This was in the Winchester Star on Monday:
As the James Madison University Dukes stand poised on the cusp of a second NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision title, it’s amazing to consider the school’s gridiron program is less than a half-century old — 44 years, to be exact.
We can recall its infancy, when the players of note were named Stith and Slayton, Branich and Adams, and Windham and Bergeria — and the coach was a bespectacled gentleman named Challace McMillin The Dukes made a quick imprint on the NCAA Division III ranks back then before going I-AA in 1980.
Now the players to watch are named Bryan Schor and Khalid Abdullah — and three young men whose monikers may be familiar to readers of this newspaper: Jonathan Kloosterman, a tight end from Strasburg; Gage Steele, a linebacker from Front Royal, and, from here in StarLand, Tyler Gray, a kicker out of Millbrook High in Frederick County.
On Friday night, all five young men played key roles in the unthinkable, but it was young Mr. Gray who had folks in the Northern Valley cheering the most. His 45-yard field goal with 11:46 remaining broke a 17-17 tie en route to a 27-17 conquest of the homestanding Bison of North Dakota State, the five-time defending national champions.
A streak of streaks was stopped, and it was the Dukes who stopped it. Now it’s on to the national championship contest — a game JMU won in 2004 — where the Dukes will take on Youngstown State, a last-second victor over Eastern Washington on Saturday — in the Frisco Bowl on Jan. 7.
In a word (or, to be precise, two), “Go, Dukes’.”
As the James Madison University Dukes stand poised on the cusp of a second NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision title, it’s amazing to consider the school’s gridiron program is less than a half-century old — 44 years, to be exact.
We can recall its infancy, when the players of note were named Stith and Slayton, Branich and Adams, and Windham and Bergeria — and the coach was a bespectacled gentleman named Challace McMillin The Dukes made a quick imprint on the NCAA Division III ranks back then before going I-AA in 1980.
Now the players to watch are named Bryan Schor and Khalid Abdullah — and three young men whose monikers may be familiar to readers of this newspaper: Jonathan Kloosterman, a tight end from Strasburg; Gage Steele, a linebacker from Front Royal, and, from here in StarLand, Tyler Gray, a kicker out of Millbrook High in Frederick County.
On Friday night, all five young men played key roles in the unthinkable, but it was young Mr. Gray who had folks in the Northern Valley cheering the most. His 45-yard field goal with 11:46 remaining broke a 17-17 tie en route to a 27-17 conquest of the homestanding Bison of North Dakota State, the five-time defending national champions.
A streak of streaks was stopped, and it was the Dukes who stopped it. Now it’s on to the national championship contest — a game JMU won in 2004 — where the Dukes will take on Youngstown State, a last-second victor over Eastern Washington on Saturday — in the Frisco Bowl on Jan. 7.
In a word (or, to be precise, two), “Go, Dukes’.”
