The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Behind its vocal coach, Quince Orchard returns to the field and avenges its loss to Northwest

April 10, 2021 at 12:08 p.m. EDT
Quince Orchard's John Kelley coaches against Northwest. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

There was a point in December when John Kelley thought his advocacy for a high school football season would be in vain.

“Sometimes,” Kelley said, “I felt like we weren’t ever going to play football again around here.”

But there Kelley was Friday night, jumping on the sideline at Northwest High in Germantown with his arms in the air seconds before his Quince Orchard team clinched a 7-0 win over the rival Jaguars.

Kelley has been one of the area’s most vocal coaches since last summer in favor of playing during the coronavirus pandemic, citing the mental health benefits of sports for young athletes and the lack of affordable football opportunities outside of high school.

After Montgomery County postponed the season multiple times, Kelley got his wish late last month when the school district scheduled a three-game football campaign. The pinnacle of that short season came Friday, when Kelley and his players finally experienced the excitement, nerves and joy of a crucial game.

“These guys have been playing football all their lives since they were 9, 10 years old,” Kelley said. “For a senior to get closure to their high school career I think is important.”

Kelley began posting on social media in July, when Montgomery County canceled its fall and winter sports seasons. The eighth-year coach said he has never been afraid to speak up when he feels strongly about an issue, and as one of the county’s most accomplished coaches, others listened.

“So [Montgomery County Public Schools] is just going to cancel fall and winter sports?” Kelley tweeted July 21. “No postponement? Why not [reevaluate] 1 month from now, two months from now? See if we can get in something for the kids. Disappointment is not the word.”

When Montgomery County announced its decision in July, Kelley pondered how he might have handled such news when he was a senior at Seneca Valley High in 1998. He would have missed a state championship, but more importantly, he said, he would have lost the routine that defined him. After his team played every Friday, it met again Saturday morning for breakfast and practice before spending the rest of the day watching college football.

“I can’t really fathom that,” said Kelley, the 2018 All-Met Coach of the Year who has never lost more than two games in a season. “It’s like we’re living in a bad movie. Especially when you’re that young, 15, 16 years old, to process that. That’s hard.”

Montgomery County later said it would reevaluate holding a football season, and Kelley continued advocating. His motivation dipped in the winter, though, when coronavirus cases spiked in Maryland and no other county in the state completed a sports season.

Hope returned in February, when Montgomery County began allowing practices, but that vanished a few weeks later when the county council voted football competitions were too dangerous. Kelley created a Twitter thread the day of the announcement, ending it by writing: “Over 1k student-athletes signed up for football [within] MCPS. You are taking that away for the wrong reasons.” A few days later, he attended a protest in Rockville.

The following week, one of Kelley’s players, Dante Thompson, spoke at the public hearing segment of the county council’s meeting. Thompson’s words must have struck a nerve because the council reversed its decision and allowed football games. The Cougars opened their season with a scrimmage March 26, but they were focused on Friday’s first official game.

For the first time since November 2019, Kelley felt anxious when he woke up Friday morning. He did whatever he could to keep his mind off football — running, grading papers in his role as a career support teacher at Quince Orchard and cleaning his house. When the evening arrived, Kelley put on the same red visor he has thrown onto fields so many times, both in celebration and frustration, and slipped a folded white play sheet into the right back pocket of his black sweatpants.

Kelley wanted his uncommitted players to obtain game film to send to college recruiters, but the season was also important to athletes who already had decided their futures.

“He was the only person who was really going down under for us to have a season,” said Quince Orchard defensive end Demeioun Robinson, a Maryland signee.

Many of the area’s top recruits enrolled early at their colleges with their senior seasons uncertain. In Friday’s game alone, Quince Orchard’s Ryan Barnes (Notre Dame) and Marcus Bradley (Vanderbilt) and Northwest’s Kaden Prather (West Virginia) were absent.

Robinson, a five-star recruit, had decided to sit out this season and preserve his energy for June workouts in College Park. That was before he saw Northwest on his team’s schedule.

In November 2019, Northwest defeated Quince Orchard in the Maryland 4A semifinals. Jaguars players and students rushed Quince Orchard’s field afterward. Robinson and his senior teammates said they would have departed Quince Orchard with regrets if they didn’t avenge that loss.

With Northwest driving in Quince Orchard territory in the game’s final minute Friday, Robinson ensured he would get his revenge. On fourth down, he sacked Northwest’s quarterback, prompting Kelley’s leap on the visitors’ sideline.

When the game ended, Kelley approached his players in a corner of the field with a grin and waved them in closer. They stood up and jumped around him. It was the happiest Kelley had seen his players in almost two years.

“I was just saying how I feel,” Kelley said of his protests. “If that helped this happen tonight, then that’s awesome.”