Peebles SOIL domination continues with fifth consecutive title

By Mark Carpenter

People’s Defender

When the Southern Ohio Independent League was formed over a decade ago, the football organization saw a few years of success but in recent years has seen its share of struggles. One thing that has remained consistent, at least over the past five seasons, is the total domination by Coach Mike McDonald and his Peebles Indians. The Indians have rumbled through what is left of their SOIL competition and last Saturday night at Kelly Anderson Memorial Field in Seaman, the Indians claimed their fifth consecutive Koehler-Darby Trophy, running past the North Adams Green Hornets by a final score of 52-6.

“This was a very weird season for us,” said Coach Mike McDonald amidst the team’s victory celebration. “We played some bigger schools and it showed us a lot – coaches and players. But playing those bigger schools made the games against the SOIL teams feel like they were in slow motion.”

The final two teams standing in the SOIL met in Saturday night’s championship contest and the outcome was decided very early in the opening quarter when the Indians scored touchdowns on their first two offensive snaps from scrimmage. The first score came on a 55-yard touchdown scamper by quarterback Josh McClary with a two-point run from Grady Knechtly. After a big third down tackle for loss by the Tribe’s Christian Gerth, the Green Hornets were forced to punt and one snap later a 57-yard touchdown pass from McClary to senior speedster Brandon Rayburn plus another two-point conversion made it 16-0.

The next North Adams possession began at midfield but again resulted in a punt, where the snap was high over the head of punter Bradley Robinson and the misfire was recovered by Peebles, setting the Indians offense up again in great field position. The North Adams defense made a stand but could not hold on a fourth and 23 play when McClary again got loose and ran for a long touchdown. Knechtly added another conversion run to make it 24-0.

The Green Hornets turned it over again on their next offensive series when a Robinson pass was intercepted by Peebles’ Kadien Karouge and returned for a pick-six. Larouge also hauled in the two-point conversion pass from McClary and the Indians were on the warpath, leading 32-0 after the first quarter.

At this point, the game officials called for the running clock for the remainder of the game and early in the second stanza, another North Adams turnover led to another Peebles score, this time Rayburn stripping a Green Hornet ball carrier and returning the recovery for a score. The successful two-point try made it 40-0. The trend continued when North Adams got the ball back and fumbled it away. Peebles took that turnover and scored on a TD run by Rayburn where he absolutely steamrolled a potential North Adams tackler on his way to the end zone. The two-point try failed and the half ended with the Indians up 46-0 and they added another forced turnover, McClary picking off a Green Hornet pass on the final play of the first half.

With the running clock, the Green Hornets controlled possession for most of the third quarter and turned a long drive into their only touchdown of the night, a one-yard run by Robinson with only 21 seconds left in the period. The two-point try was stopped, leaving the score after three quarters at 46-6.

The final points of title #5 for the Indians came with nine minutes to play when senior running back Nathaniel “Nano” Cummings pushed it across from one-yard out, then tried to kick the extra point but that try was wide, leaving the final score 52-6 in favor of the champions in red.

The championship game for the conference whose future is up in the air was the final for a number of seniors. For North Adams, those were Landon Ison, Gage Mohammad, Colton McCune and Jayden Shepherd. The Peebles seniors included Christian Gerth, Brandon Rayburn, Ashton Burke, Nathaniel Cummings and Johnathon Nichols.

“This was an incredible group of seniors,” said Coach McDonald. “Starting with Christian Gerth, that kid would absolutely run through a wall for us. He doesn’t get a lot of stats but he does everything right and anything you ask him too. Johnathon (Nichols) unfortunately got hurt in our last regular season game but he has been one of the anchors on our offensive line for four years. “Nano” (Cummings) is just a stud. Brandon (Rayburn) was one of the fastest players in the league, especially when we got him the ball in space and Ashton (Burke) has been starting center, starting left tackle, starting guard, all depending on what we needed on the offensive line.”

Looking ahead to next season and the uncertainty of the Soil, McDonald concluded, “We will be a little younger and a little smaller, but that’s okay. Each year is completely different and that won’t change. When we see what we have next year, that’s what we’ll go with. I hope to get some away games next year against some different teams because this year did show us that as good as we have been, there’s a large gap between the SOIL and some of these bigger teams that we played. It’s not a talent gap, we have all the talent in the world, but it’s all about depth.”