Midland Trail sat at 4-5 heading into the final week of the regular season last year.
A win over Pocahontas County as well as a brutal schedule that yielded bonus points for wins and losses helped the Patriots into the postseason where they eventually fell to Tucker County in the first round.
Now in his third year at the helm, Jeremy Moore is hoping to build upon last year’s success and restore deep playoff runs.
It won’t be easy as Midland Trail, traditionally a Class A school, moves into the new Class AA after the expansion to a fourth class.
“We’ve got some positive momentum and we’re playing up a class,” Moore said. “It’s obviously gonna get harder, but it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to grow and keep building the program.”
Helping aid the transition is an experienced group of returning players.
“Start off with Will McGraw who was an all-state honorable mention kid last year,” Moore said.”He’s a linebacker and fullback-tailback. He’s kind of one of those kids you build your program around. He embodies everything that we stand for. He’s a hard-working physical, tough type guy. Kayden Lephew stepped in for us last year whenever Jayden Roop got hurt and it looks like Roop will be out again this season as well. So, you know, Lephew stepped in and did a phenomenal job at tailback towards the end of the season. So we’re about to lean on him on both sides of the ball really. And then, you know Greg Cramer, he’s probably one of our better offensive lineman. He’s one of those guys that wants to be a leader up front.”
Last year the Patriots had two different players who took majority of the snaps at QB in Jaden Gladwell and Thad Brown. Gladwell moved to receiver halfway through the season, making way for Brown who will retain his role at QB.
“I feel pretty confident,” Moore said. “We’ve got Thad and he’s a senior. He stepped in last year when Landon Syner got hurt in Week 4 or Week 5 I think. He’s one of our better receivers but we moved Jaden Gladwell out to receiver to help us out there, and we moved Thad up. Thad learned pretty quickly. He still has some rocky moments, but he’s a resilient kid and coachable. And he’s a good leader, so we feel pretty confident. He’s got the pieces around him, especially if the offensive line steps up like we hope they will. We should have a pretty decent group.”
One place Moore wanted to see his team improve was in its off-season workouts. Early in his tenure he expressed he believed the team was losing games in the offseason by not taking conditioning and weight lifting as seriously as the top tier programs in the state. His team heeded the words.
‘I’m very proud,” Moore said. “We had some kids really take that to heart. I was pretty adamant about it. Coaches can’t want it more than the kids. And then I had some kids like Greg Cramer and Kaden Rose and guys like that really stepped up in the trenchers. And Gage Johnson, another one of those guys, stepped up in the offseason and really decided that they were going to draw a line in the sand. So I don’t know if it’ll correlate to wins but we’ll be, I think, we’ll be much more competitive.”
Should the Patriots make it into the postseason they’ll be battle-tested. The schedule is loaded with teams such as Wheeling Central, Nicholas County, James Monroe and Greenbrier West.
“We told our kids it doesn’t matter where they put us, it’s an opportunity and It’s a chance to prove we belong,” Moore said. “I think we do. But we got to win week by week. It’s a pretty challenging schedule. I mean, we picked up Poca and Braxton County and Lincoln County, which, we dropped some single-A teams to get those teams on top of playing Wheeling Central and James Monroe and Greenbrier West. You’d be hard-pressed to find a tougher schedule, especially in September and October than what we have but our kids, our kids know the challenge ahead. It’s not anything new to them.”
Midland Trail will open its season Friday Aug. 30 at home against Clay County.
