Josh Volpe, Deontay Twyman and Melvin Harris each threw for over 2,000 yards last season, but Frazier’s completion percentage (68.0) and yards per attempt (11.5) this year surpass what any of those three quarterbacks managed. His 10-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio falls short of only Volpe’s (33-to-1).
Oh, and say what you will about Damascus’s schedule. The Hornets beat their four playoff opponents (record against teams other than Damascus: 40-4) by a composite score of 172-52.
‘‘Each time we’ve been here we’ve been a little bit better,” Damascus coach Dan Makosy said after the state championship game. ‘‘In 2003, we won in a big upset. In 2005, we were undefeated, but this year, we were the most balanced that we’ve ever been.”
If Damascus was that good, Quince Orchard was presumably better, judging by the head-to-head meeting. The Cougars navigated a deeper 4A schedule, and of its four non-division opponents, three made the playoffs and the other was Gaithersburg (6-4).
Though Quince Orchard didn’t have anyone put up the individual numbers of Zedler and Frazier, it had more varied weapons. Thomas Addison finished behind Zedler as the county’s second-leading rusher (1,615 yards), and four other Cougars ran for at least 250 yards.
Quarterback Jaron Morrison, one of those four, also spread his 1,303 passing yards to a bevy of different receivers, four of whom went over 100 yards on the season. The Cougars combined rare size on the lines with speed all over the place.
‘‘Quince Orchard is a great team,” Thomas Johnson senior Corey Hunt said after facing the Cougars in the state semifinals. ‘‘We hadn’t seen that kind of speed all year. It shocked us.”
The dominance of those two programs — exemplified by their combined 10 members of the All-Gazette first team — overshadowed what was also an historic season in the rest of the county.
Nine Montgomery teams made the ’07 playoffs, a Maryland state record. Three reached the state semifinals, with Class 2A Clarksburg (12-1) joining Damascus and Quince Orchard.
Clarksburg was one of the stories of the year, though the Coyotes may have been easy to overlook as one of just four smaller schools (2A or 1A) in the county. They accomplished what they did despite a season-ending, week-one injury to arguably their best all-around player, Derrick Morgan. They did it despite being a relatively young team and a very young program, in its second season of existence. For that, head coach Larry Hurd earned his first Gazette Coach of the Year award.
Sherwood continued its run as one of the county’s top programs. After state-final appearances in 2005 and ’06, the Warriors ran second to only Quince Orchard in the county’s 4A ranks, with their two losses both at the Cougars’ hands.
Kennedy followed a special 2006 with another playoff berth in ’07. Quarterback Melvin Harris and his 2,653 combined rushing and passing yards won the Gazette Player of the Year award for the second straight season. Together, he and head coach Gunnard Twyner gave a once-moribund program something to cheer about again this fall.
It was a season of great parity in the county as a whole, especially among 4A teams. After Quince Orchard and Sherwood, no 4A team finished better than 6-4; three reached that mark, and another three went 5-5.
That led to a wild, six-team battle royale for two available playoff spots over the final weeks of the regular season. When the dust cleared, Magruder and Whitman (both 6-4) made it, with Gaithersburg, Wootton, Northwest and Springbrook missing out.
How little separated those teams? Consider: Whitman beat Northwest, which beat Gaithersburg, which beat Springbrook, which beat Magruder, which beat Wootton ... which, naturally, beat Whitman. Take that, transitive property.
Magruder earned its way in with a win over Gaithersburg in the season’s final week. It was the school’s first playoff berth since 1989; only Blair and Walter Johnson have waited longer.
The 3A teams had a race of their own, with Seneca Valley joining Damascus and Kennedy in the playoffs. At one point, it looked like county programs might claim all four berths in the 3A West Region, but when Frederick County’s Urbana picked up a win by forfeit, Paint Branch (7-3) was left on the outside.
Rockville, on the other hand, reached the 2A playoffs with a 5-4 record; surprising, given the amount of talent that had graduated from the previous season. The team gave Clarksburg all it could handle in the first round before bowing out, which was vindication for the Rams, who were left out of the ’06 playoffs despite a 7-3 season.
In the private-school ranks, Good Counsel could certainly give Quince Orchard and Damascus a run for their money. Juniors Jelani Jenkins and Caleb Porzel emerged as major players at running back and on defense; Jenkins was named Maryland’s Gatorade High School Football Player of the Year.
Along with senior linemen Bryan Murray and Cory Boatman, they led Good Counsel to another stellar season and a regular-season win over DeMatha. But in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference title game, it was déjà vu for the Falcons: their 12-7 loss in the rematch against DeMatha was their fourth straight WCAC final loss to the Stags, all by one score or less.
That one might have been easy to predict. Little else was about Montgomery County football in 2007.
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