MOUNTAIN RIDGE MINER FOOTBALL

     Ryan Patterson - Former Mtn. Ridge coach

FROSTBURG — After eight seasons bookended by three state championship game appearances, Ryan Patterson has stepped down as the Mountain Ridge football coach.

Patterson nearly built Mountain Ridge from the ashes, taking over a program in 2016 that had a win-loss record of just 9-30 over the prior four campaigns.

After an up-and-down beginning to his tenure, Patterson got the Miners rolling, losing just two regular-season games over the past three years to the tune of a 34-5 mark.

Mountain Ridge was 33-0 against every school not named Fort Hill over that span.

But Ryan Patterson made a promise that the 2023 season would be his last.

Three weeks to the day after Mountain Ridge fell to Fort Hill, 45-21, in the title game, Patterson and his wife welcomed a daughter into the world.

“I’m a man of my word,” he said. “We lost the state championship game, and I felt embarrassed the way we played down there. Came home, of course my wife was very pregnant. Took a few weeks off school.

“After a little bit of delaying and doing deep looks into my soul to see if that’s what I wanted to do, I decided to make it happen.”

Allegany County Public Schools posted the job opening for the position on Tuesday and it will be open until March 26, but Ryan Patterson made it clear who his preferred successor is: Miners’ junior varsity head coach Nathan Shipe.

If Shipe gets the job, Patterson said, he’s confident offensive coordinator Sefa Pua’auli and defensive coordinator Adam Patterson, as well as the rest of the coaching staff, will return.

“Nathan Shipe, I told him this was going to be it,” Patterson said. “I saw that opportunity to hand the program over to someone who is a big part of what we do here. It was a natural progression. He teaches right down the hall.”

Patterson, who finishes with a 53-29 record in eight years, including the 2020 pandemic-shortened campaign, will still be involved with the program.

“I’m planning on helping our program out whenever I can,” he said. “Help coach whenever possible. I can’t be the first person in the door and turning the lights off on my way out the door with a baby. I’ll be assisting the program that I love to the best of my ability from the sidelines, my living room, from the parking lot, whatever’s necessary.”

As for whether Patterson, a 1996 graduate of Beall High School who has been part of the Beall/Mountain Ridge football programs for most of his life, will ever return to the sidelines as a head coach, he wouldn’t rule it out.

“I won’t be coming back to a school called Fort Hill or Allegany, but I’ll never say never.”

A two-time first-team All-Area defensive back and second-team All-Area quarterback, Patterson joined the Beall High coaching staff in 2000 after four years of football at Frostburg State University. He remained on the staff through 2007, when Mountain Ridge opened its doors.

In 2016, Patterson succeeded Roy DeVore as head coach, the man he played for at Beall and then served as an assistant under for 16 years.

DeVore retired from coaching with a 140-94 record over 23 seasons. Three of his teams played in state championship games.

The long-time offensive coordinator under DeVore, Patterson played free safety at Frostburg State from 1996 through 1999. He graduated in 2000 with a degree in social studies/education. He teaches history at Mountain Ridge.

Patterson surpassed his former coach as the winningest in school history in Week 4 of this past season with a 27-6 rout of Class 4A Frederick at Miner Stadium.

DeVore was 45-47 in nine seasons at Mountain Ridge.

It wasn’t a perfect start for Patterson. The Miners were just 16-23 over his first four campaigns, but the trajectory of the program changed after the pandemic in 2020.

The momentum began with Mountain Ridge’s first win over Fort Hill in 15 tries, a 27-20 victory during the 2021 spring season.

While many in South Cumberland did, and still do, contend that the game shouldn’t count, the result was evidence of Mountain Ridge’s rise as a program and a harbinger of future success.

“We competed and beat them in the spring, and the kids started buying in,” Patterson said. “It was a signature victory for this program and showed that we can compete with them.”

Mountain Ridge went 11-2 in its first full season out of the pandemic, starting 5-0 until a 37-7 defeat to Fort Hill.

The Miners then rattled of six straight wins, which included the program’s first region title (a 35-6 rout of Allegany), first state tournament win (a 55-20 romp of Forest Park) and first state championship appearance — courtesy of a 63-14 bludgeoning of Perryville.

Mountain Ridge’s season ended in Annapolis with a 51-31 defeat to Fort Hill — the first of three title game losses to the Sentinels — but it was a precursor to the greatest season in school history.

STORY: Courtesy of the Cumberland Times-News