PEMBERVILLE, Ohio — A No. 10 seed is not supposed to look like a regional finalist. Coldwater has spent three weeks looking like one anyway. The 10th-seeded Cavaliers upset third-seeded Eastwood 26-7 on Friday night, November 13, at Freedom Field at Jerry Rutherford Stadium in an OHSAA Division V, Region 18 semifinal, according to the Mansfield News Journal’s statewide scoreboard. The Columbus Dispatch’s scoreboard, High School On SI’s statewide scoreboard and the Reflector’s score list all confirmed the 26-7 final.
The road itself is part of the story. Coldwater had traveled nearly 600 miles in the first two weeks of the playoffs, according to Black Swamp Football’s semifinal broadcast notes, winning at Genoa Area and at Wooster Triway just to earn Friday’s trip across the state to Pemberville. A team on its third straight road game, against a 10-1 host, is the bracket’s textbook underdog.
Coldwater’s tournament began with an escape: a 27-26 first-round win at Genoa Area, according to the Dayton Daily News’ playoff preview. The quarterfinal was the milestone game — Coldwater won at second-seeded Triway, the win that made Chip Otten the school’s 200-win coach, according to Black Swamp Football’s broadcast notes, which reported Otten had just recorded his 200th win with the Cavaliers entering Friday.
That context matters because Coldwater is not a Cinderella program renting November. The Cavaliers have advanced to the regional semifinals in all but one season since the playoffs expanded in 1999, the Dayton Daily News reported. Friday’s win at Eastwood — a Midwest Athletic Conference program beating the Northern Buckeye Conference’s 10-1 champion on its own field — is the latest entry in a two-decade habit.
Eastwood’s credentials were real. The Eagles entered 10-1 as the region’s No. 3 seed, with a quarterback completing 75.5 percent of his passes and a receiver who had caught 92 passes this season, according to Black Swamp Football’s broadcast notes. Holding that offense to seven points, on its home field, in a regional semifinal is the single best defensive result in Region 18’s tournament so far.
The 26-7 margin also flips the region’s power reading. Eastwood’s only previous loss this season is joined now by a playoff exit at home, and the Eagles finish 10-2. Coldwater, 8-4 a week ago in seeding terms, is 9-4 with three road playoff wins — and the region’s remaining favorite, Archbold, now has to prepare for the hottest team in the bracket rather than its No. 10 seed line.
Northwest Ohio’s Friday produced another overtime classic in the tournament run covered in Carey Outlasts Delta 24-18 in Overtime to Reach Regional Final. Carey, like Coldwater, won as the lower seed on the road — the northwest’s smaller divisions are being decided by travel-tested teams playing their best football in the season’s fourth month.
The region’s other road winner Friday was the Division I team covered in Springfield Flips Perrysburg 21-14 in Playoff Rematch to Reach Regional Final. Springfield avenged a 31-point loss; Coldwater avenged nothing — it simply kept winning in other teams’ stadiums, which in November is its own kind of statement.
Coldwater is also now the lowest seed still standing in Region 18 — a No. 10 seed in a final against No. 4 Archbold, according to the OHSAA pairings. Every other team left in the region’s bracket was seeded in the top four, which makes the Cavaliers the bracket’s last true outsider, and the one nobody left in Division V wants to draw on a cold night.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: the Region 18 final pairing is set, Coldwater (9-4) against Archbold, which beat Keystone 39-8 in Friday’s other semifinal, according to the Mansfield News Journal’s statewide scoreboard. The final is Friday, November 20, at a site the OHSAA announces Sunday, November 15, according to the Canton Repository’s bracket report. No play-by-play account of Friday’s semifinal was published by the sources used for this story, so this report does not invent one — the score, the setting and the season context are what the record supports.
What happens next: Coldwater (9-4) faces Archbold in the Division V, Region 18 final on Friday, November 20, at a site the OHSAA announces Sunday, November 15. A fourth straight road win would send the Cavaliers to the state semifinals on November 27 — an outcome no No. 10 seed’s bracket line ever promises, and one Coldwater is now a single game from delivering.
Photo: Dana60Cummins, CC BY-SA