Snyder voted Player of the Year
Fort Hill senior led team both offensively, defensively

Feb 23, 2020
Jeff Landes

CUMBERLAND — Fort Hill fullback Carson Snyder finished the Sentinels’ 11-2 season as the team’s leading rusher and scorer with a team-high 26 touchdowns.

Even with all of those individual accomplishments, that’s not what Fort Hill head coach Todd Appel admired the most about him.

“His maturity grew in the four years in the Fort Hill program,” he said. “He became more of a team player, more of a humble player. What his success was built on was by putting the team’s success first.”

Snyder, a senior, gained 1,382 yards on 183 attempts for a 7.6 yards per attempt average. He scored 26 touchdowns — 25 rushing and one on defense for a team-high 158 points including one two-point conversion.

As a defensive lineman, he finished with 113 total tackles and led the team with 48 solo stops and tackles for loss with 10. He forced three fumbles, recovered two, pressured the quarterback 25 times with a sack and blocked a kick.

“We asked him to play on the defensive line,” Appel said, “and he accepted that role with open arms. He led our team in tackles. We had no returning starters (on defense from the 2018 championship team) and he did a tremendous job for us.”

As a result, his overall solid performance throughout the season earned Snyder the Player of the Year award as determined by voting from area coaches.

For seven straight years and nine out of the last 10, a Sentinel has been named the area’s best player. This will be the first time in four years that the top award is not being shared.

In 47 years, 18 Fort Hill players have been chosen 20 times. Allegany is next with 13, followed by Keyser with five, Beall, Bishop Walsh and Moorefield three, and Frankfort, Mountain Ridge, Petersburg, Southern and Westmar all have one.

Four-time Dapper Dan Top Award honoree, Detroit Lions running back Ty Johnson, was the first back-to-back Player of the Year in 2013 and 2014 only to be followed by Fort Hill’s Brayden Brown in 2015 and 2016. The Sentinels’ Mark Manges was the first Player of the Year in 1973.

Snyder will receive his award today during the 72nd Dapper Dan Sports Awards Banquet at the Ali Ghan Shrine Club beginning at 3 p.m.

Last season, Snyder rushed for more than 100 yards in seven of the Sentinels’ 13 games, scored four TDs against Green Street Academy, and he had four games with three TDs and four with two.

In terms of yards, his most productive game came in the Sentinels’ 38-14 Homecoming victory against Allegany where he ran for 180, scored three touchdowns and was voted the Offensive Player of the Game.

“He sees the field real well,” Appel said. “He’ll be remembered for being physical. When he’s in the open field, it seems like he’s looking to hit people. And he did gain a lot of yards after contact.

“It was a pleasure to coach Carson this year,” he said. “He listened well and did his best. He was a good teammate. He made everybody better.”

Out of 19 votes for the four Player of the Year nominees, Snyder received seven, teammate and co-Offensive Player of the Year Breven Stubbs and Keyser’s Caden Biser each received five and Petersburg’s Dawson Tingler got two.