Cougars to Welcome Home 1991 State Title Football Team

On Saturday, October 1st, Quince Orchard will honor the 1991 4A state championship football team during the Seneca Valley game. As the school gets ready to welcome home members of the team and coaching staff, Patch.com sat down with former players and coaches to reflect on that season.

Pre-Season:

In the summer of 1991, just three years after Quince Orchard High School opened its doors, a group of football players – a mix of juniors and seniors – was preparing for the upcoming season, excited to be reunited again.

The same group played together two years before on the junior varsity level and went undefeated during the 1989 season. Momentum had been building the following year as well, which gave the team hope that 1991 was going to be a special year.

The 1990 team finished 8-2, which in today's era, would likely be enough for most teams in Montgomery County to make the playoffs. But not back then.

"You have to remember, back then only eight teams in the entire state got in as opposed to 16 today," recalls Larry Hurd, the team's starting quarterback on the 1991 championship team and now coach at Clarksburg High School. "When you played in Montgomery County at that point in time, if you lost twice, you weren't making the playoffs."

Quince Orchard's two losses that season came at the hands of Seneca Valley and Wootton. Wootton later lost in the 1990 state championship to Randallstown.

But, 1991 was going to be different. There was a feeling among the players on the team.

"Going into that season, we knew we had something special," said Robb Hampton, a junior on the 1991 team, whose father, Bob, is a longtime Montgomery County coach and was at Wootton at the time. "When we all got back together for varsity, we were excited about the season…we expected nothing less than a state championship." 

For the seniors, they were the first class to go to the school for all four years of their high school career. For some of them, they had a feeling about their football team before they played a single game.

"Honestly, we believed we had a special group of guys from the very first day that we got together to get our equipment as freshmen," recalls Richard Tyler, a senior wide receiver on the team. "It was an attitude of confidence that Coach [Ernie] Ceccato and his staff instilled in us from day one. Perhaps we were just naive, but we believed we could and would win a state title from day one."

It didn't hurt that the school was considered state-of-the-art when it opened in 1988. This also helped the team get excited about their situation from the onset.

"We were coming into a brand new situation – a brand new school, new equipment, new uniforms, new stadium, new everything," Tyler said. "We felt as though we had the opportunity to write our own story and create our own legacy to determine whether QO would have a tradition of winning, or of losing. And we embraced that."

The Season:

The Cougars began the season strong with a 30-8 win over perennial contender, Gaithersburg. Following three more wins over Westminster, Blair, and Magruder, Quince Orchard started off 4-0. But it was about to welcome the state’s most accomplished team to town – Seneca Valley.

The rivalry between Seneca and QO was natural. Many of QO’s players would have played for Seneca had QO not been built. Many of the players grew up playing youth football together with the belief that they would play together all through high school. All that changed when QO was built and a rivalry was formed from the beginning.

"Seneca Valley was huge for many of us, as a lot of us grew up playing football with each other. There was a crowd there of over 5,000. I remember being on the field and seeing people in their cars on top of the hill, behind the fence, flashing their lights and the visitor section of the stands completely full," Hampton said. "Meanwhile, we are playing backyard football against some of our closest friends."

The game lived up to all the hype, with Quince Orchard winning, 21-20, in front of a capacity crowd at the school. The Screamin’ Eagles were up 20-14 at the half, but QO shut down Seneca for the rest of the game to earn the win. It would be the first of five one-point games that the Cougars would be involved in that season. It would also be Seneca’s only loss in the regular season.

"The Seneca Valley game is still, to this day, the biggest high school football game that I've ever seen or been a part of," Tyler said. "There were people everywhere. Bleachers packed to capacity, swarms of people on the hill behind the endzone, people crowded on the side of the highway just to get a look. It was madness…such an electric atmosphere."

The following week, QO was on the receiving end of a one-point game and lost a tough road game to Churchill, 7-6. The players called the loss deflating but were determined to move on from it.

"After that loss, I remember sitting in our locker room with some of the other guys and I don’t know how our coaches didn’t throw us out. It must’ve been midnight and we were still there and hadn’t even taken our pads off," Hurd said. "It was an awful feeling and we weren’t going to let that happen again."

The team bounced back the following week with a one-point win over Paint Branch, 14-13, then rolled over Richard Montgomery, Springbrook, and Wootton – avenging the loss from the season before – to close out the season 9-1.

The Championship:

The road to the championship started against a team that the Cougars had beaten by just one point a month before when they hosted Paint Branch in the first round of the playoffs. After another one-point squeaker, 13-12, top-seeded Quince Orchard had advanced to the second round and was ready host the Oxon Hill Clippers, a talented team from PG County.

The Cougars won the game, 7-6, thanks to Ray Gray’s 62-yard touchdown run in the second quarter. But a dramatic ending put the exclamation point on the win.

"It was late in the fourth quarter and they completed a pass that got them to like the one-foot line and we made a tackle to keep them out of the endzone," Ceccato recalls. "We forced a fourth down and they were lining up to kick a short field goal. If they make it, they're up 9-7 and we may only get one more chance. But they missed it and we ended up winning, 7-6."

It was only fitting that it was another one-point game that helped propel the Cougars to the title game, which was played at University of Maryland’s Byrd Stadium.

Tyler said: "The entire community came out to support us. It was as if all other activities stopped and people of all walks of life – young, old, football fans, and non-fans – came out to push us toward the goal. It was an unbelievable feeling. Still gives me goose bumps."

Quince Orchard controlled the championship early, when senior Obi Ogbolu, made a big tackle on the opening kickoff. Ceccato, along with several players, said that hit helped set the tone early. Quince Orchard won 34-13 over High Point and never showed any real signs of fatigue on its way to the title.

In the title game, it was once again Gray who would stand out on offense. Gray had 158 yards of total offense and scored three touchdowns (runs of 4 and 5 yards and also a 49-yard touchdown pass from Hurd in the third quarter). Hurd also had a rushing touchdown as did Jacob Ritchie, the game's first score. 

Just three years earlier, in its first season, Quince Orchard finished 1-8. Now, they were the top team in the state of Maryland and finished the year 12-1 and as the No. 1 ranked team in the DC area, according to the Washington Post. Ceccato was named Coach of the Year by the Post and Gray became the school’s first All-Met selection (and the last until Bani Gbadyu in 2005).

Looking Back:

Twenty years later, the team will be reunited formally for the first time, on the field where they once led the school to one of its best seasons in program history. It's only appropriate the game is against Seneca Valley, which of course, was not a coincidence.

The players look back now and remember, above all else, the team’s connection and chemistry, which started long before the season began.

"I just remember how close we all were and how we always believed in each other," Ricky McFarland, a junior on the team, said. "Every situation and no matter what happened or what the score was, we always knew we could beat any team on any given night."

For some, just getting together with old teammates is reward in itself.

"To be honest, the biggest thing for me is just being able to see everyone again," Hurd said. "A lot of us haven’t seen each other since we graduated. So, the greatest honor is just being able to be together again. We had a great team with great chemistry."

Of course, not all members of the 1991 team will be able to make it home. Jerry Doye, a junior on the team, is a Sergeant in the United States Army, currently serving in Iraq. He won’t be there Saturday, but his fondness for that team and that experience stay with him.

"My fondest memory of that team is how we played and pulled together, not only as a team, but also as a family," Doye said. "This is one of the reasons why I joined the Army, because of what I gained from the team and the experience."

Ogbolu added: "Those three months of my life taught me a lot about life.  It taught me that with discipline, hard work, and the drive anything is possible to achieve. I still look back in time and use those life lessons in my day to day life."

Even if the team went 20 years without seeing each other, there is an obvious bond for life.

"That season brought many of us together for life, even if 20 years go by without talking," Hampton said. "We all have great memories of that season."

Tyler added: "It was a magical time in my life, as a boy entering manhood, and I will never forget the lessons learned, the sacrifices made, and the friendships forged along the way."

Follow Patch.com throughout the week for more coverage of the 1991 team, including a one-on-one interview with Coach Ernie Ceccato. Saturday's game begins at 5:00pm.