The first week of high school football in the Mahoning Valley has come and gone, and I’m still hearing about the excitement that came with it.

The thunderstorms rolled in Thursday, bringing a halt to a few matchups and delaying another, but they didn’t stick around long enough to cause any worry for Friday, and I’m thankful they didn’t.

We had two games in our area — Columbiana/Lowellville and Pymantuning Valley/Mineral Ridge — that came down to the waning moments.

In Columbiana, Lowellville quarterback Michael Ballone ran back and forth across the field as the Rockets went for a 2-point conversion to win the game before throwing a 50-50 ball to receiver Mathew Lucido to win the game. If you haven’t seen the clip, please go find it because the play was as fun as it sounded.

In his first game under center, Ballone, who’s taking over for his cousin Vinny Ballone, threw for 149 yards and two touchdowns to go along with three interceptions. He also ran for 102 yards and a touchdown. Talk about a special debut. Lucido also led the Rockets with 7 catches for 104 yards and two touchdowns.

Quite the exciting outcome at Firestone Stadium, but the finish at E.Z. Whitaker Field in Weathersfield might have topped it.

Trailing by one point, Mineral Ridge drove 91 yards on three plays with less than a minute to go to earn a 29-22 victory over the Pymatuning Valley Lakers. Coming into the season, Mineral Ridge head football coach Brian Shaner was bouncing back and forth at quarterback between senior Ian Erb and junior Owen Shingledecker. After leaning on Erb for most of the game, Shaner threw Shingledecker in at quarterback for the game-winning drive.

On play one, the junior picked out Erb down the field, and the senior drew a pass interference penalty. Then, Shingledecker picked out junior wide receiver Brady Balestrino on back-to-back passes for gains of 39 and 37 yards. The latter was the game-winning touchdown, which Balestrino wrestled away from a Pymatuning Valley defender. Balestrino finished the game with six catches for 132 yards and two touchdowns.

While they were high after the win, Shaner said that he knows his team can do even more as it continues its season.

“We won, and I’m a little bit down because I know that we can perform better than that,” Shaner said. “I’m not going to take anything away from Pymatuning Valley, they played a great game, they were very physical. But we have really high expectations for this football team. 1-0 is so much better than 0-1, but I know we have so much more ability and we can perform so much better. Our guys know it, too. They are going to let us coach them really hard this week.”

The Rams are set to take on a much-improved Orange team this week.

There were also plenty of special performances around the area in Week 1.

Returning from an injury-riddled junior season, Niles’ Antuan Gardner proved that he is back and stronger than ever as he ran for 193 yards and four touchdowns on just 20 carries in the Red Dragons’ win over Howland.

Lakeview quarterback Boom Gillis, who didn’t play offense for a majority of last season after injuring his hand in the preseason, led Lakeview to a big 41-14 win over LaBrae. From his quarterback position, he rushed 17 times for 147 yards and three touchdowns. His backfield mate, Thomas Easton, was just as strong as he rushed for 176 yards and two touchdowns.

Austintown Fitch’s DJ Williams was also spectacular, rushing for 136 yards and two touchdowns in a 40-6 win over Euclid.

Let’s also not forget about the Valley Christian Eagles. Junior running back Ja’Sean Lindsey lit up the Crestview Rebels for 217 yards and two touchdowns. As one of the top backs in the area, he’ll be one to watch this season.

I also wanted to highlight a few area coaches who picked up the first wins of their coaching careers. Derrick Bush benefited from the performance of Gillis and Easton while South Range’s David Rach continued the program’s winning streak with a 41-14 stomping of Springfield.

On a slick and wet night, Damon Buente led the Warren JFK Eagles past the Champion Golden Flashes to earn his first career win.

Finally, James Houge and the Newton Falls Tigers held off East Palestine behind an exceptional performance from Carter Rapczak.

If this week was just the beginning of High School football in the Mahoning Valley, I can’t wait to see what the rest of the 2023 season has in store for us.

We’ll break all of this down in our latest episode of the Sideline Chatter podcast, which was released this morning on wherever you find your podcasts. You can also visit www.vindy.com or www.tribtoday.com for a full library of past and present episodes.

gmacafee@tribtoday.com