DEER PARK, Ohio — Some seasons end. This one keeps making history. Deer Park beat Mechanicsburg 50-28 on Friday night, November 13, in an OHSAA Division VI, Region 24 semifinal — and with the win, the Wildcats secured the first 11-win season and the first regional final berth in program history, according to Cincinnati.com, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s site. The Mansfield News Journal’s statewide scoreboard, The Columbus Dispatch’s scoreboard, High School On SI’s statewide scoreboard and TriState Football’s scoreboard all confirmed the 50-28 final.
To understand Friday, start a month earlier. Deer Park won its first Cincinnati Hills League championship this year, Cincinnati.com reported, sealing it by beating Wyoming for the first time in 20 years in the regular-season finale. A week ago, the Wildcats secured their first 10-win season since 1981 with a dominant playoff win. Friday made it 11 wins — a number no Deer Park team has ever reached — and a regional final no Deer Park team has ever played in.
The record book took the damage in person. Running back Morgan Brown scored three touchdowns in the win, Cincinnati.com reported in its Week 13 takeaways, and per head coach Tucker Berger, Brown set three school records in the process: season touchdowns, career rushing yards and career touchdowns. Brown was also named one of Cincinnati.com’s top performers of Week 13 for the performance.
Brown is half of the engine. The other half is Tink Sellers, the Wildcats’ quarterback and defensive back, whom Cincinnati.com called Deer Park’s record-setting leader on both sides of the ball. In the quarterfinal rout of Covington, Sellers produced 206 yards of total offense, three combined touchdowns and two interceptions, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer’s semifinal preview — a preview that asked which was more dangerous, Deer Park’s offense or its defense, and answered: both are led by Sellers.
Mechanicsburg was no formality. The Indians arrived as the No. 6 seed at 10-2 behind junior quarterback Matthew Davis, who had combined for more than 3,000 yards of offense and 42 touchdowns this season, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer’s preview, including 196 rushing yards and four touchdowns in a quarterfinal road win at Zane Trace. Deer Park’s 50 points — and a 22-point margin — were earned against the region’s most productive quarterback.
The shape of the program’s rise is visible in its takeaway habit, too. The Enquirer’s preview noted Deer Park’s defense intercepted five passes against Covington, including the program’s eighth interception-return touchdown of the season, scored by Titus Sayers. A team that scores on defense, runs a record-breaking tailback and takes the ball away in bunches is built for exactly the round it has now reached.
Southwest Ohio’s Friday produced finalists everywhere — the all-local final set by the game covered in Anderson Routs Troy 50-7 for Fifth Straight Trip to Regional Final among them. Anderson’s fifth straight trip is the region’s standard for sustained success; Deer Park’s first trip is the opposite story, and in its own way the bigger one: a program measuring its season in firsts.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: the Region 24 final pairing is set, Deer Park (11-1) against St. Henry, which beat Versailles 38-14 in Friday’s other semifinal, according to the Mansfield News Journal’s statewide scoreboard and Press Pros Magazine’s game report. The site is not set — the OHSAA announces regional-final sites on Sunday, November 15, according to the Canton Repository’s bracket report. What is settled: Mechanicsburg’s season ends at 10-3, and Deer Park’s history-making run gets at least one more Friday.
St. Henry is the bracket’s heavyweight test — a Midwest Athletic Conference program that just scored 38 on Versailles. Deer Park’s counter is the season itself: a league title 20 years in the making, a 45-year win-total barrier broken, and a tailback rewriting the school record book one Friday at a time. The Division VI bracket elsewhere sent Garaway through in the game covered in Garaway Beats Waterford 29-25 to Reach Regional Final Against Monroe Central — small-school Ohio’s November is being decided by programs playing the best football in their histories.
What happens next: Deer Park (11-1) faces St. Henry in the Division VI, Region 24 final on Friday, November 20, at a site the OHSAA announces Sunday, November 15. A win sends the Wildcats to the state semifinals on November 27 — one more first, in a season that has collected them weekly.