Allegany Radio Corporation Sports Column by Mike Burke

MIKE BURKE Allegany Radio Sports

The season ends, but it’s never really over

The final football game has been played for the 2019 season, meaning it is now the winter sports season — basketball, wrestling — for area athletes; and it won’t be long until March comes and goes to bring the spring (that’s a trick; winter never ends), with summer then to follow, bringing with it the 7-on-7 circuit and then, here we go again, summer football practice.
So does football ever really end around here?
Yes, and no, actually. Yes, each season eventually comes to a halt for another year, but save for a few weeks or a month of down time and rest (physically, emotionally and mentally) at season’s end, the preparation for the coming season never really stops for players, coaches and support staffs.
That’s just the nature of football when done correctly — always preparing for the next play, always preparing for the next game, always preparing for the next season, because growth can only be measured by the previous action taken.
The Fort Hill Sentinels, who once more played the final game of the high school football season amongst area teams, certainly experienced their share of growth, given the team was the defending undefeated Maryland 1A state champion entering 2019. But, of course, that is a mistaken belief we carry amongst ourselves entering most high school football seasons. It is, in fact, a fallacy, for this year’s Fort Hill Sentinels were anything but the defending Maryland 1A state champion.
Yes, in title, of course, Fort Hill High School had the defending state champion football program, but this year’s Fort Hill team was no more the defending anything because so many of their players were seeing action as the core of the team for the very first time.
The Sentinels returned zero starters from the previous team’s defense, one of the best and most smothering defenses the school had fielded in quite some time. Offensively, things were not much different as three interior linemen returned as starters, with the only other returning starter being the previous year’s place-kicker, who was given the role of starting quarterback to carry out on top of that.
It was a young team, which, as we seemingly choose to keep forgetting, is the nature of high school, as the object of the exercise is to graduate and move on to the next stage of life. But we tend to forget that in our enthusiasm for the sport, and, of course, in our enthusiasm for winning and in having won so many times before.
No team in the state of Maryland — any class — has won as much as Fort Hill has won in this decade. In fact, not many programs in the country have won as much as Fort Hill has won all-time (700 wins, 181 losses, 17 ties, .789 winning percentage).
The Sentinels’ 41-0 loss to Catoctin in the state semifinals means this Saturday when the Cougars meet Dunbar in Annapolis, it will mark the first 1A state championship game since 2012 without Fort Hill playing in it, the Sentinels having made a state-record six straight appearances in the final and winning five of them.
Yes, Catoctin clearly outplayed the Sentinels and were the worthy team to advance to this year’s final. And, yes, while it was a surprise to many of us that the Sentinels did not score in the semifinal, it should not have been the stuff of shock trauma that Fort Hill lost the game. After all, the fewer teams that are left standing out of 32, the larger the odds that any one of them will lose.
Which is what makes what Fort Hill is still in the process of doing all the more remarkable.
That’s right — still in the process of doing, for the only thing the semifinal loss to Catoctin concluded for Fort Hill was an outstanding 11-2 season. And given the make-up of the 2019 Sentinels, and given what we have come to know as the way of life for Fort Hill football in the way of preparation for what is always the next step, a safe bet can be made that this group of Sentinels is only getting started.

Mike Burke writes about sports for Allegany Radio and Pikewood Digital.

Mike Burke [email protected] @MikeBurkeMDT Mike Burke writes about sports for Allegany Radio and Pikewood Digital. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s County Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984. He was the sports editor of the Times-News for nearly 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter @MikeBurkeMDT