The superlatives ran out months ago when folks tried describing the 2024 high school football season for Ashland and Hillsdale.
And with the stacks of talent the Arrows and Falcons have coming back for kickoff Friday night, fans might have to start making up new words to describe the squads.
Without a doubt, the 2025 campaign will go down as one of the most anticipated in the history of Ashland County football.
In 2024, Hillsdale gave the area just its second state championship game appearance ever, rewriting the overwhelming majority of its program record books.
The Falcons (14-2) were the first local squad ever to win five playoff games before finishing as Division VII state runners-up to Marion Local and the greatest senior class in Ohio history (four state titles, perfect 64-0 record).
Following a 5-6 finish in 2023, Ashland erupted for just the fifth perfect regular season in its 118-year history last season.
The Arrows’ 12-1 mark tied a program record for wins and their outright title in the Ohio Cardinal Conference was their first in 13 years.
Barring key injuries, there is absolutely no reason this season won’t be even more jaw-dropping.
Both teams have returning All-Ohio quarterbacks in Ashland senior Nathan Bernhard (committed to NCAA Division I Appalachian State University) and Hillsdale junior Kael Lewis (drawing plenty of college interest).
Both return nearly all of their top skill-position players and are bringing back a majority of their starters.
Unlike last year, both are preseason picks to win their respective conferences.
A magnifying glass will be on Ashland County as much as ever this fall.
Here’s more on why:
Hillsdale
Former Falcon quarterback Trevor Cline enters his eighth season as head coach and returns his entire coaching staff after losing just six seniors.
His roster has swelled from 40 to 50 and he’s got nine returning starters on both sides of the ball — with the majority of those adding 10 to 15 pounds of muscle in the offseason.
The bulletin board in the weight room must have read, “Eat Your Wheaties.”
“They’ve had a good offseason and that should pay dividends for us,” said Cline, now 57-26 at his alma mater (.687). “The two games that we lost, we struggled physically against those teams.
“There’s a lot of outside noise. It’s good and bad, but the players have done a great job so far of just knowing that they’ve got to prepare one day at a time, one week at a time, one game at a time.”
Cline, who shared Division VII Coach of the Year honors last season, has six returning All-Ohioans.
They include the 6-2, 185-pound Lewis (3,053 yards and 35 TDs passing last year), running back Owen Sloan (school-record 42 career TDs, 1,658 rushing yards last year), wide receiver Hayden McFadden (school-record 1,369 yards and 18 TDs receiving last year), linebacker Brady Heller (school-record 150 tackles last year), defensive back Brock Bower (11 total TDs, 47 tackles, 3 INTs last year) and kicker AJ Brown (142 of 155 on PAT kicks, 157 points in his career).
Cline said Lewis has refined his pocket presence and is reading coverages better. He said the junior has grown into more of a leader and likely will run the ball more as well.
Sloan, meanwhile, has fully recovered from the ankle injury that hindered him during the playoff run last season. Cline said his explosiveness has returned, accompanied by 20 pounds of added muscle.
The senior ran for a program-record 287 yards in Hillsdale’s unforgettable third-round, 50-48 victory over Malvern.
That same night, Lewis completed Hail Mary touchdown passes at the end of both the first half and regulation, providing arguably the most scintillating finish to a playoff game in area history.
The Falcons have a 16-man senior class and the only injury of note thus far is to returning standout senior lineman Landon Thomas, who Cline hopes will return in the second half of the regular season.
Hillsdale, however, won’t get a free pass back to the state title game, and the Wayne County Athletic League is still a hurdle for the program.
Despite all their success over the past two decades, the Falcons still boast just one outright conference title (Cline’s junior season in 2010). They have made an area-record nine consecutive trips to the playoffs but don’t have a single first-place WCAL finish in that stretch.
It speaks to the talent of a conference that has had a team make the state semifinals four times since 2011.
Hillsdale also has never had a 10-0 regular season, and its chances at outright league crowns in both 2011 and 2014 were thwarted with Week 10 losses to Norwayne and Dalton, respectively.
Both of those foes will be stout again this season after 10-win campaigns last year, and the Falcons are on the road against the pair as well.
Cline said Smithville (8-4 in 2024) also should be improved, so the league could have four teams pushing for double-digit wins.
Hillsdale’s nonleague slate features three foes that all should be better as well in Black River, Lucas and Loudonville.
Needless to say, the regular season is no gimme for the Falcons, despite the most talented roster in the more than six decades of the program’s existence.
And competing in a new region, Hillsdale very well could end up locking horns with traditional powerhouse Danville for a regional crown — one round earlier than when the two met last year in a 25-22 Falcon victory in the state semifinals in Shelby.
“Our goal is to get back to the state championship and compete for a state championship, but that’s 16 weeks away,” Cline said. “Our focus is on Black River this week.”
Ashland
Arrow fans might be getting a bit of a deja vu vibe.
Two other times in the last two decades they have returned first-team All-Ohio quarterbacks after monster seasons (Taylor Housewright in 2007 and Marcus Fuller in 2010). Both times, the encore was a thing of beauty.
The 2007 squad went 12-2 and made Ashland’s lone Final Four appearance.
The 2010 team finished 10-3 and shredded many of Ashland’s offensive records, including a 40.1 points-per-game average.
This time around, they have Bernhard, who is coming off the best junior season ever by an AHS quarterback. The 6-6, 240-pound senior accounted for 46 touchdowns (24 passing, 22 rushing) and 4,116 yards (2,895 passing, 1,221 rushing) a year ago.
After committing to Appalachian State in April, Bernhard said he was excited to enter a season without having the stress of recruiting on his back.
All told, he had 14 Division I offers.
“I’ll just be able to have fun playing high school football,” said the senior, who didn’t throw an interception in his final six games last year (125 passes). “It’s one of the greatest things you get to do growing up and it’s just a special thing to play on Friday nights.”
He’ll do it with a cavalry of supercharged talent around him.
Bernhard and junior Grayson Baith (437 yards, 7 TDs rushing) were Ashland’s top two runners last fall, and AHS also returns three of its top four receivers in All-OCC performers Gabe Baith (59 catches, 894 yards, 7 TDs), Killian O’Brien (34-726-8) and Dakota Kruty (24-353-4).
It’s a group that head coach Scott Valentine said had the Arrows competing right alongside some of the very best teams in the state during 7-on-7 competition in recent months.
Defensively, 5-11, 200-pound linebacker Gunner Lacey is a headline-grabbing talent all to his own. The first-team All-Ohioan has 317 career tackles — just 80 away from breaking Anthony Deppen’s program record set in 2009.
The athleticism isn’t just in the numbers, either. O’Brien has a Division I FCS offer from Austin Peay and Division II Ashland University. All-OCC senior lineman Brandon Briggs has an offer from Division II Hillsdale College. Lacey has an offer from AU and is drawing interest from some mid-major Division I programs, and Kruty has offers for track from both AU and Hillsdale College.
Plug in one of the best kickers in program history with senior Carson O’Brien — last year’s OCC Special Teams Player of the Year (106 career points) — and all three phases are oozing with talent for the Arrows.
The squad will need to find some new leaders in its secondary and also has some question marks in the trenches, but with guys like lineman Budda Martin — a senior who bench-pressed 440 pounds in the offseason — no level on the field lacks star power for Ashland.
And with six home games in the regular season, the Arrows could even have a chance to play in front of the Community Stadium faithful eight total times this year.
“When there’s an expectation, you can either accept it and grow with it, or you can run from it — you can run and hide and not work to get the job done,” said Valentine, in his 20th year as the Arrows head coach (147-67, .687) and also returning nearly his entire coaching staff from a season ago. “This group has taken that role and they’ve worked.”
Like Hillsdale, the Arrows should be tested even more this regular season.
In nonconference play, they replace 2024 opponents River Valley, Linsly (W.V.) and Maple Heights for games against Bay, Clyde and Dover.
Clyde hasn’t missed the playoffs since 2012 and won a state title six years ago. Bay, meanwhile, has made 11 straight trips to the postseason and Dover — which will join the OCC in 2026 — has been there every year since 2018.
The OCC is sure to be better as well, and the Arrows could get their biggest league test in Week 10 at Lexington.
The Minutemen also won a pair of playoff games last year and have Power Four college commits in 6-5 quarterback Joe Caudill, who will likely play tight end at Michigan State, and 6-3 receiver Brayden Fogle, who will play tight end at Georgia.
Ashland remains in its same Division II region, which still will feature reigning region champ Big Walnut (beat AHS 28-10 in the third round last year), Columbus DeSales and Massillon, among other potential challengers.
There will be plenty of roadblocks for both the Arrows and Falcons to clear if they want to recapture and even surpass last year’s spectacles. But they both have the studs to do it.
Get your popcorn ready, Ashland County.
