Cooper’s O-Hara slings Jags to breakthrough win over Ryle at buzzer in battle for Union

By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter

Life, like football, occasionally offers you a win-win deal. As it did in Friday’s Skyline Crosstown Shootout at Cooper High in the battle for Union against crosstown rival Ryle, the team that’s owned this series since Cooper’s last win in 2015.

Both teams can still go on and reach their dreams. Class 6A Ryle and 5A state runner-up Cooper, each 2-0 coming into this game, can go on from here and win state titles. And they can take this game with them.

When they came up with the “Crosstown Shootout” concept, the classic West Side-East-Side Elder-Moeller matchup was the model for a Cincinnati “Crosstown” showdown. Who could have ever imagined that the town they’d have a shootout like this would be Union between schools just 4.8 miles away from one another – across a couple of subdivisions, some farmland and a shopping mall in the rolling hills of central Boone County.

“We finally found a way to win the big one,” Cooper Coach Randy Borchers said, the Jaguars’ only head coach since the school came to be in 2008 after his team pulled this one out with 38 seconds left on a Cam O’Hara 11-yard TD strike to Isaiah Johnson after recovering a fumbled punt. “I’m glad we won in regulation.”

Borchers wasn’t sure what would have happened had this game gone into overtime. “That’s a really good defensive front over there,” he said of Ryle’s Raiders – led by junior linebacker Jacob Savage – that likes to hit people.

“That’s a good football team,” said O’Hara, the quick-armed, quick-footed junior who threw it 41 times, completed 25, for 356 yards, two touchdowns while running in for the third for the now 3-0 Jaguars who delighted a capacity crowd of some 4,000 at Cooper.

“That’s the best environment ever for this game,” said Borchers, who has been here for every one of them. “You’ve got two really good teams in the same city . . . but nothing this big.”

“The game came down to one or two big plays,” Borchers said. Make that two. With each team winning a half – 14-0 for Cooper in the first half, 14-0 for Ryle into the final minute of the second half, that’s what it took: two plays.

But not the way it looked after Savage sacked O’Hara and forced Cooper to punt with 56 seconds left. O’Hara, who also punts at times, hit one a bit short from the 41 deep into Ryle territory. Were we headed into overtime, was the thought as the ball twisted back a bit away from the Ryle return man, forcing him to go to his knees to try to come up with the football.

Only he couldn’t. Copper’s Corey Freihofer did, with 38 seconds left and the ball on the Ryle 11. O’Hara kept it for three on first down, then lined up and “Cam gave me the look,” wide receiver Isaiah Johnson said. And then he ran the “out and up” pattern, got open over the middle and made the game-winner look like one of their hours of summer route-running for the game-winner.

“First time I’ve ever beaten them in my high school career,” said Johnson, who caught seven passes for 123 yards, “what a great experience.”

“For everybody here,” Borchers said, “these people got their money’s worth.”

So did O’Hara, the man who did it all for the Jags, do anything special on that punt? “Shoot, no, I’m not good enough to do that,” the three-year starter said with a laugh. But he was good enough to be named the game’s Most Outstanding Player. And scramble, scramble, scramble behind an offensive line with four new starters just trying to find its way right now.

“People say I can’t run,” said the 6-2, 195-pound O’Hara, who at times circled around 20 to 25 yards behind the line of scrimmage with Ryle defenders in hot pursuit as he tried to find an open throwing lane. Run he did. Throw on the run he did “maybe even more than I ever have,” O’Hara said.

That’s because, according to the quarterback, “we have the best wide receiver group in the state . . . never a doubt in my mind.” What Borchers likes about that is that “when he scrambles, our receivers do a great job coming back to the ball.”

Like the way Jaiden Combs (seven catches for 121 yards) did from the 29-yard line on a comeback route that saw him cut to the sideline behind running back Keagan Maher’s crushing block for the game’s second TD to go up 14-0 in the second quarter.

But it wasn’t all offense. The Jags pulled down four interceptions with Ryker Campbell getting two. “One of the best players on our team,” Borchers said.

But the defender who makes people take notice in this game and every game he plays is Ryle’s junior middle linebacker Savage, the 220-pound Savage, with a game-high eight tackles and one sack.

“He’s a frigging dawg,” O’Hara said after absorbing a number of crushing Savage hits. “He’s going to feel it tomorrow,” Borchers said, “we’ll have plenty of ice ready for him.”

But that was for “tomorrow,” tight end/defensive end Austin Alexander, the 6-3, 240-pounder headed to North Carolina with six catches for 73 yards, two tackles and a sack, told his team after the game that it could “party.”

“Live it up tonight,” he told them, “but tomorrow morning we’re back at it.” Because according to every Jaguar you talk to, this game – big as it is – isn’t the end game. Winning one more game than a year ago and a state title is.

Ryle Coach Mike Engler, deprived of setting the school record for football wins for a coach with this loss, sounded this positive message. “You came back, you fought hard. We had all the momentum in the world.”

But they had something else that cost them: “We killed ourselves on special teams,” Engler said of his 2-1 team that faces Highlands, Christian Academy of Louisville and Louisville St. Xavier in its next three games. Ryle’s five turnovers to Cooper’s three were the big difference in this one, even if Ryle held Cooper to minus-17 yards rushing.

“We’ve got to get better there,” Borchers says. One who definitely got better as the game went on was junior Ryle quarterback Nathan Verax, who threw for 82 yards on 10-of-19 passing and ran for another 68 yards on 11 carries.

Cooper gets Campbell County, Great Crossing and the showdown district game with Highlands in its next three games.

SCORING SUMMARY

RYLE 0 0 6 8—14
COOPER 7 7 0 7—21
1st Quarter
COOPER: Cameron Ohara 7 yd Rush (TD)
COOPER: Eyler Tibbs (PAT)
2nd Quarter
COOPER: Jaiden Combs 29 yd Pass from Ohara
COOPER: Tibbs (PAT)
3rd Quarter
RYLE: Savage 3 yd Rush (PAT snap fumbled)
4th Quarter
RYLE: Lee 12 yd Pass from Verax
RYLE: Lee 3 yd Pass from Verax (PAT)
COOPER: Isaiah Johnson 11 yd Pass from Ohara
COOPER: Tibbs (PAT)

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