MIDDLETOWN — It was, in gang parlance, a turf war. One in which the Middletown Mustangs and the quagmire that was the Middletown field ganged up to annihilate Harker Academy of San Jose, 62-0 in the first round of the North Coast Division Division IV football playoffs.
Doubtlessly, the terra firma, which was anything but firm, was a factor in the devastation, Middletown”s 10th straight win. But then again the Mustangs” spectacularly sharp play was a whole lot more of a factor.
The visiting Eagles were befuddled and bemuddled in a game in which the Mustangs scored five touchdowns on their first 14 offensive plays to hold a 34-0 command at the end of the first quarter. A game in which Harker, which played most of its 7-4 regular-season games on artificial turf, had to venture out onto the real stuff.
“Seven games on artificial turf and then coming out here?” Mustang coach Bill Foltmer mused. “Advantage Middletown!”
The Mustangs” point total, to which six players contributed TDs, equaled their highest total-point output and worst rout of the season (they also beat Upper Lake 62-0). It also extended Middletown”s string of scoreless quarters to 16 straight. Worse, Middletown held the Eagles to 60 yards.
From the outset, there was nothing physically imposing about the Eagles. They were a nondescript team on which linemen were built about the same as the backs and wide receivers. A kind of one-size-fits-all team.
Harker coach Karriem Stinson acknowledged that the turf, which resembled a freshly plowed field, was more than his team, which subsisted on a sort of run-and-shoot offense, could handle.
“The field conditions were really bad, but I”m not a coach who”s going go blame it on field conditions,” he said. “We couldn”t roll out. We”re a passing team and we really couldn”t pass, but I”m not going to ever blame a field for what happened out there. I want to apologize to everybody on this side of town that we didn”t show up tonight. I respect Middletown. They”re a great team. I wish them nothing but the best.”
He spoke factually. No one knew much about Harker, which the Mustangs met for the first time. And after the earth and the Middletown defense swallowed the Eagles up they still didn”t. The game started with no clue of what was to follow with the Eagles taking the opening kickoff and moving 12 yards on their first two offensive plays. Then they fumbled, Chris Oatman recovered for Middletown and two plays later Jake Davis, playing with a large cast on his hand to protect a broken pinky, scored his 20th rushing touchdown of the season from the Harker 11-yard line only 63 seconds into the game.
Davis scored again from the 15 on a four-play 63-yard drive with 7:21 left in the quarter and the rout was on. Kyle Harmyk completed his first pass of the night ? a 37-yard strike to Danny Beckwith ? one play after an Eagle punt to make it 20-0 and followed that with two more TD strikes of 9 and 30 yards to Dylan Galusha before the quarter ended. The three TD passes elevated Harmyk”s total for the year to 21.
What happened after that hardly bears chronicling. Suffice it to say that Middletown”s second unit continued the rout to make it 48-0 at the half and that by game”s end, Kyle Brown, just up from the JVs, was in at quarterback.
“Yeah, I think a muddy field had a lot to do with it,” said lineman Dylan Finley, “but we were going to come out and kick ass anyway.”
It was a sad spectacle for the Eagles.
“They were slipping and sliding. You could tell even with their linemen when they”d come up,” said Jake Davis. “I think we had them at a disadvantage because we were more used to it. We ran right through the quagmire. We wouldn”t even know about it.”
Who will visit Middletown for round two of the playoffs will be determined tonight when Cloverdale hosts Valley Christian at 7 p.m. What will that team make of the Mustangs when it studies films of the complete and utter dismantling of Harker?
“I think for a game like this a good coach is going to look at the first half; I wouldn”t even look at the second half,” said Foltmer. “You look at what a team opens up with and whatever. When you have another game where things are closer you”re looking at plays.”
Whoever plays the Mustangs next will certainly take note of the rain-battered field. As stated, it looked more like a plowed farm field. You couldn”t grow tomatoes on it, or even rutabagas. But, lord, yet another crop of great football players has taken root there.
