Massillon quarterback Danny Clark transferring to Hoban
Chris Easterling
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Updated: Friday, February 27, 2015
MASSILLON What has been oft-rumored in Massillon for weeks was confirmed on Friday. Quarterback Danny Clark is departing the school.
Clark, who has committed to Ohio State despite only being a sophomore, is heading to Hoban for his junior season next fall. The news was initially reported by Scout.com’s Bill Greene.
The Clark family did not wish to speak on the matter when contacted by The Independent on Friday.
Clark’s absence was notable from many of the Tigers’ offseason workouts when they resumed in January, even before Nate Moore was hired as the head coach late in the month. That absence had created heavy speculation that he would not be playing forMassillon when the 2015 season arrived.
Those beliefs were only ratcheted up when he was not present for the meeting on Jan. 27 where the players were told of Moore’s hiring. He and his family were also not in attendance at the Meet the Coach event the following evening, nor at a meeting on Wednesday with Moore and the team’s players and parents.
Moore spoke with both Clark and his family on multiple occasions in the last month. On Friday, the new Tiger coach admitted the decision was the Clarks’ to make alone, and that he harbored no ill will over the move.
“The first time I talked to Danny, I told him I wished him the best, whatever he decided to do,” Moore said. “Everybody’s situation is different and everybody has to do what they feel like is best. If that’s somewhere else, that’s somewhere else and I get that. I wish him the best and we’ll certainly follow him and hope that he does well and his team does well.”
The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Clark made Massillon history in Week 2 of the 2013 season when he became to the first freshman to start at quarterback. He started the final 11 games of the season — including two playoff games — completing 58.1 percent of his passes (104-of-179) for 1,644 yards with 17 touchdowns and seven interceptions.
That season included an impressive 358-yard performance in a loss at Austintown Fitch. More than 200 of those yards came in a fourth-quarter comeback that came up short, in part because of a go-ahead touchdown pass that was negated due to an illegal formation penalty.
That freshman season garnered him an offer from Ohio State, which he accepted in December.
Clark’s sophomore season saw his numbers take a dip. He completed 54.6 percent of his passes (118-of-216) for 1,519 yards with eight touchdowns and three interceptions.
Clark’s departure leaves junior Seth Blankenship as the only quarterback with any experience in a varsity game. Blankenship completed 7 of 11 passes for 116 yards with a touchdown in two appearances last fall.
“The Tigers have to move on,” Moore said. “We’ll be OK. We have a lot of really good kids who have been working really hard in the weight room. There’s nobody who’s not an injury away from not being there. You don’t want to lose anybody for anything, but these things happen and we’ll move on.”
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