By Ralph Hitchens
Proven beyond a shadow of a doubt last Friday night: the best-drilled squad on the gridiron was the Poolesville Poms. Second-best were the Wolverines of Watkins Mill High School. The poor Poolesville Falcons just barely made the short list. Chalk it up to playing in August, which given our recent weather may not have been a great idea. C’mon, it’s still a couple of months away from the end of baseball season — the Armchair QB misses the good old days when “to everything there is a season.” (At least it was encouraging that MCPS required some official’s time-outs for water breaks during the game.)
Hand it to the Wolverines, though — they brought their A-game. Credit where credit is due, the troika of QB Patrick Schlosser and running backs Prodige Kitwata and Quinton Littlejohn proved way too much for the Falcons to handle. Unaccountably, Watkins Mill has yet to submit any individual stats to the Post all-met website so I have no numbers for these three gents, but impressive they surely were. Schlosser was also one of the best local high school placekickers Armchair has seen lately, lofting six PATs with ease. He also (with his coach’s blessing, no doubt) proved himself a very good sport. When Falcon defenders, in desperation, twice committed personal fouls in vain attempts to prevent the Wolverines from scoring and 15-yard penalties were assessed on the ensuing kickoff, Schlosser boomed his kicks well beyond the end zone, allowing the Falcons to start from the 20. He didn’t have to do that and could easily have tapped lightly to pin us deep, but it was gracious instead to give the outmatched home team a fighting chance.
The Falcons failed in nearly every department. The Poolesville defense missed far too many tackles, arms flailing helplessly as white jerseys skittered past them. They simply could not contain the Wolverine running backs and receivers once they got outside. Coach Will Gant, as we’ve observed on several occasions, made his bones as a defensive coordinator under the best Poolesville coach in recent memory, but he clearly has some work to do. On offense, all too often the Falcons were utterly predictable. On nearly every series, you could bet money that on first down it would be poor Nickolay Henze, in his fourth year as a starting workhorse, trying to hammer his way inside and getting at most a couple of hard yards. He gained only 26 yards on 12 carries, but showed his stuff with two pass receptions for 20 yards. The Armchair Quarterback has admired this gritty, undersized running back since his freshman year, and still expects to see him pull off some great performances as the season progresses. The Falcons’ other running back of whom we have great expectations, Charles Lyles, did somewhat better by finding opportunities to cut outside, picking up 28 yards on 8 carries. But the top Falcon rusher was none other than quarterback Kirby Carmack, who ran a successful option and scrambled well out of a collapsing pocket. He picked up 90 yards on a dozen carries, including a touchdown, and completed 4 of 8 passes. We need to see a lot more of this flexible offense. Carmack also proved to be the fastest man on the squad, so far as I could see — the only one able to run down a speedy Wolverine defensive back after giving up his one interception.
Look, it’s early season and way too soon to write off the Falcons, who until the final games of last season haven’t had much to cheer about in recent years. But yeah, keep bringing on the Poms with their own A-game.
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