Mainland falls (hard) to Lake Mary, but history says the Bucs can put it behind them

DAYTONA BEACH — When it was over, Travis Roland had a tough sell.

His Mainland Buccaneers, a team so thoroughly dominant through its first nine regular-season games, had just been embarrassed in front of the home crowd.

They’d outscored their nine previous opponents 343-97 and their three district foes 158-14. Needless to say, they were 9-0 and ready to cash in a perfect regular season and use that on-ramp to launch into the playoffs next week.

Well, there are hiccups, and then there’s this — a full-body, guttural heaving-up of what could’ve been.

Lake Mary 33, Mainland 0.

A matchup of two of the state’s best teams, to close the regular season, was touted as a heavyweight battle but turned into a pratfall.

But guess what. Roland, the Mainland coach, didn’t just preach the preachables to his Bucs after the game, he really and truly had a place to hang his blue cap: 2003.

Twenty years ago, the Bucs won the state championship. Haven’t won one since, and have had some chances. But this time, they might have some actual history in their corner.

Back in ’03, when Roland was a Mainland senior, the Bucs closed out their season with a 30-9 loss to South Florida’s Chaminade High. Several weeks later, the Bucs were state champs.

So, if nothing else, there’s that. And the Bucs, given the short-term attention span of today’s youth, could and should quickly tuck away lost hopes of a perfect season and instead start focusing on a season that, beginning next Friday, could end perfectly.

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For now, however, there are fresh scars to deal with.

“This sucks, doesn’t feel good at all,” Roland said Friday night.

The Bucs did a great job of smothering Lake Mary’s receivers nearly all night.

Nearly.

Perhaps the only three times Caden Harshbarger found some elbow room, he found a Noah Grubbs pass in his bread basket.

Grubbs, just a sophomore, is an absolute keeper, and man what an arm. He came in with stats out of a video game — nearly 3,000 yards passing, 41 TDs, just seven picks — but simply couldn’t find open targets and, frankly, plenty of his best passing decisions were those he simply threw away.

“He’s a great quarterback,” Roland said.

With all the talk of Grubbs and the Rams offense, it was their defense that erased any doubt in Friday’s outcome from the get-go. Mainland simply couldn’t manage any offensive momentum, and it’s a bad time of year to be looking for such things, but that’s where they are.

Not all suburbs are created equal

Let’s digress a moment and remind everyone how Mainland and Lake Mary will be entering the state playoffs in two separate atmospheres, regardless of being separated by a little more than 30 minutes.

Starting last year, the Florida High School Athletics Association went about fixing the age-old format of 1A, 2A, 3A, etc., and introduced us to M, S and R.

M for metro, S for suburban, R for rural. All football schools in the state’s eight most populated counties got the M designation. Lake Mary is in Seminole County, and any drive across I-4 will convince you that Seminole, a neighbor of Orlando and Orange County, is among those eight.

When you think Lake Mary, you might think leafy, gated neighborhoods and some great golf, but numbers are numbers.

Volusia County is among the state’s other 59 counties falling into the suburban category — no security gates, Chipotle or community pickleball courts necessary to play Suburban football, it turns out.

Mainland High sits on what might be the busiest intersection of a busy area, but again, numbers are numbers.

Over its past 30 years of playoff football, the Bucs have won that one state championship (2003), contended for several others, but often, eventually, ran up against loaded Miami teams that seemed like they were from a class just above.

And now those big-city teams are a class above, officially, which clears the path a bit but also seems to level the playing field for Mainland, if not Lake Mary. Last year, the Bucs reached the state championship in Division 3 of the Suburban class, but lost to Lake Wales, 32-30.

They’ll learn Sunday where their next Suburban road leads, and though it’s cliche´, the Bucs and all the other playoff teams will begin the postseason with 0-0 records.

Gotta say, tucking away a 10-0 would’ve probably felt pretty good. But when Travis Roland thinks back 20 years to his 2003 Bucs, it’s not the loss to Chaminade he remembers.

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mainland's perfect season blown away, but bigger things may await