Football: Knights still have something to prove in final game

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

 

The Middletown High School football team is in a position they haven’t been in, in a long time.

The Oakdale High School Bears are in a position in which they’ve never been in.

Both teams will try to adapt to this position, when the Bears and Knights meet up on November 7^th, at 7 p.m. in Ijamsville, Maryland.

Middletown’s position is one, even though most people knew they had lost lots of talent off of a state championship year, few believed the Knights would be in.

Even with a region that got significantly weaker from last year, Middletown finds themselves heading into Week 10 eliminated from playoff contention and knowing that no matter what they do tonight once the clock strikes 0:00 there season will be over.

Middletown (4-5) had not missed the playoffs since 2004 and had only missed it 3 times in the past 15 years.

That all changed for Middletown as three consecutive losses to the Urbana High School Hawks, Governor Thomas Johnson High School Patriots, and Linganore High School Lancers left the Knights eliminated from the playoff race.

Oakdale has had a reversal of the Knight’s fortunes happen to them.

After the first three seasons in which the school all offered football seeing the Bears end up missing out on the playoffs, Oakdale (7-2) has ran over pretty much everyone this year, with a 50-20 win over the Tuscarora High School Titans helping them clinch a playoff spot in the 2014 Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (M.P.S.S.A.A.) 2A State Football Championship.

Although, the game might appear meaningless as one team knows their season will end and another knows their season has to continue, there are multiple reasons why both teams have a vested interest in this game.

For Oakdale, with a win tonight they would lock the #1 seed in the 2A West region of the 2014 M.P.S.S.A.A 2A State Football Championship which would give them home field advantage up possibly through the state semifinal.

For Middletown, they will try to avoid setting another dubious record and giving their football-crazy fans a little joy, in what has been in an unusually tough season in the Middletown Valley. Middletown has not had a losing season since 1976, just the program’s second year in existence.

That year and the year before, 1975, the Knights would end the regular season with records of 4-6 something that with a loss tonight, the Knights could duplicate.

For both teams, it is a win against a team that most people from both schools now consider a rival, with Middletown students and parents ranking the Oakdale rivalry over the famed Walkersville rivalry and Oakdale parents and students ranking this rivalry as their only rival considering Oakdale started out as a new school with no real rival just a little more than 4 years ago.

The Middletown team would echo this same sentiment when asked about it before today’s game.

“Today’s mentality is to finish,” said Middletown junior Marquis Lauer who in his first full season on Varsity has amassed 789 yards averaging 8.9 yards a carry. “We got to play hard, do our jobs, and play together.”

The stress that comes with being part of a football team in Middletown has taken its toll on the team according to Lauer, with the Knights having been under stress to extend the 36 game win streak they carried into this season, to make playoffs, and to reach up to the extremely high bar which the community has set for them.

When asked about the Knights thinking about trying to avoid setting the dubious record mentioned earlier, Lauer deadpanned that it would be unnatural if it wasn’t.

“Yes, it is on our mind but we have to play this game 100 percent,” said Lauer, a junior halfback. “It is our last game and it’s many of the senior’s last games of their careers. We got to just play Middletown football.”

Middletown’s offense has been one of the bright spots for the team as even with a back-up quarterback in for 8 of the 9 games this year Middletown has still put up numbers offensively that would be considered above average.

Middletown’s rushing offense has been prolific is always with the Knights averaging, 6.7 yards per attempt and gaining a whopping total of 2973 yards this season, more than the pace of the 2013 Knights team that won a state championship after Week 10.

Unfortunately, the defense has not been a spitting image of last year’s team as while last year’s defense gave up only 69 points in 10 weeks, the 2014 Middletown Knights have more than tripled that rate, giving up 225 after only 9 weeks.

Even though, Middletown has found themselves out of the playoff chase and is facing those dubious records the Knights still have plenty of motivation for tonight’s game.

When asked what he would say to people who consider tonight’s game meaningless, Lauer had only one thing to say.

“(Tonight) shows who the best 2A school in Frederick County is.”

That might just be the only way for Middletown to view this season as a success.