By DAVID STILWELL
The Evening Leader

"I feel like I've been at Cedar Point all season," said St. Marys coach Doug Frye, as his up-and-down roughriders ended a roller-coaster season with a 28-21 win over Ottawa-Glandorf Friday night at Skip Baughman Stadium.

The Riders jumped out to a 21-0 halftime lead and then struggled to hold off a Titan second-half comeback.

"This ball game tonight was an exact refleion of our entire season," Frye said. "We've been searching for consistency all season, and tonight was a perfect example."

Playing some classic bend-but-don't-break defense, St. Marys appeared to have the game well in hand at the break.

However, the Titans drew up some playground plays to get back in the game. On O-G's first play from scrimmage in the second half, Jay Tousley completed a 67-yard halfback pass to set up his own one-yard touchdown run.

On its next possession, O-G used an end-around reverse followed one play later by a 20-yard touchdown pass from Tony Ball to Chad Killen, narrowing St. Marys' lead to 21-14 with 28 seconds left in the third quarter.

"We wanted to do some things to get the ball in the end zone in the second half," O-G coach Ken Schriner said. "We moved the ball well in the first half, we just couldn't score."

"We thought their linebackers were playing very aggressive, so we wanted to use that halfback pass to loosen them up a little."

"I've got to give O-G a lot of credit," Frye said. "Their seniors came out in the second half and played like it was the last game of the season."

The Roughrider offense, which had gone south in the third quarter, started to come back to life. John Meinerding gat a scoring drive going with a first down completion to Bob Huttis for 18 yards. Eli Holsinger ripped off back-to-back runs to set up a five-yard bootleg run by Meinerding for a touchdown.

Kurt Kill added his fourth PAT kick of the night to give the riders a 28-14 lead with 5:18 left to play.

Safe?

Not yet.

Killen returned the ensuing kick-off 62 yards to the St. Marys 21. Two incomplete passes later, tousley covered all 21 yards on the ground to once again cut the deficit to seven points with 4:45 to play.

St. Marys picked up oone first down on its next possession, but the drive stalled near mid-field, and on fourth-and-one, the riders ran a sweep to Huttis, who was swarmed under in the backfield.

But it was Huttis - who is nicknamed "Prime Time" - capping off a Deion Sanders type night by intercepting a Hall pass at the St. Marys 28 with 1:54 left to play.

Holsinger was able to pick up a first down on three carries, enabling Meinerding to take a knee twice to cap the game.

The Riders rolled up over 400 yards of offense, most of which came in the first half. Huttis and Holsinger rushed for 168 and 133 yards respectively.

Huttis scored on runs of 70 and 62 yards. Both times the speedy senior broke the containment at the line of scrimmage, and then picked an angle, and simply out-ran the Titan defense.

"Their speed hurt us," Schriner said. "Really the speed of their entire attack was impressive. The Wing-T is so hard to simulate the way St. Marys plays it. They put their heads down and come right at you, and their backs run very hard."

St. Marys' other first-half touchdown was set up by two big passing plays - a 41-yard completion to Jason Homan and a 19-yard scoring strike to Andy Slone on fourth-and-18.

"I'm really pleased with the way the offense has progressed in the last four weeks," Frye said, "especially when you consider the injuries we've had on that side of the ball."

Tousley had a huge game for the Titans as he led the team in rushing with 214 yards and in passing with his 67-yard completion.

"We had a winning season, and that's good," said Frye, who wrapped up his first season at St. Marys with a 6-4 record. "I think a lot of people didn't give us much of a chance coming into the season, and we finished strong, so that will give us something to build on."

Ottawa_Glandorf finishes its season with a 3-7 record.