Nothing has steeled Trotwood-Madison’s resolve better than losing last year’s Division II high school football state title game. That was an image Rams’ coaches made certain every player often reflected upon this season.
“It gave our group a vision,” Trotwood coach Maurice Douglass said. “If you don’t have a vision, what can you shoot for?”
Douglass and every other coach who is taking a team to this weekend’s state championships at Massillon and Canton addressed the media in a conference call on Monday.
Besides Trotwood, Springfield Shawnee (D-III), Coldwater (D-V) and Marion Local (D-VI) also advanced to Week 15.
Shawnee is the rookie among the four area teams, making its first state final. It’ll be the third state title game for Trotwood, including last season and Douglass’ senior year of 1981.
Midwest Athletic Conference rivals Coldwater and Marion Local gauge their seasons by state title games. Coldwater is 2-3 in championship games, like Trotwood falling last season and most recently winning in 2007.
Local is 5-1 in state title games, but hasn’t advanced this far since sweeping in 2006-07.
Trotwood (14-0) will play Avon (13-1) in the D-II final at 7 p.m. Friday at Massillon. The Rams lost 45-33 to Maple Heights in the 2010 title game.
That sting still hurts, mainly because the Rams couldn’t protect a 26-7 lead they amassed essentially in the first quarter.
To make certain no player forgot that heartache, Trotwood coaches blew up a photo of junior Cameron Burrows and stuffed it in each player’s locker prior to the playoffs. Each included a personal inscription. The image showed Burrows on his knees, weeping with the scoreboard’s final score of the Maple Heights loss emblazoned in the background.
That shot featured Burrows, but it could have been any of the other returning Rams.
“It was the toughest thing I had to swallow last season,” said Douglass, who has made his players off-limits to the media the last couple of weeks.
“Being a defensive guy, for us to have the lead like we had and then the momentum to switch and not being able to do anything defensively, it was tough. But it also fueled our guys. That goal of winning state and bringing back that title, that was the thing that fired them up the whole year.”
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