Here we go, folks. For the third straight year, the only Northern Kentucky team standing this final weekend of the KHSAA football playoffs is Beechwood.
And the familiar opponent, a team Beechwood has faced eight times now in the two teams’ playoff history, is none other than Mayfield. Between them, the Class 2A powers have 28 state titles to their credit – 16 for Beechwood, 12 for Mayfield.
But the crazy thing is that until last year, Mayfield had won all seven games these teams had played against one another before Beechwood finally bashed the Cardinals, 38-7, in Fort Mitchell last November.
And here they are again. Here’s the breakdown:
CLASS 2A STATE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
MAYFIELD (14-0) vs. BEECHWOOD (13-1) at University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field, 4 p.m.:
Has any team come back from as horrific an event as the deadly and destructive Mayfield tornado to produce an unbeaten season and end up in the state championship game? It’s a plotline straight from the next Disney movie. But with a final chapter to play out.
And that’s where Beechwood comes in. For the entire playoffs this year, the Tiger family has been rooting like crazy for a Mayfield team and town they had grown close to after the way the communities had come together with the aid sent down from Fort Mitchell in December.
“Everybody was pulling for them,” said Beechwood Principal Justin Kaiser. And now here they are.
“Of course we were,” said Beechwood Coach Noel Rash, a close friend of Mayfield Coach Joe Morris.
And here, also, is Beechwood, trying for a rare three-peat against a Mayfield team full of game-breaking threats that’s had just one close game.
But then there’s last year’s game and it was not close. Talk to Rash about how his Tigers outgained Mayfield 394-168 on the ground a year ago and he replies: “Joe won’t let us do that again.”
And without the injured Mitchell Berger, who was responsible for 189 of those yards, Beechwood will have to depend on the young guns – sophomore quarterback Clay Hayden ((99 of 146 passing in nine games for 1,706 yards and 20 TDs) and his classmate, running back Chase Flaherty (88 carries, 653 yards, 18 TDs).
But the key here could well be the nine-senior Beechwood defense led by 240-pound linebacker Austin Waddell, DB Carson Craycraft (seven INTs) and the game’s top college prospect, corner Antonio Robinson Jr. and headed to Wake Forest in January upon graduation.
Listening to these coaches talk about one another’s teams, it’s like they were looking in a mirror.
“They’re extremely well-coached and play with passion,” Rash says of Mayfield. Ditto says Mayfield’s Morris.
“We’re really young,” Rash says of those top two positions on offense. “We’ll see how they do when the bright lights come on.”
Or how Mayfield will adjust to a team that can – and will — throw the ball downfield, unlike last year when Beechwood didn’t need to throw it and totaled just 45 yards in the air.
If there was any good out of the deadly December tornado that leveled so much of Mayfield, “it might have helped us stay focused,” Morris says of the way this team practices and the way its leaders keep them headed in the right direction.
After noting that they, like Beechwood, are missing their best player – linebacker Jax Rogers, Morris says they have a number of game-breakers.
Isaac Stevenson (36 receptions, eight touchdowns), Brahone Dabney (36 receptions, nine touchdowns), and Jutarious Starks (1,120 yards, 20 touchdowns). Or as Rash calls them after hours of film study, “Numbers 1, 4, and 24.”
Against a team that’s outscored its four playoff opponents by an average 23.5 points a game, “We’re going to have to find the holes,” Rash said.
But there is this layered onto this game. The word in the Northern Kentucky coaching community is that this could be Rash’s final game as a coach after taking his ninth team this year to the state championship game with a record of 7-1 in the first eight.
So what’s the word, Noel? Is this the end?
“I don’t know,” Rash said. “And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.” Wouldn’t tell anyone, he said. “This is about our team . . . It’s got to be about them.
“And yes, I am getting to that age,” Rash continued. “And it’s taken a huge toll on my life, although I’ve been rewarded a thousand times what I put in.”
If there is to be a decision, and an announcement, “it will come in due time,” Noel said. Just not right now. And not right here.
Be sure to get there early for a pregame, on-field ceremony with mayors, school superintendents, principals, and head coaches from both towns offering a proclamation recognizing the work of the Beechwood and Fort Mitchell communities to provide tornado aid to Mayfield.
“That’s great,” Rash said, “because there’s still a need there and will be for a long time.”