MOUNTAIN RIDGE MINER FOOTBALL

FROSTBURG — Frankfort dominated in just about every fashion on a historic night in Miners Stadium.

The No. 2 Falcons (5-0) rumbled for 377 yards on the ground and 170 through the air.

For No. 3 Mountain Ridge (3-2), it was historic for all the wrong reasons.

Frankfort was near-perfect on offense and ferocious on defense, as it snapped the Miners’ 28-game home win streak with a 49-12 victory.

“I’m very proud of the kids,” said Frankfort head coach Kevin Whiteman. “We had a good week of practice. With all that rain and stuff, I was a little scared because we had to practice in a very wet, puddly field. “I’m just proud of their effort. They embraced the game plan, came out and played hard. They were physical. I just thought we played well in all three phases. I thought we were a little slow starting. Mountain Ridge did some things to slow us up. They were in a different look defensively than we expected, so it took us a while to adjust to that. But just very proud of the whole team for their effort tonight.”

Frankfort converted big play after big play, not allowing the Miner defense off the field.

The Falcons finished 6 of 7 on third downs, needing on average 5.7 yards to get past the marker.

Conversely, the Miners finished 2 of 10 and needed 11.2 yards on average for a first.

“Not a whole lot to say other than what the scoreboard said — that was that we got our tails whipped,” Mountain Ridge head coach Nathan Shipe said. “Frankfort was a very good team. We had some opportunities early that we missed. Getting off the field on third down, that was the big thing.

“They hit a couple of big passes early and then some big runs late. And once the gap widened, they did what good teams do. They roll you up. When they got you on the ropes, they’re not going to let you get up. When they knock you down, they’re not going to let you get up. They’re going to knock you out, and that’s what happened.”

The first big Frankfort offensive play came on third-and-9 on its second drive when quarterback Uriah Cutter hit Blake Jacobs for 51 yards on a post route to the Mountain Ridge 3. Two plays later, Julian Pattison rumbled in from four yards out for the first of his three scores. Rhett Sensabaugh booted the PAT.

After the Miners’ ensuing drive ended in three points with a 36-yard field goal by Tyler Cook, the Falcons got double-digit yardage from Pattison for 15, Carder Shanholtz for 13 and a 25-yard pass from Cutter to Jacob Nething before Pattison capped off the drive with a 16-yard TD run and a 14-3 lead at 11:11 in the second.

Cutter showed off his arm on Frankfort’s next drive, throwing a 60-yard dart to Nething for a score. Sensabaugh’s PAT made it 21-3 with 6:32 to go.

The Falcon defense forced their second three-and-out, and the ensuing drive went five plays, each one gaining at least seven yards, with runs of 12, 15 and 17 by Cutter and Shanholtz twice setting up Pattison’s third score on a 12-yard run at the 2:20 mark.

Frankfort had one more shot at a score before halftime, taking over on its own 40 with 47 ticks left, but a fumble was recovered by the Miners with 21 seconds left.

The Miners had a chance to make it a three-score game heading into the locker room, but Cook’s 41-yard field goal try sailed left of the upright.

Mountain Ridge showed its biggest sign of life offensively coming out of halftime, with Levi Clise converting on third-and-7 with a 13-yard run, Mountain Ridge’s first third-down conversion.

Quarterback Carter Clites followed up with a 13-yard gain and, three plays later, lobbed a 22-yard completion to Eli Sibley on third-and-6.

A Sibley catch and a Clise run set up first-and-10 from the Frankfort 12, but a holding call on second down set the Miners back. Passes fell incomplete on second- and third-and-20, leading to a 39-yard field goal by Cook to make it 28-6.

“That hurt,” Shipe said of the penalty. “It was just one of those situations where in pass protection, a player got beat. And to try to make up for getting beat, they grabbed on, and that definitely hurt. But there were some other situations too. We had three penalties on that drive, and that just happened to be the one that will stick out because of the down-and-distance situation.”

A 47-yard run on third-and-3 by Shanholtz was the vertical bar on an exclamation point, as Cutter applied the underdot with a 10-yard touchdown run for a 35-6 lead at 4:33 in the third.

Cutter finished 8 of 10 passing — completing his final eight attempts — for 170 yards.

“We have confidence in Uriah to throw the ball,” Whiteman said. “They had the whole box packed up in there, so it didn’t take long to figure out we were going to have to throw some passes. We connected on some big ones simply because they had everything packed up in there.”

Shanholtz capped off a dominant night on the ground with a 66-yard touchdown run later in the third, finishing with 204 yards on just 10 carries.

Frankfort backup QB Gunnar Bradshaw had a 60-yard score in the fourth.

The Miners’ lone touchdown came on a 13-yard run by Clise as the running clock expired.

Frankfort’s dominance on the ground started up front, with blue hats terrorizing the Miners all night.

“Our offensive line, that’s what makes us tick,” Whiteman said. “Our offensive line is big and strong, and they work hard. … When you got guys that big and that strong coming at you, that’s hard to stop.”

Mountain Ridge’s offense was limited to just 259 yards, with 104 coming in the air.

“Our whole defense did a good job,” Whiteman said. “I think our defensive line did a good job. I’ve got to give a lot of credit to our defensive backs. (Mountain Ridge does) chuck the ball around. They have a very unique offense, the way they do things. I thought we did a good job covering the pass, putting a little pressure on the quarterback.”

The win was Frankfort’s fifth straight as it hosts Brooke on Friday.

It was the Falcons’ first win over the Miners since 2019 after Mountain Ridge had won seven of the previous eight matchups.

The loss was Mountain Ridge’s second straight, having fallen 28-23 at Frederick last week. It was also the Miners’ first regular-season loss to a non-Fort Hill team since 2019. The last team to beat Mountain Ridge in Frostburg was Northern in Week 8 in 2019.

“Yeah, we talked about all that before the game,” Whiteman said. “I let them know. The main thing I wanted them to know is that we, the Frankfort Falcons, have not beaten them since 2019. ... We needed a victory against these guys.”

The road doesn’t get much easier for the Miners, as they welcome top-ranked Fort Hill to Miners Stadium next week.

“I think kids are resilient and sometimes even more resilient than the coaches recognize,” Shipe said of getting his team refocused. “So I think that as long as the coaching staff rallies together and works on building the kids, putting the pieces back together, that they’ll get on board with that.

“We have a lot of kids and a lot of good leaders on the team that are 100% behind what we’re trying to do in the program and 100% behind the idea of righting the ship and patching the holes in the ship and moving on to next week. So I think that we’ll be good to go by Monday and have a good week of practice.”