Spalding, St. Mary?s and Severn are all rivals by the nature that the three private schools are located in Anne Arundel County. The rivalry takes on added meaning since their football teams play against each other in the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B South Conference.
Spalding clearly established itself as the team to beat among its county rivals, and all of the other B Conference schools, after going 10-1 and knocking off Boys? Latin, 35-10, in last year?s league championship.
Spalding coach Mike Whittles? brand of football is not flashy. In 2005, the Cavaliers ran the ball 416 times for 2,920 yards and threw the ball just 94 times for 624 yards. Still, interest in football at Spalding has never been greater. The program has 120 kids playing this year. This allowed Whittles to field a freshman team for the first time.
Spalding graduated 12 seniors from last year?s team, but, as Whittles pointed out, many of those holes will be filled by players coming up from a junior varsity team that went 17-0 over the last two seasons.
“This will be a very competitive league this season,” Whittles said. “A lot of people are counting us out because of the players we lost, but every school lost key players and I think we have a lot of good players coming back. I don?t think it would be smart to underestimate us.”
Spalding may be the class of the B Conference, but both Severn and St. Mary?s have shown they can compete withjust about anybody in the league.
St. Mary?s is coming off a 5-5 season last season in coach Mike Clay?s first year at the helm. The .500 record came one season after the Saints went 1-9. Their improvement came mainly from great defensive play ? the Saints allowed just 107 points. This included six games where they allowed less than 10 points, one of which came Oct. 28 in a close 8-0 loss to Spalding.
Severn is coming off an inconsistent year in which the Admirals beat up on teams like Harford Tech and Baltimore Lutheran (33-7 and 41-6, respectively). At the same time, they were also on the opposite end of the spectrum in a 35-18 loss to Spalding and a 35-0 loss to St. Paul?s. The Admirals did end their season on a high note by beating St. Mary?s, 20-17, at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
