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The fact that the Strongsville Mustangs are playing good football under first-year coach Jason Trusnik can be a surprise to nobody.
Strongsville is a huge school with a long history of athletic success, and Trusnik was a Division III All-American at Ohio Northern who was one of those small-school college athletes who had the drive and talent to put together a 10-year career in the NFL despite being undrafted.
So, the question wasn’t, will the Mustangs be good? The question was, when will they be good? Now that they have won three games in a row and four of their last five and sit atop the Greater Cleveland Conference standings with Mentor, the answer is, now.
“I knew we had the potential within the team,” Trusnik said. “I knew the type of guys that we have and the talent that we have. But when it was going to take off, I wasn’t sure. But where we are right now, it’s a 1-0 mentality. That’s all you can do anytime, but especially with a new staff, new offense, new defense, new special teams. So, it was just one week at a time, get better and find a way to help this team. That’s what we’ve done.”
As they approach their game Thursday with visiting Shaker Heights, the Mustangs are a team brimming with confidence.
“The confidence is there,” Trusnik said. “The belief is there. It’s something I’ve strived for as a coach and as a coaching staff to be instilled in our kids. You’re seeing it in the way they’re playing, in the way they’re taking the field, and that’s super important to me.”
In order to continue its winning streak, Strongsville must get past a Shaker Heights team that entered the season with lots of high hopes and expectations, but currently sits at 2-5. If the playoffs started today, the Red Raiders would be on the outside looking in at the Division II Region 5 postseason slate.
Things started well for Shaker with victories over Willoughby South and Brush. Then came two narrow losses to Solon and Euclid. Since then, the Red Raiders have lost to Benedictine, Brunswick and Mentor by the combined scores of 119-16.
This was a team that won seven games last year and made the playoffs before losing a first-round shootout to Barberton, 48-41. While this could be viewed as a possible slip-up game for Strongsville—especially with next week’s game being a showdown at Mentor for GCC supremacy—Trusnik doesn’t view it any differently from any other game on the schedule.
“To me it’s not any less or more important than any other game that we face,” he said. “From the ones that we’ve won to the ones that we’ve lost, our approach is to study, do our job each week in practice and go out in games and handle our mission, which is to go 1-0. That’s it. I know it’s cliché, but we need to handle ourselves as a football team, play the way we’ve been playing, and the rest will handle itself.”
Shaker’s best player is senior Trey McNutt, one of two five-star recruits among Ohio’s seniors. Recruited as a safety but also a dangerous receiver and returner, McNutt has committed to play next year at the University of Oregon. Shaker also returns running back Cornell Beard, who rushed for more than 1,300 yards and scored 22 touchdowns last year.
“Shaker is a great team,” Trusnik said. “They have some really good athletes, both offensively and defensively. They do some great things schematically.”
Which certainly presents a challenge for the Mustangs. But Trusnik feels his team now has grown accustomed to what he considers the formula for winning football.
“The keys are, first of all, handle the ball,” he said. “The games that we’ve won, we’ve handled the ball, no turnovers and we created turnovers. Secondly, we need to play the way we’ve been playing. We need to play physical and dominate all three phases of the game. We’ve been able to do that, and we need to continue to do that.”
Magill’s pick: Strongsville. The Red Raiders have some scary talent, but these appear to be programs headed in opposite directions. The Mustangs have won three in a row and Shaker has lost five in a row.
