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One characteristic of Paul Withee’s 18-year tenure as head football coach at Foxcroft Academy has been quick, tenacious defensive play.
So when he suggested before the start of the 2007 season that this year’s defense was among his quickest ever, some LTC followers weren’t sure that was possible given that Withee’s previous teams had racked up six Eastern Maine championships and two Class C state titles.
But the proof is in the results, particularly during the Ponies’ run through the LTC playoffs over the last two weekends to yet another regional title.
Foxcroft was faced with two of the league’s more versatile offensive opponents in playoff foes Rockland and John Bapst of Bangor. Both teams featured mobile, multidimensional quarterbacks in Andrew Weiss of Rockland and Kyle Gallant of John Bapst, but both teams had little luck offensively against the Ponies.
In its 32-0 semifinal win over Rockland and 14-7 victory over John Bapst in Saturday’s Eastern Maine final, Foxcroft allowed just 164.5 total yards per game – and just 80 rushing yards per contest.
That defensive effort was particularly impressive against John Bapst, a team whose own defense made Foxcroft’s offense struggle for points.
The Crusaders had passed for more than 200 yards in a season-opening 13-12 loss at Foxcroft, and the Ponies were focused on making sure John Bapst didn’t have similar aerial success in the rematch.
“We thought with our defensive front that [Gallant] wouldn’t have a whole lot of time to throw, so with their four wideout sets we wanted to make sure every area was covered,” said Withee, whose 11-0 Ponies will face 10-1 Boothbay for the state championship at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland on Saturday. “I just thought we a did a tremendous job.”
John Bapst completed 6 of 16 passes overall for 100 yards with one touchdown, but Foxcroft’s defense had three interceptions and three quarterback sacks while holding the elusive Gallant to six rushing yards on nine carries.
“We basically tried to isolate the quarterback as much as we could in the pocket,” said Foxcroft senior defensive tackle Adam LePrevost. “I think we did a good job in doing so. They had real big guys up front, but I just think we played real well and it worked.”
John Bapst’s running strength relied more on speed than power, and Foxcroft was able to negate that speed while limiting the Crusaders to 84 yards on 36 rushes.
“They came out in a 4-3 with a cover-two behind it,” said John Bapst coach Dan O’Connell, “so there’s only seven in the box and you think immediately you should be able to run the ball. But their tackles in the middle and [Ben] Provost at linebacker were tremendous. We just couldn’t run the ball, so we were forced to pass it in traffic, and when you do that at this level, there’s a good possibility you’ll make some mistakes.
“We tried to keep [FA’s Jon] Geiger and [Evan] Worthing at bay, but they’re two great rush ends, and when you get flushed from the middle and then Kyle has to go outside it’s hard for our tackles to stay in front of him, so it was hard to maintain our pocket presence when we needed to pass.”
When Gallant or tailback Nick Smith did elude the Ponies defensive front, a linebacking corps that included Provost, Jerod Rideout, Shane Adkins and Danny Brown was quick to react.
“They were a team that was good both running and passing, so we had to be fairly balanced against them,” said Rideout. “They had tendencies that we noticed on film, and we read them right to a ‘T’ and executed perfectly.”
A Foxcroft flashback
Fans who saw Foxcroft quarterback Jamie Nason dive over the goal line for the winning touchdown in the Ponies’ 14-7 victory over John Bapst of Bangor in the LTC final probably had a sense of deju vu.
Foxcroft used the same play four years earlier for the winning TD in the 2003 title game.
On that bone-chilling November afternoon, Foxcroft quarterback Josh Withee rolled to his right, found a slight gap in Stearns of Millinocket’s defensive front and dove into the end zone to give the Ponies a 6-0 overtime victory.
Four years later, Withee is a student at the University of Maine and an assistant coach under his father, Paul, at Foxcroft.
And presented a scenario similar to the choice made four years earlier, this time with Foxcroft facing fourth-and-three from the Bapst 4 late in the the third quarter of a tie game, the younger Withee suggested turning to something that worked before.
It worked again, with Nason rolling right before cutting behind the lead block of Adkins to score and counter a Bapst touchdown scored earlier in the period.
“Our kids really answered the bell on that,” said Paul Withee. “We came up with some big plays and then Josh called the option play down on the goal line. He noticed that they were all caving inside and Jamie did a great job reaching for the end zone.
“It kind of reminded me of old No. 5 [Josh] a couple of years ago doing that in the same corner.”
PONY POWER
(11 games)
Points scored – 371 (33.7 per game)
Points allowed – 68 (6.2 per game)
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