Football: Ready Silver Knights plan to build on strong finish
A bumpy summer and a rough start to the regular season didn’t keep the Ready football team from peaking by year’s end.
The Silver Knights closed the regular season with three consecutive wins, including a 15-14 victory over KIPP Columbus on Oct. 22 to secure the 13th seed for the Division V, Region 19 postseason.
With a 35-6 loss to fourth-seeded West Lafayette Ridgewood on Oct. 30 in the first round of the playoffs, Ready finished 5-6 under interim coach Michael Schaefer.
Previously a longtime assistant at Upper Arlington who served as the defensive coordinator under Joel Cutler in 2020, when the Knights went 6-3, Schaefer was named interim coach over the summer after Cutler took an indefinite personal leave of absence.
Ready also had one of its scrimmages canceled because of a COVID-19 case within the program and lost five of its first seven games, with all but one of those losses coming to teams with winning final records.
“Obviously the season didn’t start out how we wanted it to with the 2-5 start,” junior quarterback Kaleb Schaffer said. “After (a 26-25 loss to) Whitehall (on Oct. 1), we really focused on us as a whole. We knew we still had a chance to make the playoffs, but we knew we needed to get better and we had a lot of guys really step up and become leaders. We had more energy at practice and that just became contagious for us.”
Schaefer is excited for the future of the program considering 23 freshmen came out and there were only 11 seniors listed on the team’s final roster.
“I was really proud of our team and the kids for hanging in there,” he said. “Getting into the playoffs was exciting. I think there were a lot of naysayers when we were 2-5, and obviously there were some circumstances with there being a transition late in the summer with coaches, but the kids kept fighting. It’s a goal of every program to get into the playoffs and show improvement and I thought we did that with a very young team.”
Ready, which went 3-3 against MSL-Ohio Division programs and lost 24-7 to Watterson on Sept. 3 in its CCL rotational matchup, expects to return nearly all of its key playmakers and several offensive linemen.
Schaffer completed 100 of 160 passes for 806 yards and three touchdowns and rushed for one score.
Junior running back Brian Fitzsimmons finished with 1,276 yards and 13 touchdowns on 267 carries, and added 22 catches for 156 yards and one touchdown.
Freshman running back Kentrell Rinehart had 83 rushes for 420 yards and three touchdowns and led in receptions with 30 for 210 yards and one score.
Sophomore Dalton Miller (WR/DB) had 19 receptions for 168 yards, senior Sage Tilley (WR/DB) had 15 catches for 112 yards and junior Braylon Cornell (WR/DB) is another eligible to return.
Devon Malone and Marvin Sutton were seniors on the offensive line, but juniors Chantz Akers, Logan Dimel and Dylan Melrose and sophomores Jude Kusan and Tylar Mix all gained extensive experience up front.
Defensively, the Knights lose J’sun Gardner (40.5 tackles, 14 pass breakups, 3 interceptions) and Tilley from the secondary, Connor Moore (40.5 tackles) at linebacker and Malone (37 tackles) on the line.
Junior Cullen Dent (LB/TE), who was named first-team all-CCL along with Fitzsimmons and Gardner, had 8.5 tackles for loss and led in total tackles with 47.
Sophomore J.D. Catena (DB) had four interceptions and three tackles for loss, and junior Jerad Koboi (DL) had six sacks and 4.5 tackles for loss.
Junior Aaron Marshall (WR/DB), sophomore Jordan Mullens (RB/LB) and freshmen Kasen Abbott (RB/LB) and Jayden McGhee (WR/DB) were others who contributed.
Senior Evan O’Connell had 11 pass breakups at defensive back, averaged 37.9 yards per punt and made 13 of 16 field goals and 17 of 18 extra points.
“I feel really great about what we have back next year,” Schaffer said. “Obviously, we had some really good seniors who are still going to be hard to replace, especially Evan O’Connell, who helped us be in and win some games just from his leg. But we had a lot of underclassmen who were playing a lot of minutes.”
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READY FOOTBALL
•Record: 5-6 overall
•Seniors lost: Ilijah Austin, Austin Burgoon, Todd Ernst, J’sun Gardner, Noah Hamilton-Foughty, Devon Malone, Zac McAndrews, Connor Moore, Evan O’Connell, Marvin Sutton and Sage Tilley
•Key returnees: Chantz Akers, J.D. Catena, Cullen Dent, Logan Dimel, Brian Fitzsimmons, Jerad Koboi, Dylan Melrose, Kentrell Rinehart and Kaleb Schaffer
•Postseason: Lost to West Lafayette Ridgewood 35-6 in first round of Division V, Region 19 playoffs
This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Football: Ready Silver Knights plan to build on strong finish
