ST. PARIS, Ohio — The top seed scored all season. On Friday night, November 13, it barely scored at all. Waynesville beat top-seeded St. Paris Graham 14-7 in an OHSAA Division V, Region 20 semifinal, putting on what Cincinnati.com, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s site, called a defensive clinic. The Mansfield News Journal’s statewide scoreboard, The Columbus Dispatch’s scoreboard and High School On SI’s statewide scoreboard all confirmed the 14-7 final.
The measure of the performance is Graham’s own recent history. Cincinnati.com reported the Spartans held Graham to its lowest offensive output of the season — one week after Graham scored 53 points against Arcanum. A defense that turns a 53-point offense into a 7-point one, on the road, in a regional semifinal, has not won a game so much as it has made a statement about the rest of the bracket.
Cincinnati.com framed the win as a signature one for the program: Waynesville’s victory marks its first regional final appearance since 2023 and what appears to be its second-ever win at the regional-semifinal stage. The Spartans were the No. 4 seed; the Falcons, the region’s No. 1 seed, go home with the bracket’s most misleading résumé — an offense that scored on everyone except the team that ended its season.
Division V’s Friday was an upset story across the region map, and Cincinnati.com’s takeaways led with exactly that: a pair of upset-minded Division V teams playing their best football at the right time. In Region 20’s other semifinal, Middletown Fenwick beat Williamsburg 27-13, holding a Williamsburg running game that arrived on a ten-game winning streak in check, Cincinnati.com reported — so the regional final pairs the two defenses that just shut down the region’s two hottest offenses.
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 verified record — the score, confirmed by three scoreboards, the top seed held to a season-low seven points, and a program milestone two years in the making — carries the story on its own.
Graham’s season ends with the region’s top seed and its lowest-scoring night, a combination that will sting in St. Paris all winter. Waynesville’s season, by contrast, has acquired the one thing November runs are built on: proof, earned on the road, that its defense can beat anyone left in the region.
What happens next: Waynesville (10-2) faces Middletown Fenwick (8-5) in the Division V, Region 20 final on Friday, November 20, at a site the OHSAA announces on Sunday, November 15, according to the Canton Repository’s bracket report. The winner advances to the state semifinals on November 27.