Football Kings of Olney – Quince Orchard
It was football crazy in Olney on Friday night. Route 108 was filled with cross-town fans riding between Georgia and New Hampshire Ave and all short cuts in between. Fan destinations were Sherwood and Good Counsel High Schools. In the end the game outcomes were split for the hometown teams. Sherwood lost to Quince Orchard 28 to 12; Counsel gets by Gillman in OT 20-19. In a test of using my Mythical Match-Up comparisons of these three teams who are all in the Challenge, QO comes out as the Football Challenge Kings of Olney beating both Sherwood and Good Counsel – but more on that later.
Under the Lights – It’s Friday Night
I covered the Sherwood-QO game. Always a tense game in Olney since QO has never won at Sherwood during Head Coach Dave Mencarini’s 9-year tenure at the Gaithersburg school. Sherwood for their part gave the Cougars a good fight for 3 quarters finally succumbing to QO’s stout defense and a couple of key 4th quarter plays. The first was D’Andre Johnson’s 46-yard TD run to make the score 21 to 12. The second key play was a strip-recovered fumble by QO defensive back Kyle Gregory in the Warriors end of the field. Shortly thereafter QO pushes across for the final score making it 28 to 12.
QO’s Kyle Gregory recovers Sherwood’s 4th Quarter fumble
During my interviews after the game with head coaches, Mike Bonavia for the Warriors and Mencarini for the Cougars, both mentioned that physical preparation in the pre-season training was not a factor for the game’s outcome. Players on both teams were seen cramping up during the 3rd and 4th quarters. Bonavia pointed to his sideline stating that it was a team effort and on this evening they fell short.
Mencarini was asked about how he felt finally winning at Sherwood (on their spectacular Bermuda grass field). He smiled and said, “I did not even bring that up (losing at Sherwood) to the team all week, it was just good to come here and win – that’s a great Sherwood team”.
Sherwood’s Larsen protected by offensive lineman.
End of game time at Sherwood, exiting parking lot traffic and an empty stomach prevented me from catching the end of the Good Counsel game – too bad, I will just have to wait for another day.
So now back to the Mythical Match-Up Challenge, this high school fantasy football match-up co-sponsored by MCM starts with this coming weeks games.
I used the Mythical Match-Up stats formula for QO, Sherwood and OLGC as outlined on my website www.PhotoLoaf.com and compared all in a “pre-season-what-if” round robin match up of three teams playing under the same conditions (hot weather, at night, under the lights, in Olney) and QO beat both OLGC and Sherwood, OLGC lost to QO but beat Sherwood and Sherwood will have to wait until the second week of “official” Match-Up season to puff out their chests. In mythical points QO got 28, OLGC got 20 and Sherwood got 9. Those “what-if” results would have meant QO could have 2 wins; OLGC would be 1-1 and Sherwood 0-2.
So, on this pre-season evening of Mythical Match-Up Quince Orchard is declared the Football Kings of Friday Night Light’s football in Olney. Here are the starting schedules for the first Match-Up Challenge Week 1 – for both leagues – Metro Mythical and MoCo Mythical
Metro – Mythical League
Wise versus Quince Orchard
Old Mill versus Friendship Collegiate*
Westfield versus Stone Bridge
Good Counsel gets a BYE week
MoCo Mythical League
Quince Orchard versus Bullis
Seneca Valley versus Good Counsel
Winston Churchill versus Northwest
Sherwood gets a BYE week
*NOTE – at this time Friendship Collegiate’s (FC) official game against Eastern Central from the Eastern Shore has been cancelled due to MPSSAA rules – so unless Friendship finds a team to play before Friday – their replacement game stats total will be the NULL game from October 5th. If Friendship played this game they would have been ruled ineligible to compete in the DC City playoffs. See rules at www.photoloaf.com
I may have to adjust that NULL game rule to have one early season and one late game NULL date to adjust for early season cancellations like the one FC threw us above.
PS: to me – that’s the problem with Private & Charter school teams that pad their schedules – with new up & coming or out-of-state opponents. That’s not to say that recently formed MoCo teams like Clarksburg and Blake did not have their growing pains too.
Till next week.
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