It was the best tagline in American sports broadcasting history: “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.” That’s how ABC’s Wide World of Sports described the essence of sport.
Friday night in Ft. Mitchell, they knew the agony of victory.
Forget Beechwood’s dominant, we’re-still-the-top-dog-in-Kentucky’s-Class-2A 34-7 win over upstart Lloyd Memorial, the latest challenger to the two-time defending state champion Tigers.
Beechwood forgot about football – and celebrating – after this one. They shook hands and then hustled back to the trainer’s table where if you weren’t in the middle of it, weren’t down on the bench, you didn’t know just why they were so somber. Why the tears?
And then you saw the man at the center of this moment of post-game tribute, almost a time of reverence, really.
“Torn ACL,” Antonio Robinson Jr. said with a nod toward Mitchell Berger, as the do-everything Tiger unsuccessfully fought back his own tears. Kentucky’s leading scorer at 21.1 points a game, and a leading candidate to give Beechwood its second Mr. Football in three years, went down in a heap after a hit at the sideline ending a big run on Beechwood’s first series in the second half.
At first, it looked like a blow across the face as Berger went down awkwardly. But that wasn’t it. It was much worse for the all-stater in two sports who has already committed to Eastern Kentucky for baseball.
“There aren’t any things that’ll fix it other than us,” Coach Noel Rash told his Tigers as they gathered around their injured teammate behind their bench. “He’ll be a part of everything we do,” gesturing toward Berger. “Don’t let this get away from us.”
“We don’t know 100 percent,” Rash said, “we’ll still need to get a picture.” But with an orthopedic physician on the bench, there seemed to be no doubt. This will take months – and surgery – almost surely.
“It’s a huge blow,” Rash said, “no doubt about that. He’s an amazing guy, and not just on the field.”
Plenty amazing. After the first quarter in this one, you caught yourself writing the score in your notebook: “Berger 14, Lloyd 0,” you wrote. And that wasn’t being snarky, just stating the reality. You meant to write “Beechwood 14, Lloyd 0.” It just came out that way.
Because that’s the way it was. All Mitchell Berger did that first quarter when it was clear Lloyd planned to challenge a Tiger program that had had its number for decades. But the Juggernauts had no answer for No. 30 in the red.
Here’s how that went: Berger carried the ball six of the first eight plays for Beechwood, for 44 yards and a 13-yard TD on a beautiful counter that saw the Juggs get just a fingernail on his ankle as he sped by. Then he kicked the extra point. Then he kicked off into the end zone.
Then after a Carson Craycraft diving interception on a tipped ball at the 45, Berger did it again, only much quicker this time. Just two plays. Nine yards on the first, 36 into the end zone for TD No. 2 on the second. Then a PAT and another kickoff, this one to the 2.
So of course, your notebook said: “Berger 14, Lloyd 0.” By the time he left the game, Mitchell had picked up an unofficial 165 yards on 19 carries and caught two passes for 42 more. And kicked off. And knocked through two PATs after his two TDs. If only Beechwood had punted, he’d have done that, too, as the state’s most formidable punt-on-the-run dual threat.
“We’ve got a lot of dudes,” Rash said as one after another Tiger stepped in to extend a 14-7 halftime lead in a 20-0 second-half shutout. “But Mitchell’s special. So many of the things we do is structured around him.”
“We did show a little resilience in the second half,” Rash said of the 7-1 Tigers (2-0 in the district) as Robinson Jr. scored twice on receptions – one from the 3 when he was just too quick to the flag on a dart from strong-armed sophomore Clay Hayden, back from a slight crack in a bone near his knee.
And then on a 24-yard ball thrown up for grabs that first looked like it was Lloyd DB Tyler Copeland with the interception before ARJ barely won a tug-of-war on the ground to earn dual possession and his second TD.
No wonder the Wake Forest secondary coach, on his way out of Edgar McNabb Field, was smiling at the thought of Robinson’s arrival at the North Carolina school after his January graduation.
Alex Courtney and Landon Aylor took over Berger’s offensive duties with Courtney scoring from 41 yards out on a short Hayden pass. “He can run,” Rash said. “We were able to run the ball effectively and that’s a huge plus for us.”
Another plus in this one was the ability to neutralize Lloyd’s Kaden Zulager (45 yards on 15 carries) to some extent. That put much of the burden for Lloyd’s dominant ground game on elusive sophomore quarterback Isaiah Sebastian, who carried it 17 times for 72 yards with a TD pass from 23 yards out to Copeland when the Beechwood defense thought he was going to run the ball.
“We played hard, we played the entire game,” Lloyd Coach Kyle Niederman said as his Juggs dropped to 5-3 (1-1 in the district). “We played the game the right way, it just didn’t go our way. But we’re not going to let one game define us.”
And yeah, that “right way” line might have been a reference to the multiple unsportsmanlike conduct penalties for a Beechwood team that played with an edge on in this one and took no prisoners.
Although maybe history should have been our guide in this one. Former Lloyd player Rash has now faced his alma mater 11 times with his Beechwood team. His record? How about 11-0 with an average score of 37.7 to 6.2 in the first 10 with five shutouts. So as close as this one was for the first half, it pretty much fell in line with the rest of the series, even with a much better Lloyd team this time around.
“You’ve got to give Lloyd credit,” Rash said for some of the plays that made him frown. But will he be invited when the Lloyd football alums get together in the future?
“Maybe not,” he said with a grin. “I don’t know. We’re just trying to win football games.”
And with the loss of Mitchell Berger, that just became a whole lot harder in a whole lot of ways.
SCOREBOARD
BEECHWOOD 14 0 7 13 34
LLOYD 0 7 0 0 7
BEECHWOOD: Berger 9 run (Berger kick)
BEECHWOOD: Berger 36 run (Berger kick)
LLOYD: Copeland 23 pass from Sebastian) (Westwood kick)
BEECHWOOD: Robinson Jr 3 pass from Hayden (Cardosi kick)
BEECHWOOD: Courtney 41 pass from Hayden (kick failed)
BEECHWOOD: Robinson Jr. 23 pass from Hayden (Cardosi kick)
