THE GAZETTE
Page B-2
Wednesday, November 20, 2013 b
QO, Northwest football meet again in region final Top-seeded Cougars hope to rebound from earlier loss to Jaguars
two touchdowns and junior Jalen Christian added 126 yards in the loss. Urbana’s Raekwon Gray ran for 268 yards and three touchdowns. The Hawks are scheduled to play top-seeded Linganore 7 p.m. Friday in Frederick. Linganore (10-1) defeated Urbana 20-7 on Nov. 8.
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Quince Orchard High School (101) and Northwest (9-2) cruised by their opponents in the 4A West Region semifinals and advanced to the championship where they will meet Friday for the second consecutive year.
Falcons clipped
FOOTBALL NOTEBOOK BY ERIC GOLDWEIN The top-seeded Cougars beat Clarksburg 42-21 on Friday to advance to the finals. Quince Orchard gave up a touchdown on the opening possession but the team scored the game’s next four touchdowns. Senior tailback Kevin Joppy had four touchdowns and rushed for 218 yards on 35 carries in the win. “It was one of those things where we had to be patient,” Quince Orchard coach Dave Mencarini said after the game. “We had to take what they were giving us and the big plays would come. We are just happy to be playing for the regional championship.” Northwest sophomore quarterback Mark Pierce threw for more than 300 yards and four touchdowns in the Jaguars’ 36-7 semifinal victory over Gaithersburg (10-3). The two-time reigning champion Cougars defeated Northwest 41-7 in last year’s regional finals, but the Jaguars won this year’s regular season game, 35-21. The teams are scheduled to play 7 p.m. Friday in Gaithersburg. “We just got to come out tomorrow and all next week,” Northwest’s Rodney Snider said after the game. “And if we practice really hard, we’re going to beat Quince Orchard.”
NUMBERS
Continued from Page B-1 We have a [small] bunch of guys who can all play.” There certainly is no shortage of talent within Poolesville’s small numbers. The Falcons are far from a one-trick pony. Led by Charles Lyles’ 1,549 rushing yards, there are three players with 300 or more rushing yards and three receivers with 20 or more catches for 200-plus yards. Playmaker Cody Zinsser leads that charge with seven receiving touchdowns. Morningstar has emerged
DUCKLINGS
Continued from Page B-1 Winston Churchill would follow suit, and by the time the state semifinals with Glenelg rolled around, Ronquillo called her team “five-set pros.” Their experience against the ropes proved invaluable in the semis, when the Swarmin’ Hornets battled back to win the final two sets on a match-high 24 kills from Schwartz. “We have higher expecta-
WHITMAN
Continued from Page B-1 cally skilled player, that taking away that one strength didn’t slow her productivity, Herbert said. It just highlighted other aspects of her game; Martin became adept at picking the right
TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Northwest High School quarterback Mark Pierce carries the ball against Gaithersburg on Friday night. The sophomore threw four touchdown passes in his first playoff game.
Paint Branch rolling along
Coming up short, again
Paint Branch’s (10-1) high-powered offense scored six touchdowns in a convincing 42-7 win against Sherwood (7-4), giving the Panthers their first postseason victory since 2009. Senior quarterback Gaston Cooper continued his impressive season, throwing for 330 yards and five touchdowns in the win. His favorite target was Javonn Curry, who had 152 receiving yards and four touchdowns. “I definitely can’t say I was expecting that but we were hoping for it,” Paint Branch coach Michael Nesmith said after the win. “We were a little concerned after beating [Sherwood] soundly two weeks ago that the kids would underestimate them. Once the kids started rolling, we were able to pull away.” Paint Branch is scheduled to play Perry Hall (10-1) 7 p.m. Friday in Burtonsville. The Panthers have not won a state championship since 1975.
Another year, another one-point playoff loss for Damascus. The Swarmin’ Hornets (9-2) lost 35-34 to Urbana (9-2)
in Friday’s 3A West Region semifinals, marking the second straight postseason Damascus lost to the Hawks by one point. Damascus sophomore running back Jake Funk ran for 134 yards and
John Harris III, Jennifer Beekman, Sam Smith and Travis Mewhirter contributed to this article.
FEARLESS FORECASTS The Gazette sports staff picks the winners for this week’s games involving Montgomery football teams. Here are this week’s selections:
Ken Sain
Jennifer Beekman
Nick Cammarota
Dan Feldman
Travis Mewhirter
Kent Zakour
Montgomery County record All games
152-29 300-57
151-30 298-59
150-31 298-59
151-30 298-59
146-35 294-63
142-39 282-75
Northwest at Quince Orchard Perry Hall at Paint Branch DuVal at Suitland Gwynn Park at Patuxent Sparrows Point at Surrattsville
Q. Orchard Paint Branch Suitland Gwynn Park Surrattsville
Q. Orchard Paint Branch Suitland Gwynn Park Sparrows Pt.
Q. Orchard Paint Branch Suitland Gwynn Park Surrattsville
Q. Orchard Perry Hall Suitland Gwynn Park Surrattsville
Q. Orchard Paint Branch Suitland Gwynn Park Surrattsville
Q. Orchard Paint Branch Suitland Gwynn Park Surrattsville
as one of the county’s more dynamic quarterbacks, quick on his feet — and to make up his mind — with the ability to throw the ball down the field when necessary. “You have a quarterback that runs and can throw and it adds almost like a 12th player out there,” coach Will Gant said. “Steven has had several plays where he has created something out of nothing. Something might come across as an incomplete pass in the stats but he made eight or 10 yards by beating a sack and coming up with an incomplete pass. Second-and-10 is a whole lot different than sec-
ond-and-20.” The same aspect that presents Poolesville with the most challenges could also be the Falcons’ biggest strength. The small town that Poolesville High represents lends itself to about as close-knit a community as one can find in Montgomery County. Many players have fathers, grandfathers and cousins that suited up for Poolesville, Gant said — Morningstar said his father was a Poolesville quarterback. The Falcons play for the community, the young aspiring Falcons and that tradition, the younger Morningstar and Gant agreed. But for all the past post-
season success — 12 playoff appearances, five this century — Poolesville has yet to win a state title and has only once reached the championship game. There has always been a comparable small school team, such as Middletown or nine-time state champion Dunbar out of Baltimore, in the way. Those teams represent where Poolesville aims to be within the coming years, Zinsser and Morningstar said. The town of Poolesville has the athletes to get there, Gant said. It all starts in the youth programs, something in which he said he is becoming more and more involved with. A summer
program at the high school fell through the cracks this summer, Gant said, but that is something, along with clinics, that will be reinstated. “For us to get to [Middletown’s] level we need to keep growing from within, growing our youth system,” Gant said. “Middletown, the kids are playing from young ages and they’re running the same system [as the high school team].” That is something Gant said he hopes to implement in the near future. While numbers were down this year, Gant said he hopes the Falcons success will help draw more interest in the
program. The consecutive playoff runs ended a six-year postseason drought and Zinsser said the atmosphere surrounding Falcons football has changed drastically since his freshman season. “When [my senior class] came into high school as freshmen, the team wasn’t doing so well,” Zinsser said. “Then we got our knew coach and he got us playing harder, playing like we really wanted it. He has us more and more playing with a never give up attitude. We didn’t have a lot of players but we just grind it harder.”
tions for ourselves and those second and third games we let those expectations slip so we weren’t going to settle,” Ronquillo said after Damascus topped the Gladiators to clinch a state final berth. “This wasn’t going to be our last stop.” But it was going to be the last time the Swarmin’ Hornets let a team take them the distance. In the locker room before the 7:30 p.m. state final match, Wyatt commanded the attention of her teammates. “’We’re not settling,’” she re-
calledtellingthem.‘”We’renotgoing to settle for five or four. We’re going to take it in three. We’re going to take them down in three.” This type of pregame pumpup speech had been done before, many times actually, but there was something a little different about this one. “We said that when we played Glenelg but this time we pushed ourselves,” Schwartz said. “We knew we had to do it. We knew it was our last game. We had to make it count.” Wyatt would note that this
year’s team wasn’t the most talented she had been a part of in her four seasons. When Autumn Jenkins, now with the University of Delaware, graduated without a state title in 2012, naysayers claimed it was Damascus’ last legitimate chance for a while. “We’ve been told every year when our seniors graduate that, ‘Oh, that was the last year. That was our last chance,’ ” Wyatt said. “We showed them. We came back. It’s great to win as a senior and know that you took your chance.”
As Marella said, no team had been nearly as tight-knit as Damascus was this year. They may not have been as talented as an Autumn Jenkins-led team, but they played with a little something more. “We played with the most heart of any team all four years,” said Nelligan, whose freshman sister, Isabel, finished with three aces in the state semis and finals. “I think that’s what pushed us this far and got us that win.” The mood afterwards was appropriately blissful for the
Damascus players and coaches, but with the season over, Ronquillo was forced to come to terms with the hard truth that Saturday was her final match with her “little ducklings.” “This is where I choke up,” she said. “I haven’t cried yet. They know me as pretty tough. These four are my rocks, they really are. I’m so proud of them. They really mean a lot to me, they really are like my children. I couldn’t ask for better girls.”
moments to move forward even as a center back. Moving to the center of the defense meant more physicality, more putting her body on the line to stop opponents, but Martin, despite her rather small frame, said she embraced that new role — many teams’ only chance to match up to the Vikings’ technical
ability was to push them around. Martin, who said she was almost silent as a freshman and wasn’t vocal as a sophomore, has also become an important vocal leader, Herbert said, a quality imperative to the center back position. “Defense, for me, is all about heart,” Herbert said. “You have to want it and you have to work hard
for it, you have to show me that trait of wanting to be the one to stop the opposition. That’s what separates Emily, I think. She’s so great at reading, anticipating and wanting. She has this great anticipation that you can’t coach. You can tell players to look for things but she reads it herself and jumps to the ball so brilliantly.”
Whitman boasted arguably the longest list of playmakers of any Montgomery County Public Schools team this fall — Rice recruit Aliza Wolfe, third-year leading scorer Anna Gurney, who scored both goals Saturday, Emma Anderson, Kristen Bissell and Severe, whose incredible speed enables her to bounce all
over the field, among others — but that didn’t always translate into high scoring numbers. Defense might not be as flashy but the Vikings’ backline has been the backbone of this year’s team. Whitman gave up one goal in six postseason contests.
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Poolesville (7-4) was overwhelmed by top-seeded Middletown (11-0), falling 45-6 in the 2A West Region semifinals. “They’re sound, there’s no weaknesses, they play hard,” Poolesville coach Will Gant said after the game. “They’re a very good team.” Falcons running back Charles Lyles rushed for 75 yards and scored the Falcons’ only touchdown. Middletown’s Bradley Rinehart and Tim Schumacher ran for two touchdowns apiece. Middletown is scheduled to host second-seeded South Carroll (9-2).
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jbeekman@gazette.net
tmewhirter@gazette.net
jbeekman@gazette.net