Millbrook-Sherando game's move to midseason highlights 2019 football schedule
If the winner of the Barr-Lindon Crimson Apple hasn’t been decided by the last week of the 2019 football season, it will be a great season for either Handley or James Wood — or possibly both.
For the first time since Millbrook opened in 2003, the Pioneers will not end their season with Sherando. (The 2008 season, when Sherando played first-year school Kettle Run, is the only time it hasn’t closed the regular-season with Millbrook since 2003). The two Frederick County rivals will instead meet at Millbrook on Sept. 27 at 7 p.m.
And after meeting in Week 10 of the 11-week regular season during the last two-year scheduling cycle, the annual Handley-James Wood game is being moved back to the final week of the regular season. (The Judges will host the Colonels at 1 p.m. on Nov. 9.) Prior to the last two years, with the exception of 2007 and 2008, the Judges and Colonels had ended the season with each other every season since 2003.
Not since 2010 has a team other than Sherando (six championships) or Millbrook (two) taken ownership of the Crimson Apple, which is awarded by The Winchester Star to the team that fares best in games involving Winchester-Frederick County teams. The 2010 season marked the fourth time Handley won the “Apple Cup.” James Wood has never captured it.
If Handley and James Wood can’t figure out ways to buck recent history, the Crimson Apple could be decided as early as Week 8 when Sherando travels to Handley on Oct. 19. (The Judges haven’t beaten the Warriors since 2010, and the Colonels haven’t beaten Sherando since 2008.)
Another notable change to next year’s schedule is that all of Clarke County’s home games will start at 7 p.m. after previously starting at 7:30. Clarke County director of athletics Casey Childs said the entire Bull Run District agreed to start their home games at 7 p.m.
“Not really us, but more teams are throwing the football, and games are finishing later and later, so [the district athletic directors] decided to move everything to 7 p.m.,” Childs said. “Plus, a lot of non-district stuff where we were going to be on the road was already going to be at 7, so it made it easier to keep along the same lines as everybody else.”
With the Class 4 Northwestern District growing from seven to eight teams beginning in 2019, it was inevitable that the football schedules for the four Winchester-Frederick County schools were going to look somewhat different in 2019-20 compared to 2017-18. (Culpeper County, currently a Class 3 Northwestern District school, is moving up to the Class 4 Northwestern District for the next alignment plan. They will play the four local schools and the three Fauquier County schools each of the next four years.)
Citing weather as a factor, Sherando activities coordinator Jason Barbe and Millbrook coordinator of student activities Scott Mankins decided to move their annual game to Week 5. This year’s game was moved up a day to Thursday because of inclement weather.
“Millbrook-Sherando has been at the end of the year for a while,” Barbe said. “I’m not necessarily one that believes any game belongs at a particular spot. They’re all big games. You’ve got to be ready 10 weeks out of the season.
“We’ve had some times with Millbrook where weather has been a factor late in the season. When the opportunity was there to play earlier in the season, I think Scott and I both were fine with that. You have to be ready 10 times in a season, and what week it falls I don’t think is a huge issue for us and our teams.”
For the most part, Mankins said they’ve been fortunate with the weather for the Sherando-Millbrook games. But as this year demonstrated, there’s risk involved in early November.
“[Barbe] and I talked about it, and we didn’t want to keep hoping for good weather,” Mankins said. “Moving it up a little earlier in the season, there’s pros and cons to it. When both teams are strong, it’s an exciting last regular-season game, but at the same time we don’t want weather and potential field conditions to take away from it.”
Pioneers football coach Josh Haymore said while he liked playing Sherando at the end of the year, he’s OK with the change. He just wants to play strong teams, and he says next year’s schedule will be the strongest schedule he’s had in his seven years at Millbrook.
“At the end of the year, you always kind of knew the past few years, since we’ve been winning games, [Sherando-Millbrook] is the game that’s deciding the Apple Cup and district championship,” Haymore said. “It was kind of the championship before the hunt for the championship.
“What matters is that when you play [Sherando], you’re playing a playoff-caliber team. You benefit from that whether you play them first, fifth or 10th.”
Sherando coach Bill Hall said the schedule change doesn’t have any special meaning to him.
“Every week is very important to us,” Hall said. “Whenever [Millbrook] pops up on the schedule, it will be an important week, but so are the other nine weeks.”
Both Millbrook (four straight playoff appearances) and Sherando (12 playoff berths in 14 years) will still be playing schools in their regular-season finales that should test them as they look to get back to the postseason. The Pioneers will host Culpeper (Class 3 state semifinalists last year). Defending Class 4 Northwestern District Sherando will travel to Class 4 district runner-up Kettle Run, which lost 16-14 to the Warriors in the Region 4C semifinals last year.
For the past two years, Kettle Run played James Wood in the season’s final week.
Colonels coordinator of student activities Craig Woshner said two years ago that schools went into the planning for new Class 4 Northwestern District knowing that they would have to be flexible with their schedules to make it work. As a result, the Colonels moved their game with Handley up a week. The Judges still closed with James Wood because they had an open date in Week 11 the last two years.
Back in 2016 Woshner said one reason he didn’t mind moving the Handley game was because they always had to compete with the Sherando-Millbrook game for fans.
Woshner said the movement of the Millbrook-Sherando game for the next two years had no bearing on the decision to move James Wood-Handley back to the last game of the regular season, but he likes the idea of playing Handley in Week 11 again.
When there’s an odd number of teams in a district, there’s always at least one team that has to play a non-district game or has an off week throughout the entire year. The addition of Culpeper created an even number of teams, and James Wood and Handley were able to make Week 11 work for each other.
“Looking at Fauquier and Liberty too, everybody has their rivalry game,” Woshner said. “James Wood and Handley have been playing the last game for many, many years, and in the last cycle, somebody had to bite the bullet and give that last week of the schedule up so that it worked out for the entire district. At that time, former [Handley director of student activities] Rick Lilly and I both said we were willing to do it and move [the game]. But it’s nice to get that back as the last game of the season again.”
James Wood will open Crimson-Apple play in the season opener on Aug. 30 when it hosts Sherando — the second straight year the Warriors will travel to Kelican Stadium to begin the season. (Woshner noted the complexities of creating a balanced schedule of five home games and five road games means some teams will have to travel to the same locations for the second consecutive year. This was also an issue in the last two-year cycle.)
The other Crimson-Apple games are Handley at Millbrook in Week 7 (Oct. 11) and Millbrook at James Wood in Week 10 (Nov. 1).
— Contact Robert Niedzwiecki at
rnie
dzwiecki@winchesterstar.com
