Jim Mashek

DAVIS FANT, JAKE NAPIER AND ISAIAH MARTIN ARE READY TO PLAY FOR STATE CHAMPIONSHIP

Two or three weeks ago, I thought about the KHSAA’s Championship Weekend and what I might be able to do beyond the conventional previews, game stories and the like.

If I was lucky enough to be covering it.

And then I tried to remember what it was like to be a teenager.

(Trust me, it wasn’t easy.)

So I told Davis Fant, the Bowling Green High School football team’s colorful senior linebacker, what I had in mind.

I wanted to meet Davis and a couple of his teammates over a meal to find out what was on the Purples’ minds.

Fant was down with the idea, and I settled on fellow BGHS seniors Jake Napier, also a linebacker, and Isaiah Martin, the hard-charging center who sets the Purples’ offense into motion on each and every play.

Made sense.

The pretty boys usually get all the pub, the running backs, the receivers, especially the quarterbacks. Besides, with the Purples, a lot of those so-called “skill position” guys are underclassmen, such as sophomore quarterback Deuce Bailey, junior receiver Easton Barlow and junior running back Jevan Huddleston.

Huddleston had yet another big game in Bowling Green’s impressive 47-20 victory over Somerset’s Southwestern High School last weekend in the KHSAA Class 5A semifinals.

I wanted to talk to some BGHS seniors. Pick their brains a little bit.

In a relaxed setting. No shot clock. Away from campus. An early breakfast made sense.

So on Wednesday morning, another cold day with the sun still coming up, I made arrangements to meet Davis Fant, Isaiah Martin and Jake Napier for breakfast at the Corner Bakery Cafe on Scottsville Road, a five-minute drive from the BGHS campus and 10, 15 minutes from the hacienda on the other side of town.

Jake was a natural. You can almost see him in a coat and tie, under those bright TV lights, sharing the news of the day with a good-natured smile and easy-going manner.

Isaiah’s equally affable. The 6-foot-2, 290-pound BGHS center, the guy who snaps the ball to Deuce Bailey, usually in the pistol formation, before executing his block in the middle of the line. Isaiah seems to like being quoted, and I’ve been pretty quick to oblige over the last four months or so.

Then there was Davis.

Fant is the Purples’ charismatic inside linebacker, a guy who sometimes communicates with his eyes, his mannerisms, while bringing intensity to the table, the practice field, or the locker room.

Davis wanted to know if I was gonna make it, at 5 minutes ’til 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning, sending me a text message from the parking lot.

I was already at the Corner Bakery’s front door.

Everybody made it, on time. (Even me.)

So we wandered into the restaurant, and I told the BGHS senior football players to order what they wanted, that I’d take care of the bill, which is standard operating procedure for journalists who get to do an extensive interview over some food.

I tried to put everybody at ease, and that seemed to be easy peasy with Jake Napier and Isaiah Martin.

Davis Fant was gonna be my challenge.

Turns out, Davis can be relaxed as the next guy.

The Purples’ emotional leader, the rugged run defender who wears a back’s number, No. 7, on his jersey, eventually gave me something I could work with.

Quotes.

Journos want ’em, we need ’em, we gotta have ’em.

I asked the guys what they’ve reflected on, as their high school career comes to a close, in their case Saturday night’s KHSAA Class 5A state championship game against Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School at the University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field.

Also in Lexington.

“It’s gone by so fast,” Davis Fant said.

Napier and Martin were quick to agree, and I told ’em to embrace the experience. I remember my senior year of high school football, at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, came and went before I knew it.

In 1973.

Ancient history, I know.

But high school and college should be the time of their lives, when adolescence gradually morphs into adulthood.

(I know, I know, I’m tryin’ … It’s been a prolonged journey, in my case.)

“The other day, I was thinking about the Rafferty’s Bowl,” said Isaiah Martin, referring to the Purples’ opening night game against North Hardin, on the campus of Western Kentucky University. “I thought about it, a minute or two, and it seemed like the other day.”

It was in mid-August. It was HOT. South Warren, the Purples’ arch-rival on Nashville Road, played Highlands High School, from the Greater Cincinnati area, in the opening game, winning 49-14.

Bowling Green then squared off with North Hardin, and the Purples actually trailed 14-10 at halftime, at WKU’s Houchens-Smith Stadium.

The Trojans’ Shaun Boykins burned the BGHS defense with a 61-yard scoring dash down the left sideline in the final minute of the second quarter.

Bowling Green kicked it into another gear in the second half, however, and won the game 23-14. It would be the first of the Purples’ 12 victories to date. They’ve won eight of their last nine games, but they’re still the underdog in Saturday night’s game against Frederick Douglass, which sports a 14-0 record and an impressive defense.

Frederick Douglass has given up 63 points, all season. While scoring 583 themselves, the most of any KHSAA Class 5A team this season.

“All of their defensive linemen have gotten D-1 offers,” Martin said. “Their D-line is really good. It’s probably the best defense, in the state.”

Still, the Purples should be a confident team. Their reputation, defensively, speaks for itself.

Offensively, they’re loaded. With sophomore quarterback Deuce Bailey slinging it around the field, and junior running back Jevan Huddleston showing breakaway speed after getting into the open field, Bowling Green has a dangerous offense.

And the Purples have all kinds of receivers.

Easton Barlow, Christopher Sweeney, freshman star Trevy Barber, Ethan Warder … well, you get the idea. Bailey has plenty of people to throw to. And his offensive line — Isaiah Martin, guards DeMarcus Elliott and Austin Anderson, and tackles Jack Ledogar and Parker Fields — has given Bailey plenty of time to throw the football.

It’s all connected, of course, but the Bowling Green offense starts with Isaiah Martin, who snaps the ball on each and every play.

The Purples have outscored their four postseason opponents — Ohio County, South Warren, South Oldham and Southwestern — by an impressive 158-27.

Bowling Green’s two losses this season came at the hands of 2021 state championship squads, Boyle County (Class 4A) in mid-September and St. Xavier (Class 6A), in the final week of regular-season play. In Louisville, no less.

Fifth-year BGHS head coach Mark Spader believes in a challenging schedule, to get his team ready for the playoffs. It seemed to pay off a couple years back, when the Purples won the seventh state championship in school history, a 17-7 victory over Owensboro High School on December 19, 2020 at Kroger Field.

That was the uneven COVID-19 season, when Bowling Green (and most everyone else) played just seven regular-season games. The Purples completed a 10-2 season with the impressive defensive performance against Owensboro.

Davis Fant got pretty extensive playing time that year, as a sophomore, finishing with 31 overall tackles. But Rece Davis and Tyler Moore were the Purples’ starting linebackers that year, and Moore was named the MVP of the championship game.

Jake Napier and Isaiah Martin pretty much just went along for the ride, as BGHS sophomores, that day.

But they were paying attention.

They’ve become two of the Purples’ catalysts themselves. Napier had a “scoop-and-score” against Southwestern in the semifinals last week, scoring on a 40-yard fumble return to close the third quarter.

So Jake had little trouble being philosophical early Wednesday morning.

Next year, at this time, Napier and Fant plan to be freshmen at the University of Kentucky themselves.

“Every day, at practice, it’s easy to think, ‘This is the last week I’ll put on shoulder pads,'” Napier said. “At the beginning of the year, Coach Spader was kind of upset at how the defense was playing. The first half of the North Hardin game. Boyle County, definitely …

“At the end of the day, we’re still playing for a state championship.”

They say it’s more about the journey, than the destination, but this is why people play football.

To win.

To win championships.

That’s the understanding the Purples’ players seem to have with Mark Spader and his BGHS coaching staff.

“I think the relationship, we have with our coaches, our relationship with Coach Spader, is a big part of it,” Fant said.

I was quick to agree with the second thought.

I mentioned the Purples’ 6-6 record last year.

That included two losses to South Warren, which knocked off Frederick Douglas 38-26 in the Class 5A state title game about one year ago.

It got a little serious, and everybody took a break from the bacon and eggs. The .500 season last year definitely motivated Davis Fant, Jake Napier, Isaiah Martin and the other 16 BGHS senior football players.

“It was a rough season,” Fant said.

It all comes full circle, late Saturday night in Lexington.

The 5A survivors are playing in the final game of the KHSAA’s Championship Weekend.

“I’m still a little nervous about it,” Napier said.

“I’m just a nervous kind of guy,” Martin said with a smile. “But as soon as the ball’s snapped, I’m good. The butterflies, they seem to go away.

“For the seniors, it’s time to empty the tank.”

Davis Fant just shrugged his shoulders and gave me a reflective expression.

Fant’s text message after last week’s game, after BGHS senior defender Devin Geer sustained a major injury — a broken ankle — pretty much spoke for everybody.

“We’ve definitely played at another level, in the playoffs, on the defensive side,” Fant said. “We really push ourselves, in practice, and in the weight room. The seniors really speak up, and get everyone moving around, and have some ‘juice’ behind us.

“Devin getting hurt, really pushed us, to dominate the rest of the game. We played that game, for Devin, and next week will be, too.”

Just a hunch, but I think the Purples are gonna be ready to play Saturday night.