emphatically. A few minutes later, the jam-packed student section joined in on the celebration after coming down out of the stands.
"It's amazing," Riverside quarterback Mikey Maloney said of the experience, both in-game and postgame. "I remember the grass muddy field here. It's crazy what the program has become. It's time people start putting some respect on Riverside."
Riverside took the lead early in the second quarter when Maloney ran in from the 2. The drive was set up by an offense that saw Maloney flinging quick passes out to the flat to negate Chardon's pass rush, coupled with runs between the tackles and rollouts.
"We wanted to make sure we made them defend the whole field," Coach Dave Bors said. "Don't let them tee off on any one thing we're doing. We wanted to make them work."
Riverside nearly had a 14-0 lead to its name when Maloney went down the visitor's sideline in the second, but Chardon's Andrew Bruce stripped the ball at the 2 and Trey Liebhardt recovered. Two plays later, Chardon QB Alex Henry hit Bruce on a swing pass and Bruce went 98 yards to the house to even things at 7-7.
"We're lucky to come out of that (with a score)," Hewitt said. "If that doesn't happen, we'd be lucky to score."
Riverside and answered back before the half when Maloney found Brady McKnight right down the heart of Chardon's defense for a 23-yard scoring strike.
It stayed that way until the second half when Maloney found Jake Elly on an out-pattern. Elly took it from there, getting tremendous downfield blocking by Ethan Ross for the 37-yard score.
From there, the Riverside defense continued doing what it had been doing all night — dominating the Chardon offense, especially in the trenches.
If there was any hope of a Chardon comeback, down, 21-7, late in the fourth, it was pretty much wiped out when Adam Becker picked off a Henry pass.
"We had to come out and smack them in the mouth every single play," Riverside outside linebacker Jason Ryan said. "We were gap sound the whole game."
Bors credited the defensive coaching staff and players for shutting down the Chardon offense.
"It was a team effort," he said.
The end of Chardon's winning streak wasn't met with total disdain by Hewitt. He said pressure mounted with each win, and he and his team looked forward to starting a new streak in Week 5 against Mayfield.
"One thing we talked about privately was when we eventually lose, and it was bound to happen, we wanted it to be a warrior's death," Hewitt said. "Tonight (Riverside) swing a heavy ax and beat our faces in."
Bors pointed out that as big as the win is, it's only Week 4. Riverside hosts Madison and travels to Mayfield in the next two weeks.
As players and fans celebrated around him, Bors noted how far the program has come, harkening back to when Riverside had a grass, muddy field and the highest pay-to-participate in the state.
"We went from rock bottom and being the butt of jokes to this," he said. "A lot of people put in a lot of hard work to get to this point. Now THIS is the standard. This is the expectation. It's only Week 4, I will say this — it's tremendous."
