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Massillon’s Jalen Slaughter is hitting his stride
(Courtesy: Massillon High School/BVM Sports)

Massillon’s Jalen Slaughter is hitting his stride

MASSILLON, Ohio — The Massillon Tigers football team is having a down year according to their standards of perfection. They’re a team that’s been hit hard with injuries and inexperience as they graduated a ton of their offensive talent last year. With a record of 6-2, you would think that the season has been a success, but Massillon is a team that is used to perfection. One of the biggest and most pleasant surprises of the year, however, has been the emergence of quarterback Jalen Slaughter.

At 5-foot-10, the freshman quarterback has emerged as the team’s starting quarterback heading into week nine. The season started with senior quarterback Darrius McElroy at the helm, but after a second quarter injury in the fifth game of the season, Slaughter got his chance. He came into the game with his team trailing and couldn’t pull off a come-from-behind victory, but he showed enough to earn himself another chance.

Slaughter saw limited action in two of Massillon’s first four games of the season, going 4-6 for 48 yards. In his first opportunity to shine after McElroy went down due to injury, Slaughter finished the game going 9-22 with two touchdowns and two interceptions. He did enough, however, to earn the starting spot in the Tigers’ next game. In that contest, Slaughter went 11-21 for 205 yards and three touchdowns. Despite throwing two interceptions, Slaughter pulled off his first win as a starter.

Since taking over as the starter, Slaughter has led Massillon to three consecutive victories and has only thrown one interception since throwing two in each of his first games seeing more than limited action. Slaughter is stepping up in a big way, and it culminated with a win on Friday against out-of-state New York powerhouse, Canisius. Although he threw just nine passes, not a single one of them failed to find the open arms of a football player. Granted, one of those catches was made by a Canisius defender on the lone incompletion of the night for Slaughter. Otherwise, he was perfect, going 8-8 for 160 yards and two touchdowns.

His total numbers on the season look like this: 41-72 for 706 yards, five interceptions and nine touchdowns. In his three games as the starter, Slaughter has been much more productive than his predecessor, McElroy. Darrius started five games for Massillon and threw for only 254 yards and two touchdowns for the Tigers.

Slaughter seems to have found his stride as Massillon’s starting quarterback and he’s hoping to keep it that way. The Tigers have one more tune-up game before finishing the season against longtime rival, Canton McKinley. After that, it’s playoff time for the Tigers and Slaughter hopes to lead them there.

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