High school football: Running back Marco Cirigliano scores five touchdowns as Columbia blows out Brookside

COLUMBIA STATION — On Columbia's homecoming night, sophomore tailback Marco Cirigliano made his home in the end zone. Cirigliano scored five touchdowns, including four in the Raiders' 35-point second quarter, as Columbia rolled to a 42-6 Lorain County League win Friday over Brookside. In three home games this season, the 5-foot-10, 160-pound Cirigliano has scored 12 touchdowns. "We started to feel them out and we got a few adjustments in and everything just kept rolling," Cirigliano said. "It's amazing to know how powerful our offense is." After a scoreless first quarter, Cirigliano ran 3 yards on the opening play of the second quarter to put the Raiders on the board. Columbia (5-0, 2-0 LCL) got the ball back 29 seconds later when junior defensive tackle Anthony Fatica recovered a fumble on the Brookside 24. After a 16-yard run by quarterback Andrew Champagne, Cirigliano found the end zone again, this time on an 8-yard run to make it 14-0. "It's feels great to be 5-0, I'm not gonna, lie, but we're not done yet," Fatica said. "We really showed what we can do in the second quarter." The Cardinals (2-2, 1-1) went three-and-out on their next possession and when the Raiders took over it only took them four plays to score again when senior Owen Menge capped off a 47-yard drive with a 9-yard run for a 21-0 lead. Before the half was over, Cirigliano added a 1-yard touchdown run and caught a 24-yard scoring pass from Champagne to give him 14 total touchdowns on the year. "The credit for our running game goes to the coaches and the line," Cirigliano said. "Yeah, Owen and I are doing our part but the line has just been doing great and opening up holes for us." Cardinals senior running back Karson Nail broke free for a 16-yard run on Brookside's first offensive play from scrimmage. They didn't get another first down until less than a minute remained in the opening half. Brookside finally got on the board with 4:31 left in the game when senior quarterback Kenny Grobolsek fired a perfect pass to sophomore wide receiver Ben Montgomery just inside the pylon to make it a 42-6 game. The Raiders defense held Brookside to 117 yards of total offense. "Both sides of the line of scrimmage played really really well tonight," Columbia coach Jason Ward said. "I thought Andrew played another really solid game at quarterback. It was nice to see Owen Menge back involved in the offense." While definitely please with his team's start, Ward is far from satisfied. "The way to keep this going is to realize we have no choice but to get better," he said. "We're not going to keep rolling if we decide we're happy with where we're at. We have to keep striving to improve and hopefully that will get us ready for some really meaningful cold weather games." Brookside came into the game as one of the feel-good stories of the season, coming off a 27-0 road win at Clearview, but Friday the Cardinals learned they have to play mistake-free football to be ready to compete with the elite teams in the LCL. "Columbia is good but we didn't play our best game," Cardinals coach Scott O'Donnell said. "We've got to coach better and we've got to play better. We have to learn from tonight. The first drive we got a holding penalty and got behind the chains, the second drive we had a turnover. You can't do that against a good team. If you give them those kinds of opportunities before you know it you're down 21-0. "We'll get back to practice on Monday, bust our butts, get after it and learn from our mistakes." Contact Todd Shapiro at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.