“Somebody might’ve mentioned it, but I didn’t know it’d been 41 years,” said junior running back Carter Russo, who scored a late third-quarter touchdown. “The whole community has been behind us.”
Badin senior quarterback Landyn Vidourek capped the opening drive of the game with a 1-yard plunge for a touchdown. Senior kicker Jackson Niesen added a 34-yard field goal with 49 seconds left in the first half, and Russo scored a clinching touchdown on a 13-yard run with 22 seconds left in the third quarter as the Rams reached a region semifinal for the second consecutive season.
Badin, the region’s top seed, is scheduled to face fifth-seeded and 10-2 St. Marys Memorial on Friday at 7 p.m. at a neutral site to be determined. Memorial advanced with a 24-21 win over 13th-seeded Chaminade Julienne on Friday.
That 1980 Badin team finished 12-1, losing to Cleveland Benedictine, 9-3, in the Division III state championship game at Springfield’s Evans Stadium.
Defense was ninth-seeded Shawnee’s ticket to the second round. The Indians advanced with a 28-0 win over Hughes in the first round, their first postseason win and their third straight win after four consecutive losses. They proved their mettle by holding to 17 points a Badin team that had scored at least 30 in five consecutive games and seven of its first 10.
“They didn’t want us to run,” Russo said. “They talked all week about stopping the run.”
The Rams were equally stifling in producing their fifth shutout of the season, including 37-0 over Butler in the first round. They sealed Friday’s win when senior linebacker Brady Imhloff recovered a Shawnee fumble at Badin’s 13-yard line with 8:24 left in the game to stymie the Indians’ deepest penetration of the game.
“We have a really good defense,” Russo added.
“That was a gritty performance by us and them,” Badin coach Nick Yordy said after the game. “They were a scrappy team. That’s a great word to describe them. Our defense did a great job. They made a couple of third downs, but our kids stepped up. We were able to finish a couple of drives and get into the end zone. We were able to avoid the big mistakes, and we’re able to play another week.
“Our kids do everything we ask them to do. You’ve got to be proud of them.”
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