The Ashland University football team captured the 2024 Great Midwest Athletic Conference (G-MAC) Championship with a 44-30 win over the Kentucky Wesleyan College Panthers on Saturday Nov. 16.
The Eagles started off the game down 10-0 after a 49 yard Cole Cawthorne field goal, and a 22 yard touchdown pass from Harrison Burch to Kam Sherrard. This touchdown happened one play after the Eagles kick off return unit coughed up the ball right after the field goal.
Ashland responded with 21 unanswered points. All in the second quarter with two Ty’aris Stevenson runs one from 11 yard and another from 8 yards. The last touchdown of the scoring surge was a 38 yard pass from Trevor Bycznski to Jamari Croom. The Eagles then led by two scores.
“They kept playing and kept working. You can’t give up the ball, went for it on a fourth down, sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t. They kept believing in what we were doing and were able to get it rolling a little bit,” said Head Football Coach Doug Geiser.
Kentucky Wesleyan struck back quickly with another scoring play on Sherrard’s second receiving touchdown of the game. This cut the Eagles lead to five points. Ty’aris Stevenson found the endzone for the third time in the game.
With under two minutes left in the first half the Panthers would draw closer to the Eagles with a long 76 yard touchdown. This made it a four point game at the halftime break with Ashland leading 27-23.
During the game the Eagles had to keep an eye on the matchup between Findlay and Tiffin to see if Ashland would be co-champions of the GMAC or get the trophy for themselves.
“Stay in the moment, control what you can control right now,” said Geiser.
The Eagles would start the second half strong intercepting Burch’s pass on third down of the Panthers opening drive of the third frame. Senior kicker AJ Rhodes added a field goal to give Ashland a touchdown lead.
Then midway through the third quarter it was the Eagles bread and butter through the entire game with Stevenson finding the endzone again from 29 yards away as he went in untouched. The Eagles were up by 14 points.
In the late third quarter the all time leading rusher in Panthers history, Brandon Mackey, found paydirt from two yards out. Kentucky Wesleyan had hope for a comeback down by 7.
Then in a low scoring fourth quarter the Eagles added one more touchdown to the board with Stevenson scoring his fifth touchdown of the game. The Eagles did not miss a red zone scoring opportunity in the game.
The Eagles wrapped up a 44-30 win and won sole possession of the GMAC championship, after Findlay lost earlier in the day.
“It feels amazing for the kids and for the staff because they’ve worked their tail off to try to get to this point,” said Geiser.
With the Eagles being conference champions, they get a bid to the playoffs and await an opponent announcement on Monday.
