Johnstown Johnnies uses explosive offensive line play to smother the Newark Catholic Green Wave 36-24

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David Burnworth | October 1, 2023

I drove my first season drive to White Field in Newark, Ohio to watch Newark Catholic battle Johnstown. There was a time I would be at White Field five times during the regular seeing watching the Green Wave play on Saturday Night but now this is a rare treat because those games for the most part are now played on Friday Night.

Newark Catholic (1-6) would get three touchdowns from Junior Mikey Hess who was the lone bright spot for the offense. He scored on runs of 68,34, and 36 yards. Those runs were mostly from his speed and his ability to square up his shoulders and get upfield. Newark Catholic came within a yard of having a fourth touchdown but the Johnnies easily turned Newark Catholic back on third and one and fourth and one from the one.

The Johnnies offensive line was dominating all night long, especially on the right side where they ran 90% of their plays with success. The Green Wave never seemed to adjust to what the quiet homeside crowd knew was coming. Johnstown had a massive drive going 99 yards and taking 18 running plays where all but one, maybe two went through the same two holes made by the work of the offensive line scoring on the drive was Kaynen Lindsey.  They had another long p drive, that lasted 11 plays and totaled 60 yards again all but one looked to be the same type of play going the same way through the Newark Catholic line with Sam Marasek finding the end zone. When the Green Wave had one guy who the left outside Johnstown would run an option play that almost always gained five or six yards, or it seemed.

The Johnnies also had a 3-play drive going 64 yards along with a 2-play drive going for 63 yards with 52 yards coming on a run by Nana Owusu, where he went untouched for the score. Johntown’s first score came on a 16-play, 78-yard that ended on the only pass of the drive. The pass went to Ryan Sager who was all alone downfield making it easy for Sager to score from 25-yards out.

On many of the Johnstown drives, they were able to gain extra yards from what some will say powerful running ball the ball carrier while others will say the extra poor arm tackling coming up high on the runner. The Johnnies gave up 218 yards with most of them coming on the breakaway Hess touchdown runs. Newark Catholic gave up 385 yards with 90% going through the left side of the defensive line.

Johnstown threw just three passes completing three of them. They ran the ball 49 times. For Newark Catholic, they had eleven completions on twenty-four passing attempts. I believe they had one drop on quarterback Miller Hutchison’s best throw.  He would overthrow his open receiver on most of his incompletions. The kid was off most of the night, a large part due to the work of the Johnstown pressure.

The Johnnies improved to (3-4) on the season. They host the most surprising team in Licking Count next week, Utica (5-2). Newark Catholic will travel to (2-5) Lakewood.

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