When East/WOI got off the bus on Greenway Avenue, my first instinct was that Fort Hill was royally screwed. That team passed the eyeball test big time with size and well cut athletes in abundance.
A 5-1 team record, they had only lost three games in three seasons. Their only loss this season was to the No. 3 ranked team in the state.
East/WOI according to MaxPreps was the No. 31 ranked team in the entire state out of 568 schools. The NY State Sportswriters Association had them as the No. 8 team in all of Class A, one of the top two biggest classifications.
Then the game happened.
Jabril Daniels took the opening handoff 72 yards for a touchdown and from there it just got worse for the Eagles. The halftime score was 38-0. The total yards on offense for the first half were: FH 261 yards, East/WOI 13 yards and zero first downs.
This one was difficult to explain. Not sure if there is a direct answer for the massive difference between these two teams. Luckily their co-head coach Steve Flagler has been open to talking with me since we scheduled this game including post game at midfield. This is how it went:
GOOD STUFF - from the East/WOI head coach after the game
Coach Flagler was wide-eyed. Kind of in shell shock. He kept rolling his eyes and going "Whew!" as he tries to sum it up. "Man, that was a complete whipping. There was nothing we could do. Your offensive and defensive lines were just all over us, too strong, too quick. We knew you were not very big up front but I can guarantee there has to be a weight room up in that school somewhere. That was the difference. Way too strong. We don't have anything like this up in New York, not even close. I'm glad our kids got to come down here and experience this. To understand what real football is, what type of atmosphere big time football is. We are just in awe of what you have here. But man, whew, I had no idea we could get beat this bad. We are going to win out the rest of our games because our remaining opponents are on the lighter side. There is nothing like this in New York."
I asked him about the only game they had lost to Christian Brothers Academy out of Syracuse, who is still undefeated and the No. 1 - No. 3 ranked team in the entire state depending on which poll you look at, and inquired as to how Fort Hill might stack up against that team. He quickly said you would beat them. Although they are much better than us up front so they could at least not get blown out like we just did. Coach Flagler just kept repeating how New York has nothing of this quality and based on this day I believe him. My only take (and the same take my good friend Jimmy initiated), New York just isn't about football. They have very few 5-star players and don't put a whole lot of recruits into big time college football for as big as the state is. Only three FBS programs exist here (Syracuse, Buffalo, Army). That seems logical to help explain this lopsided outcome. Coach Flagler kind of stated the same thing in the Times-News by saying New York teams never get this opportunity to play teams from Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland to see really good football.
If FH had those Rochester kids coming up since pee wee I don't think they would lose a game this season. I am not lying when I say that team was large and athletic. But they certainly were not fast like on film. Their NY competition just made them look fast. They were also organized, knew where to line up, didn't have any delay of games, very few penalties. The week leading up to this Saturday the South Cumberland thought process was a hope that the wing-T offense would be foreign to this visitor from almost six hours away. Boy, was it ever. But it was way more than a scheme. As Coach Flagler also pointed out, the weight room and the discipline difference was too much. He kept calling it a "well oiled machine". During that post game conversation at midfield after everyone cleared the turf, Coach Alkire came over to join in the conversation. He then found himself answering weight room and work out questions from both the Eagles co-head coaches in detail. I joked afterwards that it would not be surprising to see East/WOI run a wing-T offense next season with a brand new weight room. LOL.
It was easy to be comfortable around their team and coaches. Good people. When Coach Flagler inquired by stating "I bet you have an 8th grade team that runs this same system?", I replied "no, it starts in the 2nd grade" and he again grinned and stated "No wonder." That isn't how football works in Rochester it seems, making their tasks much more difficult to face a "well-oiled machine" so to speak.
THE 52-0 EQUATION
East/WOI was way better than the Capitol Christian type teams that have come here the past decade only to get beat by the same type of score. This team was way more organized and way more talented with upwards of 40 players available. But they do not understand the nuances that make football teams really good. How to move, how to fire off the ball, how to shed a block, assignments, gap responsibility, hitting, leverage and discipline. The things learned through years of football repetition in a system built for repetition and instruction on how to do so. And most important...running the football in a physical running scheme. It's all spread these days and apparently even more so in New York. So much so that FH coaches had a difficult time finding game film of the East/WOI defense playing teams that ran the ball. They had to dig back two seasons and still could not find any film against a running team. They had no idea what defense East/WOI would employ before kickoff. Not sure if the opposing coaches were sure which defense to employ on a week's notice. It showed. As for the Fort Hill defense...they were too strong and too quick for East/WOI. And that's all she wrote.
