Mount View’s depth too much

DEXTER, Maine — Five teams remain undefeated through two weeks of the LTC Class D North football season.

Two are fairly predictable, defending league champion Maine Central Institute of Pittsfield and Mattanawcook Academy of Lincoln.

Two reflect the changing landscape of the sport in Maine, second-year varsity entry Houlton and newcomer Medomak Valley of Waldoboro — the latter with two fourth-quarter comebacks already to its credit.

The fifth unbeaten is Mount View of Thorndike, which improved to 2-0 with a 41-8 victory over Dexter on Saturday afternoon.

The Mustangs took the lead as junior Devan Davis returned the opening kickoff virtually untouched 83 yards to the end zone, then relied on their big, physical offensive and defensive fronts to control the line of scrimmage the rest of the day.

“Last year we had 22 or 23 kids on the team, but we’ve got nearly double that number this year,” said third-year Mount View coach Haggie Pratt, the former longtime Dexter mentor who was coaching his first varsity game from the visitors’ sideline at Tiger Field. “We had some issues at Mount View last year, but I don’t have one kid ineligible this year and that’s been a great sign.

“I’ve never had this much depth anywhere I’ve been.”

Nowhere was that depth more evident than in the offensive backfield, where nine different ballcarriers combined to rush for 312 yards — with no runner carrying the ball more than nine times.

Senior Tyler Ripley led the way, rushing for 142 yards and two touchdowns on six carries despite nursing a sore Achilles’ tendon. His two scores, on runs of 32 and 14 yards, marked the only TDs of the second quarter as Mount View stretched its lead to 27-0 at the break.

Jack Axsom added 82 yards and a third-quarter touchdown on eight tries while Darrin Cook contributed 49 yards — including a first-quarter TD run spanning 7 yards — on nine attempts.

That ground game, which averaged 7 yards per carry, was ignited by the blocking of linemen Ethan Sewell-Berry, Colton Medina, Owen Cunningham, Alex Sobey and Casey Spaulding.

“Give Dexter credit,” said Pratt, whose club hosts MCI next Saturday afternoon. “We ran option anytime we wanted to last week (a 49-12 win over Camden Hills of Rockport); today they took it away from us. But we have quite a few weapons.”

Mount View limited 0-2 Dexter to 185 total yards, including an 8-for-16, 82-yard passing performance by junior quarterback Brayden Miller.

“We definitely improved our defense today,” said Ripley. “We didn’t have to change a whole lot, but we made better tackles … gang tackles.”

Miller did set up Dexter’s lone touchdown through the air late in the third quarter with completions of 35 yards to Zach White and 21 yards to Bryce Salsbury before Salsbury ran the ball in from the 1 to complete a five-play, 60-yard march and cut the deficit to 34-8.

But Davis got that score back for Mount View, capping off a 71-yard march with a 20-yard scoring run with 3:06 left in the game.

“We haven’t put together back-to-back games like this in a long time so I’m proud of the overall play, especially on defense,” said Pratt. “I thought we swarmed to the ball well, tackled a whole lot better than we had been. We did have some breakdowns that we need to clean up a little bit, but all in all we played pretty well today.”