Landon Football 41 McKinley Tech 0

The Bears travelled to North East to play DC’s STEM magnet school. In 1926 at its founding, its full name was the  McKinley Tech Training HS, thus the name the “Trainers”. Tech has transformed from “a manual labor school dealing with carpentry, construction, and other technical skills” and an all-white male student body to today’s competitive curriculum of  Engineering, Information Technology (Networking, Computer Science, and Digital Media), or Biotechnology with a diverse student body.

The Trainers’ home field is tremendous, but the field’s lighting system tested the eyes of Bear ’65. Also, the scoreboard/clock was inoperative. Consequently, this post will be lacking in details.

MTHS showed how seriously they took the challenge of their visitors by a surprise, well executed onside kick, recovering the ball on Landon’s 38. After 4 plays, the Trainers punted, and Landon took possession. Five runs and, a pass resulted in a 6 yard TD run by Aaron Hart and the Hunter Taylor PAT was good.

BEARS 7 TRAINERS 0

Captain Taylor’s kickoff pinned the opponents to their own 4. A pass breakup by Chris Wells ended MTHS’s control of the ball and their punt put the Bears on their 34. A Nathan Furgeson to Carter Phillips 34 yard pass added the 2^nd TD. The PAT was successful

BEARS 14 TRAINERS 0

This time the McKinley team was frustrated by a Bears’ TFL—James Haas and Jeremiah Peebles. Another Trainer shortpunt resulted in great field position for Landon. A pass, a run and a 2 yard TD run by DeAngelo Dickerson added to the team’s lead. The PAT converted.

BEARS 21 TRAINERS 0

The net of three penalties and a TFL by DeAngelo (-8) was a Trainers’ negative two yards.

END OF 1^ST Q

 From the Bears’ 31 Nathan Rosner connected with Christopher Wells for a 34 yard TD. The PAT failed

BEARS 27 TRAINERS 0

The home team’s 2^nd play from scrimmage was a pass which Anthony Savoy skillfully intercepted and sprinted 24 yards to the end zone. PAT good from 35 yards.

BEARS 34 TRAINERS 0

HALFTIME

Landon kicked off and the MTHS offense was held to 4 yards in 3 plays. Their punt moved the Bears to their own half of the field. Twelve plays (3 passes and 9 runs) put the visitors 5 yards from the goal line and Aaron Hart consumed that distance for his 2nd TD. Hunter converted the PAT.

BEARS 41 TRAINERS 0

Under the national high school football rules, after a team reaches a +35 margin, the clock does not stop. The remainder of the 3^rd and 14^th quarters had abbreviated play.

The Landon kickoff hit a Trainer and the visitors’ recovered. The Bear O was manned by many future stars who do not get much practice time as a squad. Five plays led to Hunter Taylor returning to the field to punt. One MTHS play rolled the invisible clock into Q4.

END OF 3^RD Q

This timeless period was a lengthy series of Trainer O plays. The referees wound down a lot of the clock with several, lengthy conferences about penalties, ball placement, etc. The home team ran 12 consecutive plays and earned 3 first down. The last play was a Bear intercept, but the field was sufficiently dark that the player’s number was obscured.

END OF GAME BEARS 41 TRAINERS 0

Next Saturday at Woodberry Forest, Orange VA. A beautiful campus with a super enthusiastic student body. The Tigers are 1-1 and may/may not remember their last contest against the Bears won by the visitors 47-37 in 2017.+

After the sun went down, Landon’s FB photographer could not take pictures due to the lack of light.