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ANNAPOLIS — Chad Gleason lowered his shoulder as he crossed into the black and yellow checkered end zone, then pumped his fist across his chest twice and pointed to the sky. He was accompanied by brother Tyler Gleason as the two jogged back to the sideline with the Walkersville faithful buzzing behind the Lions bench. The elder, Chad, had just crusaded a steady 13-play, 59-yard drive spanning nearly six minutes.
Though Gleason’s run only gave Walkersville a 13-6 lead at the 4:43 mark in the third quarter, it jolted a second half surge in which the Lions busted open the floodgates for 27 unanswered points to claim the school’s first football state championship since 1987.
“They were done,” Gleason said after Walkersville defeated Elkton 33-6 on Saturday night at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium. “I was focused, just working on getting here. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me.”
One year removed from a nightmare fourth quarter collapse on the same stage — a 20-0 lead vanished in the waning seconds, a game the Lions lost to Patxuent, 21-20 — Walkersville flipped the tide and instead of faltering across the finish line, Gleason and company left no doubt this time.
“We train all summer and all winter to get into situations we are today,” Gleason said. “We work harder than anyone, and obviously it showed this year.”
On the game’s opening drive, Walkersville coach Joe Polce elected to go for it on 4th-and-2, a play he says he has “confidence in.” Gleason, the ball carrier, was stuffed well short of the first down, giving Elkton prime field position at the Lions 44-yard-line. Soon after, Elks running back Ray Estep sprung free for a 38-yard touchdown to give Elkton a 6-0 lead just three minutes and 22 into regulation.
The ensuing possession didn’t end much better. Before Lions quarterback Billy Gant could set his feet once dropping back, he lobbed an errant throw into the secondary that was intercepted by Estep, who returned it inside the red zone, but a block in the back penalty pushed Elkton back to their own 40-yard-line.
“We were fortunate there,” Polce said of the negated return by Estep.
Walkersville trailed 6-0 after one quarter, and only produced 26 yards on 10 offensive plays.
The Lions tied the game at 6-6 on a 5-play, 52-yard drive when Gleason bounced to the outside and scampered in from three yards out.
Polce took most of the blame for the halftime score, saying he didn’t allow his team to “play their game.”
After a few tweaks and situational adjustments, the second half barrage began. Elkton went three-and-out on their first drive to start the third quarter, playing into the hands of the game-deciding 59-yard drive that spanned five minutes and 44 seconds. On that drive Chad Gleason ran for 19 yards, Jacob Wetzel ran for 18, Tyler Gleason ran for 15, Ty Littleton ran for 5 and Billy Gant picked up two to set up the second touchdown at the goal line.
“That defines our program,” Polce said of the opening drive of the second half. “Since 2010, that what we’ve built our program on. It starts in the weight room.”
Everything after that was history, and as Wetzel put it, the Lions “tire[d]’em out” by “pounding away.” Kyle Daggett forced a fumble in the backfield on the next series to plate a 6-play, 23-yard Gant-to-Wetzel scoring drive that gave Walkersville a 20-6 lead. Walkersville scored on their next two drives on a Gant 1-yard run with 9:03 to go and then Gleason capped a 104-yard, three touchdown performance on a 24-yard run with 3:12 left in regulation.
“We focus on tiring out the team,” Gleason said. “We wore them out in the first half. By the time we came out in the second half, they were exhausted.”
It didn’t seem too long ago Walkersville somberly walked off the field of M&T Bank Stadium after enduring a heartbreaking one-point loss in an improbable playoff run.
Everything came to fruition on Saturday night. Gleason, who woke up at the crack of dawn the next morning after the loss in the state final game to train for Saturday’s moment, vanquished a “childhood dream.” They said in August the sequel was coming, and now, that story has been signed off triumphantly.
“It means everything to our school, to our community,” Polce said. “They’ve been waiting for this for a long time. This wasn’t an overnight thing or a one year thing. It’s been a longtime thing. … I’ve been chasing this thing for 22 years, and I don’t even know if it’s sank in yet.”
