By Matt Florjancic
MaxPreps.com
MASSILLON, Ohio – The Massillon community loves watching Tiger football. Of the 16,935 fans inside Paul Brown Tiger Stadium Saturday afternoon, those clad in orange and black went home happy.
The Tigers vanquished the Canton McKinley Bulldogs 17-0 in the 117th meeting between the Stark County rivals. Massillon shut out the Bulldogs for the first time since the 1982 season.
“It’s a situation where you don’t really know until you experience it,” first-year Massillon coach Jason Hall said. “[For] our fans in this town, football just means everything. We’ve got little kids standing out in the rain just to see these football players.
“It really showed me how important all of this is to this community,” he added. “Any time your defense can pitch a shutout against a good team like that, you’ve just got to take your hat off to the defensive staff. What a great job our defense did today.”
“I’ve been beating them since my sophomore year,” Massillon senior J.T. Turner. “It feels great to win this game.”
In addition to the rivalry, the game had postseason implications for both sides. Canton McKinley had a home game on the line, while Massillon was fighting to clinch the No. 8 seed in Division I, Region 2.
When the pairings are announced, Massillon will likely travel to North Canton Hoover, while Canton McKinley may stay in the city limits to play a Federal League foe in the GlenOak Golden Eagles.
“We’re excited just at the opportunity,” Hall said. “We’ll enjoy this for a day, the McKinley one, but we’ll be getting back to work tomorrow.”
“It’s a whole new season,” Turner said. “We’ve just got to take it like we did this game, just keep it going.”
Junior kicker Jeremy Geier gave Massillon the lead with a first quarter field goal. The lead ballooned to 10 points when quarterback Robert Partridge connected with fellow junior Bo Grunder. Partridge aired the ball out down the near sideline as Grunder positioned himself to make the catch.
Turner scored the game’s final touchdown with 7:38 remaining in the fourth quarter. Turner took the handoff from Partridge, found the hole made by his right tackle, burst through McKinley’s secondary and dove for the end zone.
“Before that, Coach Hall told me just to get in there,” Turner said. “I respect my coach and I did what he told me to do.”
Hall showed he meant business in his first game against McKinley when he went for it on the initial offensive drive of the afternoon. Though it did not go for points, Hall motivated his players, the coaches and the Massillon faithful.
“We were shooting ourselves in the foot,” Hall said. “The one thing that never stopped was our kids getting after it. They never got flustered. We’re a passionate group of coaches so we get worked up, but our kids went out there and played.”
Teams talk about being a family on and off the field. While all of the players in Massillon know of the tradition, defensive lineman Joe Studer is carrying on his family’s Tiger legacy.
His father, the late Steve Studer, played for the Tigers and later became their strength coach. Joe’s older brother Dan was one of several seniors featured in the 2001 documentary, “Go Tigers!”
Being a Studer comes with its privileges, as only a member of their family can wear No. 55. If there are no Studers on the roster, the jersey goes into retirement.
“Coming into this game, I was thinking I might be the last person to ever wear 55,” Studer said. “I just had to represent it with intensity and heart.”
Matt Florjancic currently works as a freelance reporter and sports show host for WOBL and WDLW.