Airport's football season comes to an end in regional championship

HARPER WOODS — There hasn’t been a single game in the past four years that Cooper Nye hasn’t started behind center for Airport’s football team.

The senior took his final snap on Saturday afternoon.

After the Jets dropped their Division 4 regional final to Harper Woods 46-19, Nye spoke about what he wants this season's legacy to be.

“From freshman year, being a .500 team, to where we’ve come I’m really proud of everyone; the coaches and the whole community,” he said.

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With Nye at quarterback, the Jets improved from back-to-back 4-5 records during his freshman and sophomore years to a 7-3 record last year and this year’s 10-2 mark. That includes being crowned Huron League Co-Champions and winning a district championship on their home field.

Those accomplishments mean little to Nye if the Jets' youth program doesn’t build from the momentum of this year’s squad.

“I hope this team will help push the Junior Jets program to keep building and (they) can get better and be better than this team is in the future,” he said.

He will be remembered as one of the best to put on the Airport uniform, coach Jim Duffy said.

“He has earned everything he has gotten – he was the best quarterback to ever play here when he was 14 years old, and now he’s put himself in an echelon that I don’t know if you find another one like him anytime soon,” Duffy said.

College football is on the horizon for Nye with multiple visits planned for the near future, listing Ferris State as a school he’d like to play for.

The signal-caller showed why he’s a college-bound football player in the first half Saturday, going 5 for 8 for 99 yards and a touchdown.

Harper Woods forced a three-and-out on the Jets' first drive and looked like it would score first, but Colin Nowak stripped a Pioneer runner inside the Jets' 5-yard line.

Airport didn’t waste the takeaway, going on an 11-play, 95-yard drive that chewed up nearly 5 minutes of clock.

It was the best drive of the day for the Jets.

Airport failed to find the end zone again in the first half, giving up Pioneer scores on passes of 77 and 48 yards that sent the Jets into intermission trailing 21-6.

Airport wouldn’t never recover from the halftime deficit, being outscored again in the second half 25-12.

Jack Mills scored on runs of 2 and 3 yards, he finished the game with 141 yards on 28 carries.

Fighting back emotions, Nye thanked the droves of Jet fans that made the trip to watch their team.

“This community, it’s small, but we’re tough and they care about us a lot,” he said.

Much like his quarterback, Duffy was feeling grateful for the community turnout for the road game.

“We have an unbelievably supportive community, I had no doubt we would travel as well as we did,” he said. “It’s really special to come from a community that supports the kids like ours does.”

This was the first time in 18 years the Jets reached the regional final round, something Duffy wants to be a more regular occurrence – something he thinks this year's Jets put in motion.

“I’m going to miss a lot of these guys a whole lot, they’ve done monumental things for our program and getting it to a place where we would like to be competitive at this level, each and every year,” he said.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Airport's season ends, but Jet seniors leave a lasting legacy