NANKIN — All the signs seemed to be pointing toward a Mapleton loss at John E. Camp Stadium.
The Mounties were coming off a 28-point defeat to a one-win Indian Creek team and limped into Friday’s game against Crestview — which hadn’t lost to Mapleton since 2018 — missing three of their top four offensive threats to injury.
The hosts then fumbled away the game’s first offensive snap inside their own 35-yard line.
But on an evening when constant rain threatened to put a damper on Senior Night, the Mounties never trailed, winning inspired, muddy football in the trenches over the Cougars 28-18.
“This school, this team, this community’s had some adversity the last three weeks that we’ve had to fight through,” Mapleton coach Matt Stafford said, “and I’m just super proud of these kids for stepping up tonight.”
Mapleton (5-5, 3-3 Firelands Conference) had already clinched a spot in the postseason, but the win boosted the Mounties’ seed for next week’s road playoff game and helped them finish tied for third in the FC — their highest league finish in five years.
Crestview (4-6, 3-3) had won three of its previous four games entering Friday and had beaten Mapleton by at least 26 points each of the last four years. But Stafford felt his team had some extra fire Friday.
“I said, ‘Listen, we are already in (the playoffs), but we want to climb higher. We don’t want to finish 4-6. This is our rival, this is Crestview, they’ve been a thorn in our back for the last four years,’ ” he said. “It was just getting down to business playing on our field. This was Senior Night, this is the last game our seniors were going to play on this field.”
Mapleton quarterback Kollin Cline put an exclamation point on a banner regular season, rushing for three touchdowns and 200 yards on 22 carries. The senior’s first TD run proved to be a tone-setting sprint down the left sideline.
The Mounties started their second drive on their own 2 yard line, but Kline broke free for a 65-yard score to cap a seven-play drive, then punched in the two-point conversion run to make it 8-0 midway through the first quarter.
He added a 7-yard touchdown run less than three minutes before the half to make it 16-6, then scored from 14 yards out early in the third quarter to make it 22-12.
On a sloppy night when he never attempted a pass, Cline finished the regular season with 16 rushing touchdowns and nearly 1,500 yards on the ground.
“We’ve been trying to beat them for the last four years,” Cline said. “We came in here expecting that they were going to be a hard-hitting team and we just put it on them today. The defense really brought it.”
Crestview running back Ayden Reymer entered the night with nearly identical numbers (1,305 yards, 14 TDs) to Cline on the ground. But the Mapleton defense limited the sophomore speedster to just 87 yards and a first-half touchdown on 24 carries.
The Cougars were within 8-6 on Reymer’s 7-yard TD carry just after the start of the second quarter. That play was set up when Crestview blocked a Mapleton punt and Caleb Cunningham scooped it up and rumbled all the way to the Mounties’ 7 yard line.
But the Cougars could never get a lead on the scoreboard. They also came into the game having already clinched their fifth consecutive trip to the playoffs, but coach Steve Haverdill said they took a step back after a solid second half to the season.
“They outplayed us, they out-physicaled us, they were ready to play in this kind of weather and we weren’t,” he said. “They were the tougher team tonight and it showed.”
“We wanted to finish strong and we’d been getting better every week, so we wanted to continue that process and we didn’t this week.”
Down 10 points, Crestview still had some hope midway through the fourth quarter after stuffing the Mounties on a fourth-and-one play from the Crestview 35. But after moving into Mapleton territory, the Cougars lost 14 yards on a bad snap that quarterback Liam Kuhn had to fall on, and they turned it over on downs two plays later.
Impressively, Kuhn completed 5-of-10 passes for 99 yards. His 34-yard deep ball to Karter Goon helped set up a 4-yard Clete Rogers TD run early in the third, and he also hit Nolan Moore for a 46-yard touchdown bomb after a Mapleton defender lost his footing.
That play helped cut the score to 22-18 in the third quarter. But the Cougars didn’t convert any of their two-point plays and Mapleton answered that final Crestview touchdown with a 15-play, 73-yard scoring march that chewed up nearly seven minutes of clock to make it 28-18.
Scoring the touchdown on that drive was junior Colton Wittman, previously a left guard who was making his first start at running back because Luke Pryor (527 yards, 12 TDs) was injured. Wittman finished the game with 106 yards on 29 carries.
“He’s a hard-running kid, he’s a shorter kid, a strong kid,” Stafford said, “so you’re not able to see him very well from the linebacker position. I’m just super proud of him.”
Caleb Siburt stepped into Wittman’s spot on the line for his first varsity start, and the rest of the Mapleton line of Hunter Rogers, Ben Miller, A.J. Workman, Tyler Delosh and Tyson Welch keyed the Mounties to nearly 350 rushing yards.
But the defense had just as much of a say in the outcome for Mapleton, led by end Mark Miller, who had multiple sacks and crucial stops.
Stafford called the senior an animal and said the coaching staff gave him the flexibility to play on both sides of the line for the first time.
“We really just needed to come together,” Miller said. “And it feels too real being a senior and this being our last home game, so I just wanted to make sure that all my friends on the sideline and everybody was just staying hyped and everybody in the crowd was reflecting that, too.”
Amazingly, Friday marked the first time Mapleton won a game when scoring fewer than 32 points since 2020. The Mounties had been 0-16 in such games since.
Now they await their opponent for their fourth consecutive trip to the playoffs under Stafford.
“We got off the ball, we were physical, we played smash-mouth football and I’m just super proud of these guys,” the coach said. “I couldn’t have asked for more.”
Like Mapleton, the Cougars will be on the road next week after three straight seasons hosting a first-round game.
“We feel good about wherever we’ve got to go,” Haverdill said. “But we’ve got to get back to the drawing board and get back to our kind of football.”
