LINGANORE- The soaked black jerseys with rugged football pads underneath them lied on the slippery tile floor outside of the locker room halls of Linganore High School. Rained-on equipment bags were being packed away in storage closets and leftover lukewarm postgame meals wrapped in tin foil were being distributed. One by one, each Linganore player took one tin foil meal. They chattered amongst each other about their most recent feat – underneath the banner that was taped above the exiting doors that read “BE RELENTLESS.”
As the locker room door swung open, Linganore (5-0) defensive lineman Tyler Fleagle swiped a grin and then murmured “That was too close. I’m glad we ended that” after his team pulled off a 7-6 victory in overtime over Walkersville (4-1).
Though the game finished in under two hours, it felt like it would never end due to the boiling stress levels and back and forth affairs – punt after punt after punt.
Gelid rain fell hard from the sky and the winds swirled, hampering both sidelines. Offensive coordinators hesitant to dig into their playbooks with the near unbearable conditions. One yard here, three yards there, an occasional five-plus yards if a hole happened to emerge.
Field position was valued more than a first-down.
The first quarter featured 43-yards of total offense and zero points from either team. At the half, that number barely eclipsed the 80-yard mark and only two drives were sustained into plus territory. Nine punts, six fumbles and one pass attempt occurred in the first 24-minutes. Yes, you read that correctly.
The second half saw chances, but no dice – as the game was knotted at 0-0, heading to overtime.
And though neither team appeared to have momentum, Linganore quarterback Nathaniel Musselman never backed down on leading the offensive huddle – chiming in that his guys would break through if they didn’t back down
“There wasn’t one drive that I didn’t go into the huddle saying ‘we can do this’,” Musselman said who completed three of his five pass attempts for 18 yards. “We were one or two plays away from extending a drive or making that key play. We were close the whole game.”
Musselman, being the vocal leader that he is, put his team on his back in the first offensive possession of overtime – taking a designed quarterback sneak up the gut ten yards and across the pylon into the end zone. The PAT was good and the Lancers found themselves up 7-0 with Walkersville getting one last possession.
“That was a good play call by our coaching staff,” Musselman said, referring to his go-ahead touchdown run. He had 13 yards rushing on five carries. “I just got behind Mike (McDonald) and ran.”
When the Linganore defense needed another stand, Walkersville answered after sophomore quarterback Billy Gant found the end zone on a ten yard keeper of his own. Fleagle and the rest of the Lancer defense were none too settled on watching Gant glide across the pylon, but they knew hanging their heads would do no good either.
“We weren’t happy when that happened, obviously,” Fleagle said. “But there’s nothing you can do, so you got to put your head down and get through it.”
And that’s exactly what the Linganore defense did. On the ensuing point after touchdown attempt, Fleagle penetrated off the line of scrimmage to get a hand on the football as it misdirected errantly and dribbled to the turf.
“I told myself to dig deep,” Fleagle said referring to the snap prior to the final PAT attempt. His block wasn’t the only key play he had all game as he made numerous of stops on short yardage situations and scooped up one fumble recovery. “I put my head down and just plowed through the line and happened to get a hand on the ball.”
“He’s a great player,” Linganore head coach Rick Conner said. “We’re excited to have him back.”
That was it. The game was over. Seven to six was the final score that lit the scoreboard as fans exited the stadium. Some stuck around to gaze at what they just witnessed.
Conner instructed his team to play the same relentless Linganore football way that hasn’t seen a regular season loss since Week 9 at Middletown in 2013.
“We tell our guys to fight and play hard,” Conner said. “We knew we were playing a good football team and I thought our defense did a phenomenal job.”
Walkersville, meanwhile, came oh so close to pulling off the improbable – going toe-to-toe with the sixth ranked team in all of Maryland for the entire game. And to have their top three leading rushers and starting quarterback be sophomore’s speaks volume on how much talent bolsters through the organization.
“This will be a launch pad for us,” head coach Joe Polce said. “Bottle it up and grow from it. Keep improving every week, get better each night, we’re going to be really, really good by the end of the season. This will be a spring board. We’re on to Catoctin.”
Maybe one or two busted runs could have been the difference, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, ball carriers were too focused on not fumbling the ball rather than registering a big play due to the slick playing conditions.
“I couldn’t do much,” running back Dante Butler said, who finished with 51 yards on 22 carries. “I just didn’t want to fumble and turnover the ball. That’s all I was thinking about.”
“The weather was an equalizer tonight,” Conner said. “Though that was the case, we still need to be able to run the ball. We’ll take a look at the film to see what we need to do to get better.”
The road doesn’t get any easier for Linganore as they travel to face the undefeated Oakdale Bears next Friday, who have been walloping opponents as of late. And who knows, maybe the grind-it-out win is exactly what Linganore needs – to build a relentless mindset for the latter part of the 2015 campaign.
“Being in a game like this, zero to zero, in overtime, is a great builder for our team,” Conner said. “We’ll watch their (Oakdale) tape and break them down. We also got to get healthy. We’ll try to come up with a plan.”
When it was all over, the rain was still pounding down and the stadium lights still glowed in the distance with the final score “Linganore 7, Walkersville 6.” still lit on the scoreboard. Conner locked up his office and walked down the vacant locker room halls of Linganore High School, knowing that there’s still work to be done. Like his players, he glanced up for one final time at the banner taped above the doorway before the exiting doors that read “BE RELENTLESS.”
You can follow me on Twitter @k_fadd and Maryland Sports Access at @MDSportsAccess for more coverage of Linganore and Walkersville football throughout the year.
Box score
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | OT | Final | |
| LIN | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 |
| WLK | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 6 |
Scoring summary
| LIN | WLK | ||||
| OT | 1st pos. | LIN | Nathaniel Musselman 10 yard rush (Sparacino kick) | 7 | 0 |
| 1st pos. | WLK | Billy Gant 10 yard rush (PAT blocked) | 7 | 6 |
Linganore individual stats
| Passing | Comp. | Att. | Yards | Comp.% | TD | INT | QBR |
| #7 Nathaniel Musselman | 3 | 5 | 18 | 60.00% | 0 | 0 | 67.08 |
| Rushing | Car. | Yards | Avg. | TD | Long |
| #23 Dante Butler | 22 | 51 | 2.32 | 0 | 13 |
| #2 Davon Butler | 12 | 40 | 3.33 | 0 | 21 |
| #45 Dominic Zanoni | 7 | 14 | 2.00 | 0 | 5 |
| #7 Nathaniel Musselman | 5 | 13 | 2.60 | 1 | 10 |
| Total | 46 | 118 | 2.57 | 1 | 21 |
| Receiving | Rec. | Yards | Avg. | TD | Long |
| #5 Jack Staub | 3 | 18 | 6.00 | 0 | 8 |
Walkersville individual stats
| Passing | Comp. | Att. | Yards | Comp.% | TD | INT | QBR |
| #15 Billy Gant | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Rushing | Car. | Yards | Avg. | TD | Long |
| #6 Tyler Gleason | 17 | 51 | 3.00 | 0 | 8 |
| #1 Ty Littleton | 13 | 31 | 2.39 | 0 | 10 |
| #22 Jacob Wetzel | 8 | 25 | 3.13 | 0 | 7 |
| #33 Christian Policelli | 2 | 2 | 1.00 | 0 | 2 |
| #15 Billy Gant | 4 | -2 | -0.50 | 1 | 10 |
| #11 Bruce Ilanga | 1 | -3 | -3.00 | 0 | -3 |
| Total | 45 | 104 | 2.31 | 1 | 10 |
| Receiving | Rec. | Yards | Avg. | TD | Long |
| None |
