1A Football: Wray Powers Way to State Title

Something had to give.

Both Wray and Forge Christian came into the game with unblemished 12-0 records. All season long, for both teams, the margins of victory were not just impressive, but massive. Nobody questioned that this year’s title matchup pitted the top two teams in 1A.

Against that backdrop, Casey Midcap’s 33-yard sprint to the end zone on Wray’s second play from scrimmage set the Fury back on their heels in a way they had not experienced all season long.

“It set the tone,” said Midcap, the Wray quarterback. :Forge is a great team; they’ve only been scored on three times all year. We knew if we scored the first touchdown and got a stop, we would be in the driver’s seat.”

But there was more to beating Forge Christian than just getting the first score.

Midcap continued, “Every team that’s in your way, you gotta run through them. We have to be the more physical team. Coach says every day in the locker room, ‘We’re the most physical team in the state.’”

And on this picture-perfect Saturday in November, Wray was emphatically the more physical team. Wray controlled the line of scrimmage with a passion, breaking things up with its passing game just enough to keep Forge from stacking up the middle.

Even in the running game, it wasn’t all three yards and a cloud of ground-up tires, though there was plenty of that. Twice in the second quarter, Wray went to a new play it hadn’t used all season—a play that wasn’t in anyone’s scouting report. That play sprung Wray running back Samuel Meisner for a pair of touchdown jaunts covering 87 and 71 yards.

“We actually put this play in this week,” Meisner said. “We haven’t run anything like it all season. We do an overload to the right and call it our Ram Set. We run up to the line and snap it on set to catch the defense off guard.

“Everyone on the line did their job, they all blocked down, and I sprung one loose. We worked it up for this game. Forge has our film, and we haven’t done anything like this all year, so it was really just to catch them off guard.”

Ten yards downfield and clear of the first wave of defenders, Meisner hit another gear. All that remained was to spring through the goal line. The play worked to perfection, twice, pushing Wray to a 28-7 lead.

Midway through the second quarter, Wray had scored nine more points than Forge had allowed all season long.

A big early lead against a team like Forge Christian, however, is no guarantee of a favorable outcome. Forge has put points on the board in a hurry all season long, going to the mercy rule in all but one game of its season.

For that problem, there was the Wray defense. All afternoon, the big guys in purple controlled the line of scrimmage, limiting Forge to only small gains between the tackles and forcing the Fury to go to the air.

While Forge found occasional success with the passing game, the larger story of the Fury passing attack was balls batted down at the line of scrimmage. Wray defensive lineman Tavery Chappell proved particularly effective at knocking passes down before they could do any damage.

Four times, missiles sent from the hand of Forge QB Sullivan Strange thudded against the immovable objects of Chappell’s upraised hands or forearms. Chappell grinned, “If it’s a quick pass, I try to get my hands up,” as if it was just that easy. A batted pass serves as its own explanation. Play over.

But there was a lot that went more that went into Wray’s domination at the line of scrimmage. Chappell turned the focus to his teammates on the defensive line, “Staying disciplined. Our ends did a lot of work in practice this week to stay disciplined with their options and stuff.”

That discipline kept Forge bottled up most of the afternoon and kept Wray’s lead safe — through all 48 minutes

Like so many championship stories, this one, too, has a back story. Two years ago, Wray held a touchdown lead over Limon going into the fourth quarter of the 2022 1A state championship game and saw it slip away.

Asked if that had any impact on what happened today, Wray Coach Levi Kramer left no doubt, “There’s no question. We talked about it all week. It’s a 48-minute game, and we have to play 48 minutes. We’re not afraid to look at the past as long as we’re learning from it.”

On this day, Wray proved it had taken ira past to heart. The sting of the past made the Eagles a better team today. Touchdowns on the second play from scrimmage, Ram Sets, and batted passes don’t mean a thing if you don’t complete the job, and 48-21 completed the job with an exclamation point.