FH had the answer before NC could ask the question

by Mike Burke

Was it cold enough for you Friday night? To be honest, I didn’t think it was really that cold at Greenway, but there were times when I felt uncomfortable. A couple of times we had to turn off the heater in the press box because it was putting out so much heat it got kind of oppressive in there. I’m not kidding. I was even tempted to take off my coat a time or two. But, hey, sometimes you have to rough it in this business.

Nothing will compare to how bitterly cold it was the day Fort Hill traveled to Linganore for a 1987 playoff game. Not only was it freezing, but the wind blew so hard the cheerleaders didn’t need tape to hold up their signs on the fences. I’m not making that up either. It’s the most miserable day I’ve ever spent at a sporting event. And the sick part was it was a day game and the sun was shining.

I sat in what Linganore called a press box with the WTBO radio crew, but it was an open area and the wind just kept hitting us in the face. It didn’t matter where you were that day, the wind hit you in the face. Actually it administered full body blows and went right to the bone, no matter how many layers of clothing you had on.

I got frostbite in my right hand that day because I am incapable of — among hundreds of other useful things — writing with a glove on my hand. And to this day, 27 years later, when it gets cold my right hand gets all red and dry, and cracks on the knuckles and between the fingers. It can get pretty disgusting, you should see it. You’re not eating breakfast are you?

If the Fort Hill Sentinels were cold Friday night, they had a funny way of showing it. Maybe it was the all red, but they didn’t look cold to me. Well, Coach Todd Appel did after the game, but that’s another story. The Sentinels looked pretty good in beating North Carroll, 56-20, in the West Region championship game for the second year in a row, but one of the impressive things about these players is they don’t ever seem to notice it.

Don’t misunderstand, they were happy to have the win, but these Sentinels normally tell you collectively what it is they believe they need to improve upon so they can “continue to get better every week.”

That’s not a company line; it’s a mission statement, and you can tell the Fort Hill players take it to heart in the way they carry themselves. There are a lot of instances this time of the year when a team’s collective body language begins to sag a little bit, and that’s understandable because, as a team continues to win, the high school football season becomes an incredibly long season with 16 teams qualifying for the state playoffs.

On top of that, this ain’t the old days, hon (for any Baltimore readers out there). Players don’t take their physicals on August 14 and then show up for the first day of summer practice on August 15 the way they used to. This is a yearround venture, and on any given summer day you drop in at Greenway you can see that the Fort Hill players take it seriously, because their aim is to still be playing on cold November nights such as last Friday.

North Carroll had a good team. The Panthers had good team speed, but nothing like Fort Hill’s; and the Panthers had a good idea about what they wanted to do. Fort Hill just had a better idea.

I have no doubt that the North Carroll passing game was fun to watch through the course of the season. But on Friday the Panthers, led by quarterback Jack Flowers and wide receiver Zach Sherman (who scored all 37 of North Carroll’s playoff points this year) were no match for the Fort Hill secondary. And what’s been fun to watch this season has been the evolution of the Fort Hill defensive line and linebackers.

That was the central area of concern for Fort Hill entering the season. But the Sentinels coaching staff has, in Appel’s words, “mixed and matched” both groups to the point that they now are as smothering as the secondary is.

Fort Hill was simply a step ahead of everything North Carroll attempted to do, other than Sherman’s kickoff return for touchdown, because the Sentinels are bigger, stronger and faster. The only surprising thing might have been the Panthers never being able to establish any facet of their offense, not even early on the way they did last year in this game. They were stymied from the get-go.

But then that’s hardly a surprise either. The Sentinels were simply better prepared. Just the way they always seem to be.

Which just goes to show you, dripping hot summer days spent applying effort to belief really can make for some comfortable cold November nights.