BAR HARBOR, Maine — As the 2016 football season began at Mount Desert Island High School, one member of the coaching staff came up with an idea to boost enthusiasm for the program and perhaps attract a few more players.
The notion was to form a kickoff team from the general student body following the model of Texas A&M University’s “12th Man Kickoff Team” first instituted by former Aggies’ coach Jackie Sherrill in 1983.
There was little if any response to that preseason push, but since then, the MDI players and coaches have worked up an even better advertisement for their program — the school’s first regional title in the sport and a matchup against Wells for the Class C state championship.
Game time is 2:06 p.m. Saturday at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland.
“We began the year with about 30 kids, and the roster is loaded with juniors and seniors,” said 14th-year MDI head coach Mark Shields. “We don’t have many sophomores, we have a few, and they are good football players, and then we only have two freshmen, so there’s a couple of years we’re really concerned about.
“We’re hoping this success we’ve had will encourage some of those kids who are on the periphery and have thought about playing football to come out and play,” he said.
MDI has been fortunate not to have a high volume of major injuries this fall — 26 players were in pads for the Trojans’ 12-7 victory over two-time defending state champion Winslow in the Class C North final last Friday night.
But Ezra Johnson, the team’s fastest player, suffered a season-ending knee injury during MDI’s season opener, and junior fullback-linebacker Croix Albee, one of the team’s two-way mainstays, went down in Week 7 with a torn ACL.
While the Trojans don’t have a lot of depth, they did find a capable offensive replacement for Albee in senior Graham Good, who led the team in rushing two of the last three weeks and contributed 59 yards and a touchdown to a balanced attack last weekend as MDI avenged a 40-20 loss at Winslow on Sept. 17.
“Graham’s played tight end his whole career, from youth football all the way up through,” said Shields. “He’s a strong, athletic, tough kid, and he’s done really well for us at fullback. With him out at end, we don’t throw the ball a lot, so he was hardly ever touching it. Now he’s touching it every third play or so.”
Good has joined halfbacks Colby Lee and Chris Farnsworth behind quarterback Andrew Phelps in MDI’s T formation, a ball-control offense Shields installed in 2008 that serves two purposes for the 9-1 Trojans — generate enough points to win and take huge chunks of time off the clock while keeping the ball away from the opposition.
That proved pivotal in the Class C North final, when a Winslow team that had averaged 48.2 points per game scored on its first possession but not only never scored again, the Black Raiders rarely had the ball.
“I’ve had years where you’re kind of hiding a kid back there and you might do OK, but teams eventually figure that out,” said Shields. “This year we have three quality kids back there, and then our quarterback, he can run, too, so you’ve got four guys to deal with.”
MDI’s ground game will be tested against a Wells defense that yielded just 29 rushing yards on 22 carries in its 27-14 victory over previously undefeated Cape Elizabeth in the Class C South final. That win avenged the Warriors’ lone loss, a 13-7 decision on Oct. 21.
“They’re tough,” said Shields. “They’ve been running a 4-4 defense, and they’re just good. They have two strong middle linebackers, and they’re all strong, tough kids who flow very well to the football defensively.”
Coach Tim Roche’s Wells club (10-1) also prefers a ground-oriented offense, in its case the Wing-T formation. Senior quarterback Owen Berry returned from a shoulder injury that sidelined him for two weeks to pass for 125 yards and a touchdown and rush for a second score in the rematch against Cape Elizabeth, while senior running back Evan Whitten rushed for 117 yards and a touchdown.
“We want to run the football, and they want to run the football,” said Shields. “My joke to the staff the other day was this could be the fastest state championship game in the history of Maine football.”
Wells, which won its most recent state title — Class B — in 2011 and lost its 2014 and 2015 Class C regional finals by a combined eight points, was the preseason favorite in C South this fall based in large part on the experiences of its 18-player senior class.
“They’re the real deal,” said Shields, who attended the Class C South final along with assistant coach Mark Arnold.
While Wells may be the favorite, MDI has a quiet confidence fueled by a series of close late-season victories that began with a 20-19 win over previously unbeaten Madison-Carrabec in Week 6 of the regular season.
“At the beginning of every year our goal is to get into the playoffs,” said Shields, whose team will take a seven-game winning streak into the state game. “But once we beat Madison, for us, the goal became to try to bring home a regional title to this community.
“We dedicated the rest of this season to our community, and it’s been awesome,” he added. “The community has rallied around us and is obviously real proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, and we’re hoping we have a good crowd when we go down there Saturday.”
