By Dan Weber NKySports reporter
It’s not exactly a classified secret . . . how to win a big rivalry game. It’s really quite simple.
Your big playmakers have to make big plays.
Which is exactly what a core group of Covington Catholic seniors stepped up to do Friday In front of a steamy standing-room-only crowd of nearly 4,000 at David Cecil Stadium in Fort Thomas.
One after another, the veteran Colonels looked like they were in a contest to outdo one another in making game-winning plays.
Quarterback Evan Pitzer, running back Owen Leen, tight end Willie Rodriguez and wide receiver Braylon Miller weren’t alone, however. Sophomore defensive back Cash Harney, a transfer from Beechwood, joined the veterans with a game-deciding Pick-Six that put the Colonels up two touchdowns late in the third quarter and that was pretty much all she wrote to enable CovCath to walk away with a 35-21 win in Northern Kentucky’s most meaningful rivalry.
Not that Highlands went down without a fight. Quarterback Brody Benke, with one 75-yard TD run, and tailback Cameron Geisler, with two scores from 37 and 22 yards out, pulled off spectacular efforts of their own to keep this one up for grabs until the Harney pick.
But the best part of this is how CovCath (2-0), now a Class 4A power, and Highlands (1-1), still in 5A, can both go on to the playoffs and root for one another. Which is how Highlands’ coach Bob Sphire was pitching his players after the game.
Sphire said they “didn’t play like a champion tonight.” Too many turnovers – three to CovCath’s one – and that was the difference. But they could be that team, he told his Bluebirds, they can “become the team you are.”
The Highlands t-shirts say: “WIN TODAY, WIN FOREVER.” And as one of the nation’s top 10 all-time winningest high school football programs, the “Win Forever” part has never been a problem for Highlands over the years. It was the “Win Today” part that was the issue on this Friday.
Both teams started a bit hot with key penalties on a night when the game was wisely backed off an hour, from 7 p.m. to 8. The temperature was near 97 degrees at the original kickoff time but down to a balmy 84 for most of the game. And it didn’t appear much of a factor.
Although CovCath Coach Eddie Eviston said “we’ve got so many guys going both ways” that the heat didn’t help. But it didn’t end up hurting a Colonel team that got a second wind in the second half.
“I was making mistakes the first half,” said Pitzer, who was under constant pressure, getting hit on almost every play, whether he was throwing it or carrying it. But he still managed to put up 134 yards of offense the first half – 18 rushing, 116 throwing – with a TD himself while passing for the tying TD with just 0:01 left before intermission on a toss to a leaping Miller.
Coming out after halftime, the Colonels had a different look about them. One piece of that, Eviston said, was “we weren’t aligned properly” the first half. Like on the Benke keep when he pulled the ball back from a diving Geisler and took off as every single Colonel on the left side of the defense went for a handoff that didn’t happen and Benke ran 75 yards with 11 Colonels chasing him with no chance to catch him for a 14-6 lead.
Geisler had already put the Birds on the board on his 22-yard run where he cut back past CovCath defenders with no shot at stopping him.
But when CovCath found itself pushed back to its own 10 with two minutes left in the first half, the last-second scoring drive to tie it at 14 at intermission can’t be overstated. Neither can the way Pitzer hit on seven of 11 passes for 87 yards and a TD.
“I just started trusting my guys to protect me,” and trusted his arm to make the throws. But still, Highlands would get to him, shaking the ball loose on a sack at the CovCath 12 with the game tied in the third. But CovCath’s defense stopped the Birds and a missed snap prevented a 29-yard field goal from getting kicked.
Then CovCath got a similar chance the very next possession on a fumbled Tate Kruer 49-yard punt, moving the ball from their own 28 to the Highlands’ 26. It took just six plays before Pitzer hit Rodriguez in the back of the end zone for a 21-14 lead.
And then on the very next possession, when Benke double-pumped on a hitch to the left sideline, he didn’t see that Harney, a veteran starting basketball point guard as a freshman for Beechwood last year, had jumped the route.
“I saw he was right there,” Eviston said as the ball came to the CovCath sideline. “Just a sophomore,” Rodriguez said after Harney’s 35-yard interception TD gave the Colonels’ their two-TD lead, 28-14.
“That was big for us, to get that two-score lead,” Eviston said of how it limited the way Highlands was able to play.
But no matter how this game came in Week 2 instead of October or the way these rivals are no longer in the same class, Eviston loved everything about this one.
“These are awesome games,” he said, “to have a night like this.”
Watching your big playmakers make big plays will do that to you.
SCORING SUMMARY
COVCATH 6 8 14 7 – 35
HIGHLANDS 7 7 0 7 – 21
COVCATH: Pitzer 5 run (Wetzel kick missed)
HIGHLANDS: Geisler 22 run (Nickelman kick good)
HIGHLANDS: Benke 75 run (Nickelman kick good)
COVCATH: Pitzer 9 pass to Miller (Pitzer run for 2)
COVCATH: Pitzer 8 pass to Rodriguez (Weitzel kick good)
COVCATH: Harney 35 INT return (Weitzel kick good)
HIGHLANDS: Geisler 37 run (Nickelman kick good)
COVCATH: Pitzer 8 pass to Leen (Weitzel kick good)
Featured photo by Dale Dawn: Not bad elevation for CovCath’s Owen Leen celebrating his TD on an eight-yard pass reception.