Mount Carmel QB Brady Cloherty ties his own school record with 7 TD passes against Providence

Mount Carmel, the area’s heavily hyped, much-loved and hated football powerhouse, took its two losses on the chin this season in stoic fashion.

The Caravan didn’t make excuses, even though excuses were easily within grasp. Many fans might not even know how legitimate the excuses are.

Mount Carmel lost its starting quarterback, Ryder Startz, in the first half of the first game of the season. Then, a week later, defensive back Cullen Winters went down with an injury. Winters, a senior returning starter, was essentially the team’s defensive play caller.

Senior Brady Cloherty stepped in for Startz and was immediately effective. Friday against Providence, he took another step forward, throwing for 376 yards and seven touchdowns in the No. 4 Caravan’s 49-14 win against the No. 19 Celtics.

Mount Carmel’s defense wasn’t as quick to adjust to missing a key player. But the Caravan is figuring it out. They shut out Providence in the second half.

“It has been tough without Cullen,” Mount Carmel defensive back Tavares Harrington, a Michigan recruit, said. “He’s a big-time player. We had to make some adjustments and took those two losses. But we are back now. We are getting in a groove, and he is coming back in a week or two, so we should be straight.”

Providence quarterback Dominic Vita connected with Hunter Long for a 93-yard touchdown with 4:52 left in the second quarter to tie the game at 14. It was all Mount Carmel from then on.

“We made some great halftime adjustments,” Caravan coach Jordan Lynch said. “It is what I’ve been looking for, to come out fast in the second half.”

Mount Carmel running back Nathan Samuels left with an injury after four carries.

“Coming in, we were going to run the ball a lot,” Cloherty said. “That changed this. So we went back to our nature—air raid—and it showed.”

Cloherty was 24-for-32 with no interceptions. He threw touchdown passes to Quentin Burrell, Jamarri Thompson, Marshaun Thornton and Danny Leyden and threw three touchdown passes to tight end Ty Kennedy, a junior transfer from Crown Point, Ind.

Kennedy has consistently become more involved in the offense.

“The receivers here are some of the best athletes in the country,” Kennedy said. “They’ve been helping me out with route running and pass catching. It’s awesome having guys I can look up to.”

Cloherty’s 7 TD passes tie the school record that he set in the Week 2 loss to St. Joseph Regional, N.J.

“He’s getting more and more comfortable with the offense,” Lynch said. “He has great weapons around him. When he plays within the system, things like this happen.”

Mount Carmel (5-2) is always in the news. So the Caravan’s dramatic, under-the-microscope season isn’t a surprise. Providence (5-2) has a traditionally strong football program, but isn’t as used to the harsh glare of the spotlight as the Caravan. The Celtics lived through a media firestorm after the school administration fired successful head coach Tyler Plantz last month.

“Even before all of that, we knew this was a pretty tough stretch of three games,” Providence interim head coach Adam Nissen said. “We finished 1-2 with it. Not what we wanted, but we competed in every game.”

The Celtics were without leading running back Broden Mackert. Their offense is built on punishing runs from Mackert and Vita.

Brayden McKay, Mackert’s faster, lighter counterpart, had 16 carries for 85 yards and a nine-yard TD for the Celtics. Vita was 13-for-22 passing for 219 yards.

“This is the first game [Mackert] has missed,” Nissen said. “He came out in warmups and tried to give it a go, but we didn’t want to roll the dice with him. He is a major part of our offense. We didn’t want to risk anything further.”