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COLUMBIANA—Crestview senior running back Corey Hill isn’t one to take much credit for his huge rushing numbers, even if it now means he’s Columbiana County’s single-season rushing record holder. “That really wasn’t a goal of mine,” Hill said. “I just wanted to win. Over 2,000 yards is nice, but that’s on the linemen. I couldn’t do that without them. They did a great job.” Hill rushed for 227 yards and five touchdowns as the Rebels slaughtered Waynedale 41-12 in a first round Division V playoff game Saturday. He now has 2,040 yards on the season. But that wasn’t the only record he broke against Waynedale. By scoring 168 points he’s now the single-season school scoring leader. He also left quite an impression on Waynedale coach Matt Zuercher. “He ran hard,” Zuercher said. “He had good vision. The biggest attribute on film he had was that he doesn’t stop driving his legs. You saw it again tonight. He ran through the arm tackles and we didn’t do a good job bringing him down.” The Rebels (10-1) advance to meet Kirtland next Saturday at a site to be determined. Kirtland beat Inter-Tri County League upper tier co-champion South Range 63-7 Saturday. Crestview made next week’s game possible by totally dominating both sides of the ball after an early special teams breakdown. With Crestview up 6-0 after a 47-yard Hill touchdown scamper, Waynedale star Thad Nofsinger took the ball down to the Rebel 2 on a kickoff. The Golden Bears (8-3) tied it on a 6-yard Travis Suppes pass to Sean Rutt shortly thereafter, then the rout started kicking in. Aside from Corey Hill, brother Carter Hill was also on as he rushed for a career-high 170 yards on 16 carries. The Rebels totaled 457 yards on the ground total as well as 56 through the air. It marked Crestview’s fourth game over 500 yards of total offense this season. The Rebels led 13-6 after a quarter and 34-6 at the half. The other big reason Crestview took it to the Golden Bears was the performance of the Rebel defense which limited the opposition to 23 yards rushing and 23 yards passing in the first half. Crestview senior lineman J.D. Harris said the team was egged on by Internet forum posts boasting about Nofsinger’s talents. “Throughout the week we heard a bunch of stuff,” Harris said. “We heard he was calling himself Superman and all kinds of stuff. We told each other be relentless and smack him in the mouth.” Harris said the team usually ignores such Internet chatter, but couldn’t avoid it this week. “I try to stay away from that stuff, but everybody was posting it up for us to make us angry,” Harris said. “It worked.” Nofsinger ended up with 104 yards rushing, but most of those came after the game was well in hand. The Rebel secondary was also busy as Jakob Leon, Brian Orr and Adam Britton had interceptions. For Rebel coach Paul Cusick it was his third straight playoff victory over a Wayne County Athletic League opponent. It was also the first home playoff win for the Rebels. “You know that’s a great football league and they have great coaches and great players,” Cusick said. “You know you have to prepare to play. Every time we have to play a Wayne County team, it’s very similar to what we have around here. It’s almost like bizarro world.” Crestview had a good idea of what its next opponent was going to be after the public address system announced the score of the Kirtland-South Range game. “I heard the score at the end and was a little surprised by it,” Cusick said. “Kirtland at 10-0, you know they’re good. South Range usually elevates their game, so I’m a bit surprised.”

 

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