Miners dominate in the trenches to end Fort Hill's streak at 18

Oct. 8, 2022
by Alex Rychwalski

FROSTBURG, Md. — It isn’t often that a team can force Fort Hill away from what it does best, but that’s exactly what Mountain Ridge did on Friday night.

The Miners’ defensive line stuffed the inside, and their secondary and linebackers cut down the angles on the perimeter to limit a team that rushed for 486 yards against Oakdale a week ago to just 176 yards on 42 carries.

Since yards up the middle were so tough to come by, Fort Hill resorted to running plays out of the shotgun for much of the second and third quarters. However, the Sentinels did so to little success.

With Mountain Ridge going on to win 30-8, it was Fort Hill’s fewest points scored since Catoctin beat the Sentinels, 41-0, in the Class 1A state semifinals on Nov. 29, 2019.

“It was very important because field position-wise, when we made the big stops, our defense would force a punt, then our offense would come on,” said Mountain Ridge quarterback and safety Uma Pua’auli. “I’d like to say the D-line did most of the work tonight, getting back there putting pressure on the quarterback.”

It started up front for the Mountain Ridge defense, led by the interior dominance of Hunter Clise, Jacob Tinsley and Peyton Miller.

Clise finished with a team-high 11 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, a sack and a forced fumble, and Tinsley racked up nine stops, 1.5 tackles for loss and a forced fumble.

Miller ate up blocks during the first three quarters, but he made his presence known late to cement the Miners’ triumph by batting down a pass at the line and sacking Fort Hill quarterback Anthony Burns in the fourth quarter.

As a team, Mountain Ridge racked up 4.5 sacks and 9.5 tackles for loss.

“The D-line, gang tackling, always hustling to the ball,” Clise said of the keys. “Anytime they tried to cut back, someone was always there. Just 11 guys running to the ball, just hard work from everyone on this evening.

“Everyday at practice, we always go hard, 100%. Even on scout team. And I think that contributes to the game. Sefa (Pua’auli) worked really hard with the D-Line, helping them get better.”

“All we did was get inside and hit them as hard as we could,” Tinsley said. “Our line, we got penetration enough to where they really couldn’t do anything inside. Couldn’t run outside and had to bounce it out. Had our safeties coming in and our linebackers flying to the ball.”

Though the inside was clogged up, Fort Hill often does most of its damage on the outside, as explosive running backs Mikey Allen and Tavin Willis both entered the contest averaging more than 13 yards a carry.

However, the work of Mountain Ridge defensive backs Pua’auli, Carson Bradley and Will Patterson prevented the Sentinels’ talented backs from burning them on the perimeter.

Pua’auli finished with five tackles, a fumble recovery and an interception, Bradley had five tackles (three for loss) and a sack, and Patterson made eight stops and forced a fumble.

Fort Hill averages 37 carries for 317 yards a game (8.6 yards per carry), but Mountain Ridge limited the Sentinels to just 4.2 yards a carry on Friday night.

“It’s pee wee football if you can’t set the edge,” Mountain Ridge head coach Ryan Patterson said. “And they make it really hard for you. It sounds easy, stop them, turn them inside. But their speed, you never know. You can’t replicate that in practice.

“We played a little bit soft at the beginning until we adjusted to their speed, then we just pinned our ears back and went to town.”

With nothing working early on, Fort Hill operated almost exclusively out of the shotgun during the middle quarters. With three quarters gone, the Sentinels were still looking for their first points, trailing 14-0.

It didn’t help that Fort Hill turned the ball over three times and was penalized 10 times for 92 yards.

“They had a lot of guys in the box,” Fort Hill head coach Zack Alkire said. “They dared us to throw the ball. We threw the ball okay, but we didn’t block very well up front. In the preview we talked about which line is going to be better, and there was a lot of pressure up front. We just weren’t ready to play tonight.”

Fort Hill returned to the Wing-T on two possessions during the third quarter, and after initial success, both series ended with fumbles recovered by David Miller and Pua’auli.

Facing a multi-score deficit in the fourth quarter, the Sentinels were forced to air it out again.

“We were just trying to find something that worked,” Alkire said. “Unfortunately we didn’t find anything that worked tonight except throwing the ball. That was the only thing that allowed us to move the ball tonight. That’s why there was that switch.”

For all of Fort Hill’s speed, the Sentinels don’t have a traditional downhill fullback to get tough yards in the trenches with Shane Welsh’s nagging injury preventing him from playing both ways.

However, Alkire didn’t think that was the issue offensively on Friday night, as Wertz still rushed for 109 yards on 19 carries.

“I don’t necessarily think it was a fullback problem tonight,” he said. “Tanner ran the ball hard, but we were just getting driven back. They were knocking our guards off. When we don’t get our guards out our outside stuff isn’t going to work.”

It’s a common trope in football to say games are won and lost in the trenches, but that was never more evident than on Friday night.

Teams often knows what’s coming against Fort Hill and its powerful downhill offense, yet they can rarely stop it. Mountain Ridge was up to the challenge, and its reward was its second-ever win over the Sentinels, ending the defending Class 1A state champions’ winning streak at 18.