Mountain Ridge's Patterson wins Coach of the Year

Feb. 27—FROSTBURG — After guiding Mountain Ridge to its first unbeaten regular season in school history and a consecutive trip to the Class 1A state championship game, Ryan Patterson was named Coach of the Year by the area's head coaches.

Frankfort's Kevin Whiteman and Fort Hill's Zack Alkire, who won the award last year, also received votes.

"I'm not really big on an individual award for a coach, but if you wanna look at it as an award that would go to a program that has come a long way (I'd accept it)," Patterson said.

"It speaks to all the good people I have working with me. ... I count my blessings. I have really good coaches, that's obvious, but the players buying into what we have going on and even the support staff. There are a lot of people in place that work behind the scenes for us that make this thing go."

Mountain Ridge won its first 12 games of the season before falling to Fort Hill, 16-14, on a last-second field goal by Quinn Cohen in Annapolis. The Miners' closest game before the title bout was a 30-8 rout of the Sentinels on Oct. 7, 2022.

Over the past two seasons, Mountain Ridge has a 23-3 record and a perfect 22-0 mark against everyone not named Fort Hill.

The Miners went 12-1 last year, again runner-ups in 1A, but were tasked with replacing record-setting quarterback Bryce Snyder, now at Frostburg State, and other key contributors on both sides off the ball.

Mountain Ridge filled those gaps and then some, embarking on what will likely go down as one of the greatest offensive seasons in area history.

The Miners scored 577 points in 13 games (44.4 points per game), and their defense was no slouch either, allowing just 142 points (10.9 average).

On an individual level, quarterback Uma Pua'auli rewrote the record books, both within the area and across the state of Maryland.

Locally, Pua'auli set the single-season passing touchdown record with his 30th score, surpassing the previous mark of 29 held by Snyder (2021) and Moorefield's Will Fisher (1996).

The duel-threat star also became the first player in state history to throw for more than 25 touchdowns and rush for 20 more — he had 21 scores on the ground. With 51 combined TDs, he was the sixth in MPSSAA history to score 50-plus times.

With a dynamic quarterback, an elite ballcarrier and pass-catcher out of the backfield in Jaden Lee (1,445 all-purpose yards, 20 touchdowns), a host of receiving options and the area's best offensive line led by Peyton Miller and Eric Fadley, Mountain Ridge was virtually unstoppable.

"We've gotten together as a staff and tried to reflect, tried to enjoy things a little bit and try to understand how significant of two seasons we've put together," Patterson said. "It's just kind of not in our nature. We're already deep into next season.

"At the same time, we have some great seniors that are walking out the door, and we do want to celebrate what they've meant to our program. ... We don't want them walking out of the program not knowing how appreciative we are."

It's rare for a team to be as in-psych with its coaches and with each other as Mountain Ridge was in 2022.

Seemingly every play called by offensive coordinator Sefa Pua'auli had the potential to go for six, and every defensive game-plan set by Adam Patterson was not only well-crafted, but well-executed by personnel able to absorb information like sponges.

"As a coach, you want to have your kids listen to what you say and follow suit," Ryan Patterson said. "Sometimes it's just a theory. Sometimes it's a lot of coach-speak.

"I literally felt like these kids, whether we were talking about football or the weight room, they were eating out of our hands. We had a very knowledgeable staff that was ready and willing to give a lot of knowledge to these youngsters.

"That's one of the more impressive things I've seen in my coaching career, just how coachable these kids were. It was so gratifying to be their coach."

For all the attention the offense got, Mountain Ridge's defense was every bit as good, notably holding an ultra-talented Fort Hill offense that averaged more than 37 points a game to only 24 over two meetings.

It started up front with the dynamic senior duo of Jaden Rosales and Jacob Tinsley, who combined for 38 tackles for loss and 8.5 sacks.

Senior linebacker Hunter Clise (120 tackles, 12.5 TFL) was one of the area's best, and Carson Bradley, Will Patterson and Uma Pua'auli headlined a capable secondary.

It wasn't long ago that Mountain Ridge was struggling to string together winning seasons, doing so just once between 2012-20. Now, winning has become an expectation in Frostburg.

With success comes a step up in reputation. Ryan Patterson is beginning to see the effect of that.

"It's one of my proudest things, seeing where this program is right now and knowing how hard of a climb it was to get where we are," he said.

"One thing that I've noticed is, we had a team drop us, and just filling that team in our schedule has been quite the journey to find a team that would play us. We've had teams call us from all over that are a little bit out of our league. ... I take that as a badge of honor."

Alex Rychwalski is a sports reporter at the Cumberland Times-News. Follow him on Twitter @arychwal.