By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
And the band played on. No, not that band.
But things had gone titanically wrong for these kids from towns like Inez and Warfield, Beauty, Lovely and Pilgrim – all in Martin County — as their Cardinals’ football team was down, 38-0, minutes before halftime in Friday night’s third round of the Class 2A playoffs against Beechwood’s flying Tigers.
With no passing attack, Martin County had absolutely no shot to win this one. All that lay ahead of them was another four-hour-plus bus trip through the cold, windy, drizzly, snowy weather back to their coal country home flanked by Pike and Floyd counties, West Virginia and the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River.
And still they played on, as did their classmates, facing a Beechwood team with superior weapons everywhere you looked. A Beechwood team heading for its 11th straight regional championship.
Only this Beechwood team is different. So much speed. More speed than a team from Ft. Mitchell has ever been able to line up at one time.
Fast enough to score two touchdowns on its first three offensive plays, three on its first four plays and four on its first eight snaps. That’s right: It was 29-0 with 3:16 left in the first quarter.
All senior Beechwood quarterback Clay Hayden had to do was get the ball to one of his guys, like Tyler Fryman, the baseball prodigy coming back this past week from a broken clavicle, who scored the first two times he touched the ball.
The first one came from 50 yards out on the game’s first offensive play with 21 seconds gone. The second came on the third play exactly 3:40 later on a 21-yard screen pass where Fryman came inside, bumped into a couple of defenders and headed the other way, beating everybody to the end zone.
“I just run,” Fryman said when asked to analyze how exactly that happened. Maybe Martin County was watching for the Tigers’ other two speed receivers – James Cusick and Luke Erdman who had the bigger stats having played all season.
And we haven’t even mentioned tailback Chase Flaherty, who hopped and stopped, jumped and started for a pair of first-half touchdowns in his nine carries for 120 yards before intermission and then a final TD in the third from 22 yards out to make it 44-0
And Flaherty isn’t even in the match race with the three receivers. “All our receiving corps is fast,” Fryman said, not picking a winner. “I don’t think anybody can defend all of us.”
After Flaherty bounced outside, making three defenders miss him while beating the rest of the Cardinals down the sideline, for a 56-yard TD to make it 21-0, Erdman got his chance.
It was a simple six-yard out pattern with Erdman, state champion in both the 100- and 200-meters, beating his man easily for a 29-0 lead a mere 8:44 since kickoff. A champ in the 400-relay with Cusick – and sophomore Nathan Pabst, who returned a punt for 38 yards and scrambled with a loose snap for a two-point PAT Friday – both were on that title team while Fryman played baseball.
So Erdman is the fastest, right? “Al three of them are over 20 miles per hour,” says Beechwood Coach Jay Volker. “And they all run completely differently. It’s fun watching them.”
But then Volker doesn’t have to coach against them. “You never know who it’s going to be . . . It’s nice to have all those weapons.”
The veteran Hayden took full advantage throwing for 85 yards and three TDs on just four completions before halftime.
With a running clock and backups in the game, it didn’t much matter what happened on the field after intermission. It’s become something of a pattern the last seven games for the Tigers with wins by 61-0, 69-0, 42-0, 61-0 again, 38-7, 66-0 and 56-28. That’s an average score of 56.1 to 5.
“It’s what we’re doing after the game,” Volker says of the Saturday film and weight work they’ve been doing to replace not getting challenged in games. “We’re really pushing them on that,” Volker says, “we need to be better, we need to be locked in.”
And while the offense gets much of the pub, don’t forget the defenders led by 6-foot-5, 235-pound senior edge rusher Mattox Kelly. “I was blitzing every down,” Kelly said, with his teammates making sure he couldn’t be double-teamed. “Clog the hole, stop the run,” was the game plan.
How did that work? In 26 first-half plays, Martin County gained a total of 30 yards, and didn’t complete a pass and for the game. The only Cardinal pass that was caught was by Beechwood’s Erdman.
Then there’s this: Junior kicker Colson Lair, with the wind at his back, kicked his first four kickoffs into or through the end zone. “A huge advantage for us,” Volker says when opponents know they’ll have to drive the entire 80 yards if they hope to score.
One other edge for Beechwood: In next week’s Class 2A semifinals, the Tigers get to play at home again after Lexington Christian clobbered Mayfield, 47-7, at Mayfield Friday, eliminating what would have been a five-hour trip to Western Kentucky for Beechwood as it had to do last season before losing there.
That Lexington Christian would be in Ft. Mitchell and the Tigers at home was the word spreading along the Tiger sideline during the game, Hayden said, with teammates keeping the guys in the game informed that they’d be staying home. Winner heads to UK’s Kroger Field for the state championship game, Friday, Dec. 6, at 4 p.m., against the winner of the Owensboro Catholic-Somerset game.
SCORING SUMMARY
MARTIN COUNTY (9-4) 0 0 0 7–7
BEECHWOOD (12-1) 31 7 6 0—44
Beechwood: Fryman 50 pass from Hayden (PAT) 2-point run by Pabst
Beechwood: Fryman 21 pass from Hayden (PAT) Lair kick good
Beechwood: Flaherty 56 run (PAT) Lair kick good
Beechwood: Erdman 6 pass from Hayden (PAT) Lair kick good
Beechwood: Safety (snap out of the end zone)
Beechwood: Flaherty 3 run (PAT) Lair kick good
Beechwood: Flaherty 22 run (PAT) Kick failed
Martin County: Maynard 5 run (PAT) Horn kick good