Revere needed exactly 18 seconds to score Friday night. Celina needed the rest of the evening to make sure it did not matter. The top-seeded Bulldogs answered the fastest possible opening strike with 34 straight points and beat the eighth-seeded Minutemen 41-10 in a Division III, Region 10 quarterfinal in Celina.
The Akron Beacon Journal’s game recap reported that Revere, which made the three-hour drive to Mercer County, stunned the home crowd almost immediately: Lane Shenigo broke an 83-yard touchdown run, and David Kennedy’s extra point put the Minutemen ahead 7-0 with 11:42 still left in the first quarter. The score was confirmed on the statewide scoreboards published by The Columbus Dispatch, the Mansfield News Journal and High School On SI.
From there, according to the Beacon Journal’s recap, the night belonged to Celina. The Bulldogs scored the game’s next 34 points. Jett Warner ran for a 44-yard touchdown and threw touchdown passes of 20 and 29 yards, both to Brodee Schulte-Arnold, as Celina seized control of the quarterfinal.
Revere’s only answer the rest of the half was Kennedy’s 32-yard field goal with one second left in the second quarter, which made it 34-10 at halftime, the Beacon Journal reported. Shenigo finished with 148 rushing yards on 16 carries for the Minutemen — a big night individually that Celina’s defense otherwise kept from becoming a team comeback.
The second half closed the door. Talmadge ran for a touchdown in the fourth quarter and Jeffries kicked the final extra point to conclude the scoring, per the Beacon Journal’s recap. Celina improved to 10-1, while Revere’s season ended at 7-5.
The quarterfinal was Celina’s first game of this postseason. As the region’s No. 1 seed, the Bulldogs earned a first-round bye while Revere was playing its way in with a 21-0 shutout of Parma Heights Holy Name. A week off can cut both ways in November — rest against rust — and for about 18 seconds Friday, rust looked like a real concern.
Instead, the response became the story. Playoff teams are defined by what happens after something goes wrong, and Celina’s answer — five unanswered touchdowns’ worth of points before halftime — is the kind of stretch that makes a top seed look like a top seed. Warner’s dual role in the outburst, running for one score and throwing for two, gave Revere’s defense two problems it never solved at the same time.
Revere leaves with its heads up. A No. 8 seed that wins a first-round shutout on the road in the bracket, then scores 18 seconds into the top seed’s stadium, was not out of place in this round. Shenigo’s 148 yards against the region’s best team will be remembered in Richfield long after the bracket is forgotten.
Celina’s reward is the matchup Mercer County has been pointing toward for weeks. Read our coverage of Wapakoneta’s 14-12 escape against Padua, which sent the Redskins to Celina for the semifinal and set up a meeting of Western Buckeye League rivals with a regional final berth at stake.
Celina’s season arc explains some of that resilience. A preview of Friday’s game in The Daily Zine noted that the Bulldogs’ only loss this season was a 22-20 defeat against Ottawa-Glandorf, and that Celina answered it by shutting out Defiance 42-0 on Oct. 23 to close the regular season. A team that has already responded to its one defeat with a shutout is rarely rattled by an early touchdown, even one that arrives 18 seconds after the opening kickoff.
The two programs know each other as well as any pair left in Division III. Regular-season familiarity rarely survives contact with November, but it guarantees one thing: neither sideline will be surprised by anything the other tries on Friday night.
Home field matters in this round, and Celina keeps it. As the region’s No. 1 seed, the Bulldogs host again in the semifinal — the same stadium where Friday’s crowd watched its team concede a touchdown in the first minute and then score 41 of the game’s final 44 points.
What happens next: Celina hosts Wapakoneta in a Division III, Region 10 semifinal on Friday, Nov. 13. The winner advances to the regional final, two wins from the state championship weekend in Canton. For Celina, the formula is the one that worked Friday: absorb the first punch, then let depth and balance take over.
Photo: Heidi Knapp, CC BY-SA