Hillsdale’s run adds to rare Ashland-area Final Four history

JEROMESVILLE — They can be counted on one hand.

Despite more than a half-century of high school football playoffs in Ohio, the entire Ashland area – 10 schools in total – has just five appearances in the state Final Four.

Hillsdale’s record-setting odyssey this season makes No. 5.

Before the Falcons (13-1) and head coach Trevor Cline kick off Friday night at Shelby High School against Danville (12-2), they might want to take a few minutes to consider the history they have already made.

“I texted Trevor last week and told him to go get that regional championship because that’s a big deal,” said Ashland head coach Scott Valentine, whose 2007 Arrows were the last area team to make the Final Four.

“There are certain groups of kids that, as they come together as a team, they raise their level of expectation and raise their level of play,” he added. “For a coaching staff working with those kids, it’s always a neat and exciting thing.”

Hillsdale, ranked No. 5 in the final Division VII AP state poll, is the first area team to win four playoff games. It will be the first to ever play 15 total games in a season.

Cline said he’s made sure his players have taken time to enjoy this year while not losing focus on the next kickoff.

“I definitely think it’s going to be something that, not only are the players cherishing it now, but when they look back five, 10, 15 years down the road on their high school experience, they’re going to truly understand how special it actually was,” the coach said.

A victory Friday also would give the Falcons the area record for single-season wins. The team they are currently tied with – the 1990 Loudonville Redbirds (13-1) – is the only one in area history to play in a state championship game.

The man who led LHS that season was Mike Warbel, a legendary area coach who helped author Final Four runs for the Redbirds in 1983, 1988 and 1990.

He learned a thing or two about what it took to even earn a spot in the playoffs during his 22 seasons at Loudonville (151-75-2 record).

“You can’t be a coach just to win,” Warbel told Ashland Source this week. “I never, ever worried about my image or that you have to win, win, win. It was about the group. We were responsible for doing our part to make sure that these kids grew up to be responsible people, and I took that to heart.

“There was a lot of discipline, there was a lot of talk about doing things together and there was a lot of talk about becoming a better man.”

While 448 teams qualify for the postseason in the current format (64 in each of the seven divisions), only 12 squads made the playoffs in all of Ohio when Warbel took over at Loudonville in 1975.

The Redbirds finished the regular season a perfect 10-0 in both 1975 and 1978 and didn’t make it into the postseason either year.

The bitterness from that prompted Warbel and LHS to leave their conference and instead play an independent schedule against many much larger programs.

“I think it was the heartbreak of not getting in where we just said, ‘We’ll play anybody (for the chance to qualify),’ ” he said. “Our kids wanted to be there. Every day in the weight room, the discussion was to get into the playoffs and try to win a state championship.

“We just thought if we prepared hard enough and played hard enough, we could do it.”

The move paid off in 1983 when the Redbirds knocked off teams including Mansfield Senior, Canton Central Catholic and Coshocton on the way to the Division IV playoffs.

At that point, just 40 teams qualified to the postseason, so when Loudonville beat Margaretta 49-8 on a snow-covered Arlin Field in the Ashland area’s first-ever playoff game, it was for a regional championship.

The Redbirds lost a week later against Orrville back at Arlin Field, 24-15, but they had set a postseason precedent for area football.

In 1988, with 80 teams reaching the playoffs, Warbel and Loudonville returned to the Division IV Final Four following wins over both Elyria Catholic (31-24) and Clear Fork (44-21).

This time, the Redbirds’ bid to play for a state title was thwarted by Canton Central Catholic in a 46-0 state semifinal pummeling.

The Crusaders won the crown the next week, 21-6 over Versailles.

“It was a matter of understanding what pressure’s all about and building this concept of confidence,” Warbel said. “You’ve got to overcome hurdles to get to the point where you can build on the next step.

“When you keep going and going and going, the pressure keeps building and building and building.”

Two years later, Warbel and Loudonville made what remains the deepest run in Ashland-area history, playing for the Division IV state championship against Versailles.

The 1990 Redbirds shut out half of the teams they played in that regular season, then plowed through Smithville (47-8) and Elyria Catholic (25-7) on their way back to the state semifinals.

That game pitted No. 2-ranked Loudonville against No. 1-ranked Campbell Memorial, a team coming off a state runner-up finish the year before.

Warbel said it’s the first game that comes to mind when he thinks back on all of the Redbirds’ playoff seasons.

Loudonville trailed the Red Devils 7-0 at halftime and the coach told his team they were in the perfect position to win, even though he admits he wasn’t as confident as he acted at the time.

Warbel said the plan was to score in the second half, fake the extra-point kick and win it, 8-7.

That’s exactly what happened.

Running back Dan Weber surged into the end zone from a yard out and quarterback Jason Beans hit receiver Ritchie Burkepile for a two-point conversion pass.

Loudonville withstood three threatening drives by Campbell Memorial in the fourth quarter to earn the victory.

“The effort that our kids put forth on defense in the second half of that game, and then to march down the field and score,” Warbel said. “Then going for the win at that point with still a lot of time on the clock. It was such a great win.”

The coach said his team was pretty battered after that semifinal victory. Despite a quick, 14-0 first-quarter lead a week later in the title game against Versailles, a bad second quarter doomed the Redbirds and they dropped a 29-26 defeat at Massillon’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium.

No Ashland-area team has made it to the final week of the season since.

“When we get together for any reason, you look at them and smile and look at what these guys have accomplished,” said Warbel of the 1990 Loudonville team, which in October was inducted into the Ashland County Sports Hall of Fame. “And if they would have won everything along the way – even though they may have paid the price – it might not have worked out so well.

“You have to understand and appreciate the sting of getting beaten and how much good it can do for you. Sometimes that’s even more important than winning.”

The Redbirds won eight of their first nine games that season by at least 28 points. They won the Mohican Area Conference and had first-team All-Ohioans in Weber, Beans and receiver Pete Brothers.

When the team returned to Loudonville the night of its loss in the state championship, hundreds of fans drove around downtown honking their horns.

“Hillsdale is a perfect example of Loudonville from this aspect: Our fans couldn’t be any better,” Warbel said. “We sold our kids on it, that this community does everything imaginable to support us. … That’s where we felt the obligation.

“We didn’t get here just because we’re so good, we got here because of the entire community and what the people have done to help us get here.”

In the 33 years after that 1990 run, the only other area squad to make the Final Four was Ashland in 2007.

Those Arrows were coming off a Division II state poll title and a run to the regional championship game in 2006 – the 100^th season of football in AHS history.

Loaded with a talented senior class now bubbling over with expectations in 2007, Ashland scored what at that time was its most points in a season (422).

The Arrows ran through the Ohio Cardinal Conference with a perfect league record for the second straight season, then won their first three playoff games by seven points each.

Their 21-14 win in the second round came over an Avon Lake program picked by some to win the Division II state title.

“Each time you’re in the playoffs, you kind of learn a little bit more and you try to make your kids aware of certain things,” Valentine said. “But for a lot of those kids it’s the first time they’re in, so you also want them to enjoy the opportunity they have.”

Ashland knocked off Sylvania Southview the next week, 21-14, to capture its lone regional championship to date, but couldn’t continue the magic in the Final Four.

Following a pair of touchdowns late in the first half, Cincinnati Anderson took a 21-10 lead into intermission before outlasting the Arrows and Division II Offensive Player of the Year Taylor Housewright, 35-20.

Anderson won the state title a week later. It marked the third straight time Ashland was eliminated from the playoffs by the eventual state champ (also Piqua in 2006 and Avon Lake in 2003).

“In 2007, we’d had the run the year before, and those were just good groups of kids who did things in the community and were good representatives,” Valentine said.

“We tell our kids all the time they have to represent our community in the right way. The community really got behind that group and they’ve done that since then.”

This Friday, the area’s Final Four history expands with Hillsdale.

The Falcons have already shattered their previous wins record set by the 2010 team that went 11-2 with Cline at quarterback.

In Danville, they will be facing a team that knocked them off just two years ago in the second round of the playoffs.

Hillsdale put together one of the greatest comebacks in program history that night, overcoming deficits of 21-0 and 35-21 against the Blue Devils before falling short, 42-41.

Now the matchup takes place on a much bigger stage.

Warbel said it’s one the Falcons should cherish.

“They need to understand what it means to represent Ashland County and Ashland-area football and make people all over the area proud,” he said. “I wish them the best.”