Maxpreps.com can’t tell you the last time a football team from Midland Valley High began a season 3-0.
That’s because the popular high school sports record-keeping website only goes back to 2004. Which means the last time Midland Valley began a season with three straight wins was, well, a long time ago — 1998 to be exact.
Maybe that’s why Friday night’s 21-7 victory over previously undefeated Silver Bluff was so special for the Mustangs. It was special enough that the Mustangs players on the sideline waved goodbye to the opposing side, even while Silver Bluff was still trying to tack a last-second touchdown onto the scoreboard.
Midland Valley running back Traevon Dunbar said it wasn’t so much a matter of taunting or trash talking as much as it was the satisfaction of proving naysayers wrong.
“This win just feels great,” Dunbar said. “We put in a lot of work this summer. People doubted us from the time we stepped on the field, talking about we’re gonna get blown out. But we already knew the expectations coach (Earl) Chaptman wanted us to do, so when we stepped out on the field, we already knew what was going to happen.”
Leaving no doubt
What happened was domination.
Although the 14-point margin of victory wouldn’t be called a blowout by most, it was clear that Midland was the better team Friday night.
The Mustangs opened scoring when junior quarterback Preston Butler connected with tight end Evan Phillips on a 35-yard scoring strike that put Midland Valley up 7-0 early in the first quarter.
Not long after, Dunbar — who’s flexed his muscles with a pair of 200-plus yard rushing performances to begin the season — rumbled his way down the sideline for a 69-yard touchdown that extended the Mustangs’ lead to 14-0 in the first quarter.
In the second quarter, Midland Valley scored its last points of the game when Preston Butler found Antrone Butler on a 10-yard slant route to the end zone to extend the lead to 21-0 with three minutes left in the second quarter.
Silver Bluff tried to chip away at the three-score deficit when Jayden Fuller scored from about 10 yards out with 31 seconds remaining in the second quarter to make it 21-7, Valley at halftime.
That proved to be all the scoring necessary for the win, as the Mustangs’ defense took control from there. Things on the scoreboard could’ve been worse if not for a pair of Dunbar touchdown runs getting called back due to penalties on the offensive line. But Chaptman was in no mood to complain about his team doing something that hadn’t been done at the school in 25 years.
“It just means that our guys have worked hard, and we’re seeing the benefits of it,” Chaptman said. “It’s not just what we’ve done this past offseason and this season. This has been a 3-year process and journey. And a lot of these guys were with us when we first started and we just won one football game. They stuck with it and they kept pushing and kept buying into what we tried to create.”
Hard work paying off
Count Phillips and offensive lineman Braydn Kesselring — both seniors — as part of that group.
“It feels amazing to be where we are,” Phillips said. “We’ve worked hard these past three years, gave everything in the summer, and, yeah, it just feels real good.”
Kesselring attributes the program’s rebuild to the cerebral impact Chaptman’s coaching has had on the players.
“It was more of a mentality thing,” Kesselring said. “Before now, everybody just started quitting when we would get down. But now that we’ve built that relationship, it’s definitely better.”
Both players point to games from the 2022 season as signs that things were starting to take an upward turn.
“I think, for me, it was last year at Thurmond,” Phillips said of the 29-23 win against the Rebels. “We just fought. We fought hard and just wanted it.”
Kesselring said last season’s 70-33 thumping of Aiken was what did it for him.
“We really stomped them in that game,” Kesselring said, “and once we did that, we felt we were really going places.”
Last year, the Mustangs found themselves with a 5-6 record and a rare trip to the state playoffs. But this year’s talk shows that the expectations are, indeed higher.
Not the ‘same old Valley’
“Everybody thinks we’re still the old Valley,” Dunbar said. “Everybody thinks they can just run over the Valley. Everybody thinks we’ve got no players, so that’s that chip on our shoulder that coach installed in us. That’s that humble pie that coach is talking about, meaning, you think we’re trash. You think we’re not good, but we’re gonna humble you and show you what we’ve been doing and how we’ve been work.”
Chaptman likes the edge his star players play with. He said it was born out of adversity and has become contagious.
“We have tough kids,” Chaptman said. “They’ve had life experiences that cause them to be tough. They’ve had football experiences that haven’t gone their way. A lot of that has just prepared them for this moment. Having struggle brings strength. And now you’re just seeing these guys get the fruit of their labor.”
Now, Dunbar, Kesselring and Phillips all emphatically state that, after everything the team has been through, they believe they are now part of a state championship caliber program. And their coach didn’t say much to discourage their thinking.
“We can be one of the best teams in the state in Class AAAA,” Chaptman said. “And I definitely we’re trending in that direction.”
