Staff photo / Brian Yauger Kennedy senior Nick Ryan drives up the court during the Eagles' Division VII regional final matchup against Cornerstone Christian on Friday at Barberton High School. Ryan finished with 16 points.

BARBERTON — The Kennedy senior class had an uphill battle to start the season. Replacing the seniors before them was a tall task.

Nick Ryan, Dom Ryan, Matt Wagner, Christian Swogger and Noah Elser rose to the occasion, stepping out of the shadows of the class before them to help Kennedy reach the regional finals.

Unfortunately for the Eagles, the ride came to an end, falling short in the regional title game, 42-32, to Cornerstone Christian on Friday.

“I’m extremely proud,” Eagles coach Mark Komlanc said. “We talked at the beginning of the season about coming out of the shadows and welcoming the spotlight because they’ve worked in those shadows for years. It’s unfortunate they didn’t get (the win), but they earned every step of the way and I’m very proud.

“I couldn’t be more proud of a group of kids. They played their tails off. We’ve got it back to within one possession. We just couldn’t make shots when it counted, and hats off to them. I think our guys played a phenomenal second half. In the first half the effort was there, we just couldn’t buy a bucket.”

After a dismal first half where Kennedy struggled to hit shots, things picked up in the second.

Those shots started falling, and the Eagles were more aggressive on both ends of the court. That effort was rewarded on the scoreboard as Kennedy got it to a two-point game in the fourth quarter.

After that, however, the Patriots kept Kennedy (17-10) off the scoreboard for the final three minutes to hold on and win.

“Offensively we told them to try and be a little bit more aggressive. In the first half, they were really passive,” Komlanc said. “Guys were in the wrong spot. It’s almost like the moment was a little bit too big for them, and I told them that that wasn’t the case. I knew we’d come back and make a run, and we just, it wasn’t even that we got tired, we just didn’t make shots when we needed to, that’s all. We got the shots we wanted in the second half, but when we needed them to fall, they didn’t fall, and that’s it.”

Kennedy has gone up against some of the state’s best athletes, but few have the resume of Cornerstone Christian’s Quinn Kwasniak. Kwasniak became Ohio’s all-time leading scorer, surpassing Jon Diebler, in the district finals against Western Reserve.

While there’s no containing a talent like Kwasniak, the Eagles limited him in the second half. Kwasniak scored 16 in the first half, but was held to a single two-point bucket in the second half and four free throws in the final minute to finish with 22.

“Defensively, Christian Swogger, I can’t say enough about him,” Komlanc said. But the other guys too, they all stepped up. They rebounded the basketball, they accepted the role of shutting their guy down, and defensively, we gave ourselves a shot and that’s all we can ask. We just couldn’t make any shots.”

In his swan song performance with Kennedy, Nick Ryan scored a team-high 16.

While the loss of Kennedy’s five seniors is a tough pill to swallow, so was losing the senior class before.

That doesn’t change the fact that the Eagles want to reach this stage every year.

Now, the task falls to Kennedy’s next senior class, highlighted by Henry Phillips and Preston Geracitano. It’s their turn to step up out of the shadows.

“Regardless of where you are in ninth, 10th, 11th grade, you can always be in this situation if you buy into what our program’s about and are OK with doing the hard work behind the scenes and maybe not reaping the benefits right away,” Komlanc said. “We live in a society where everybody wants it now. Quick instant gratification. That’s not what we’re about, and that’s why we have continued success. We get here almost every year, because we’ve bought into the idea of the grind and working and eventually it’ll pay off.

“Our message for our younger guys is that this is a great example of a group of kids who maybe didn’t see the gratification their sophomore year, their junior year, but here they are now under the biggest spotlight, and on the biggest stage, they had this to a possession game and they just couldn’t finish it out, but they earned everything they got.”