ASHLAND – It took the Ashland football team 13 seconds to put its stamp on the beginning of a potentially monumental season.
Hosting Bay on Friday in their 2025 opener at Community Stadium, the Arrows watched senior Gabe Baith return the opening kickoff 89 yards for a touchdown.
His junior brother, Grayson Baith, scored the squad’s fifth and final TD of the night, rushing in from 22 yards out early in the fourth quarter to force a running clock in a 43-10 rout of the Rockets.
Gabe Baith had 135 yards on kickoff returns in the first quarter alone while Grayson balanced his night with 92 rushing yards, 44 receiving yards and even back-to-back sacks on defense to quell a potential Bay scoring drive in the second quarter.
“I love playing with Gabe; I was going crazy for him on that return,” Grayson said of his brother. “… We’re both (playing offense and defense) this year, so it will be nice to see what we can do.”
Wildly enough, Bay tied things at 10-10 with 1:55 left in the first quarter.
A 28-yard field goal from Griffin Ruppe came about six minutes after returning All-Ohio running back Rocco Ereditario broke away for a 71-yard scoring dash.
But the Rockets fell flat on offense after that and the contributions came from all over the Ashland sideline.
Ereditario had just seven yards on his 11 other carries in the game, as Arrow defenders Grayson Baith, Budda Martin, Greyson Blough and Brandon Briggs terrorized Bay and first-year starting quarterback Patrick Cleary.
“We had a lot of guys who it was their first time under Friday night lights, and that’s a whole different thing,” 20th-year Ashland head coach Scott Valentine said. “Our defensive staff and (defensive coordinator Ryan) Stackhouse went in at halftime and made some adjustments and we got ourselves settled down.
“We were able to get after it a little bit in the second half.”
Cleary finished 15-of-25 passing for 93 yards and was intercepted by both Killian O’Brien and Bryden Bolen in the second half.
Outside of Ereditario’s huge TD run and an early 45-yard completion for Cleary, the Rockets managed just 44 yards of offense for the entire night.
Bay converted two of its first three third-down attempts in the game, then spent much of the rest of it punting the ball away.
A total of 10 penalties for 90 yards – many of those early in the third quarter while still trailing just 20-10 – didn’t help the visitors’ cause.
“We made some self-inflicted mistakes in the second quarter and our offense kind of sputtered a bit and got out of sync because of that,” said first-year Rockets head coach Nick Bigrigg, who has changed the program’s offense from run-first to more of a passing attack.
“But Ashland played a great game and had a great game plan, so hats off to them.”
Arrows senior kicker Carson O’Brien was consistently clutch throughout the night, scoring in every quarter while hitting all five of his PATs and burying field goals of 29 and 38 yards in the first half.
In addition, the veteran’s kickoffs forced the Rockets to begin their last six drives inside their own 25-yard line.
“When you get them pinned inside the 20 so many times in a row, that changes play-calling and you’re just trying to get a first down,” Valentine said. “That was big in the second half.”
Bigrigg said his main concern all week was trying to slow down Ashland’s offense behind All-Ohio quarterback Nathan Bernhard.
The Rockets never let the 6-foot-6 senior throw the ball deep to his many speedy receiving threats on the outside, but Bernhard still found ways to slowly demoralize the visitors as the game progressed.
The Appalachian State commit ran for 68 yards and two third-quarter touchdowns on 16 carries while also collecting 158 yards and a 7-yard scoring strike to Killian O’Brien on 16-of-23 passing.
The back-left-corner touchdown pass to O’Brien (7 catches, 72 yards) made it 17-10 early in the second quarter and Bay never sniffed a lead again.
Bernhard eclipsed 6,000 passing yards for his career Friday while also extending his streak of consecutive games without an interception to seven, dating back to last year’s unforgettable 12-1 season.
The senior said it was nice to get into a bit of an offensive rhythm, even though the Arrows didn’t turn in many highlight-reel plays against a team and coach they knew very little about.
“We had no idea what they were going to do, to be honest, so it was a grinder,” Bernhard said of Bay. “There were definitely a lot of question marks going into this game.”
“That first game, unexpected things are going to happen and it’s good to get a little bit of adversity early,” he added when asked of the 10-10 tie in the first quarter. “I think we were the better team, but for them to punch is in the mouth and have us react, I think that’s a good thing to see early.”
Bay, which is in search of its 12th consecutive playoff appearance and is considered by some to be a darkhorse in the Cleveland West Conference, finished 7-5 last year and hadn’t lost a season-opener since 2020.
But the Arrows got some revenge a decade after the Rockets beat them 31-21 in the first round of the 2015 playoffs. That still stands as Valentine’s only home playoff loss (6-1 record in such games).
This time around, Ashland stretched its home win streak to nine games (12-1 since the start of the 2023 season) while using a lot of its stars – including Bernhard, Killian O’Brien, All-Ohioan Gunner Lacey, Blough, Briggs and the Baith Brothers – on both sides of the ball.
O’Brien would have had a second receiving touchdown in the third quarter from 30 yards out had it not been negated by a holding penalty, and AHS sophomore running back Julian Cabrera also lost out on an 8-yard TD run in the fourth due to a holding call.
Still, the 43 points were the most scored by the Arrows in a season-opening game since a 49-7 pounding of Willard in 2010.
“They have great players all over the place and they showed that tonight,” Bigrigg said.
The Arrows return home next week for a matchup with Marion Harding, which was a 21-14 winner Friday over Mount Vernon on the road.
