MoCo Football at Its Best

Circa 2012 – a local high school gym, Quince Orchard (QO) boys basketball team was about to lose when the chants started “Old Mill, Old Mill”. Opposing school teenagers rubbing salt in a fresh wound. You see QO lost a few months earlier in the 2011 4A State Football Championship in the last seconds to Old Mill at M&T Stadium after holding a commanding lead at halftime.

Circa 2014 – fast forward to this week. Damascus Hornets experienced on Thursday evening that same gut-wrenching feeling to watch a 3A football championship slip through their finger tips in the second half. They lost to Franklin (Reicherstown MD) 35-21.

I dare anyone to taunt Damascus. Or anyone other team for that matter that makes it that far. Throw a FLAG at them – penalize them for that personal foul.

Tonight another MoCo team will travel up I-95 to M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore to face off against another strong team. It will be Northwest versus Old Mill (Millersville MD) for the 4A State Football Championship.

Of course I don’t want to see a repeat of that 2011 experience and neither do two men who were on opposite sidelines that evening back in December 2011. That would be Old Mill Head Coach Chad McCormick and Northwest Head Coach Mike Neubieser, who at that time was on QO’s staff.

Luck. It’s all about luck at this point. Teams who reach this level is because of what they have accomplished. The only differentiator which is totally unpredictable is luck – who has it – and who doesn’t.

Representation of MoCo in state title games – in this case football – is not a result of luck or recruitment or some nebulous imagined advantage or deep pocket. It’s a result of teachers, administrators, coaches and parents who sacrifice to build programs that give their student athletes the best advantages possible on the field of play.

They are all winners.

So happens Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has built many winners and this week we get to see the best examples of football in both Damascus and Northwest.

Game coverage begins at 7:30 at M & T with MyMCMedia and I providing coverage. Follow me on @Photoloaf. Game Day photos to follow at http://sugarloafphoto.smugmug.com/MCMsports

Jag

About Phil Fabrizio

Phil Fabrizio is an event, news and sports photographer in the Washington D.C. Metro area. He lives in North Potomac and has operated Sugarloaf Photography since 1985. He is a member of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce and serves on the board of the Glen Echo Partnership for Arts and Culture, Inc in Glen Echo. Stop by Phil's PhotoLoaf site or follow him on Twitter @Photoloaf. Find Phil's blog on MyMCMedia here.

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