Mapletown in Rush to make playoff push

Competition is everything for Dylan and Matt Rush. Whether it be a pick-up baseball game with neighbors or playing football on Friday nights, one always wants to outperform the other and it almost always leads to fighting.
That same desire to be great also brings the two Mapletown High School students together on and off the football field. As preparation to join National Honor Society, they adopted a section of highway near the high school in Greensboro – walking the stretch of road every few months to clean garbage and debris.
The tedious cleanup is much like the one they will undertake over the next six weeks and Dylan, a sophomore running back, covered much ground last week to help with the effort.
After Mapletown (1-2, 1-2) unexpectedly started the season with back-to-back losses, Dylan Rush, a second-year starter, and the offense had a game that jump-started the Maples and might have salvaged their season. He ran for 221 yards and five touchdowns in a 61-22 win over West Greene.
As a linebacker, Rush also recovered a fumble and returned it 51 yards for a touchdown, and he converted three two-point conversions. His six touchdowns and 42 points were school records.
Matt, a senior, also is a running back and linebacker.
“Our line got downfield and blocked everybody they needed to,” Dylan Rush said. “They came off the ball ready to play and opened some holes. I just had to run through them. I had the easy part.”
At least he made it look easy. Rush had touchdowns of 4, 3, 2, 10 and 32 yards.
Mapletown has fielded a football program for almost 90 years, but last Friday was the first time it scored 60 points, breaking the previous school record of 53 scored against Center Township in 1946.
“I couldn’t believe that was a record,” head coach George Messich said. “I told Chris Bates, who keeps our stats, that there’s no way 61 points is the highest. There have been a few games we could have scored that many, but I was shocked.”
It was a much-needed win for the Maples, who entered the season as a contender for the conference title, but injuries and inconsistent play cost them. They opened with a 48-12 loss to Beth-Center, followed by a 27-8 defeat against Carmichaels, and have allowed more than 30 points per game.
Now, Mapletown faces another tough test when it travels to Frazier (3-0, 3-0), which has allowed only three points in three games, tonight with kickoff at 7 p.m. Messich feels good about his team’s chances, especially with how Rush and his offensive line are playing.
“Dylan’s a very, very good back. If you could coach some of the things he does, everybody would have a back like that,” Messich said. “It’s like (Beth-Center running back Tony Welsh). If a coach could make a player like Welsh, every team would have one. Kids like that have a God-given ability. He does some really good things for us.”
Rush’s performance against the Pioneers was a continuation of a strong freshman season, when he ran for 1,016 yards and 17 touchdowns. The Maples’ offense last season went through either the Rush brothers or the Hein brothers.
The group, which included Adam and Matt Hein, combined for 34 touchdowns. Though Adam graduated, it’s been more of the same in 2015 with Dylan and Matt scoring all but one of Mapletown’s touchdown through three games.
Dylan Rush entered high school last August standing at 5-8 and weighing just 165 pounds, making him one of the smallest starting running backs in the conference. Now, he’s 5-9 and lifting weights four days a week in the summer helped him gain 15 pounds to prepare him for nights like last Friday, when he had 21 carries. Despite the addded weight, speed is still his game and its one that helped Mapletown climb back into the playoff picture.
“Since I’m not bigger, I have to be able to move and be able to make people miss,” Rush said. “I have to make people miss and get more yards that way. I can’t run people over.”
With six games remaining, the Maples are focused on reaching the playoffs for the second consecutive season and reminding people why they are a contender in the Tri-County South.
“Coming into the season, we knew everyone thought we’d be good and we wouldn’t surprise anyone again,” Rush said. “We wanted to show them they were right and that we deserved it. We started slow, but winning last week was big. We need to keep doing that and prove we belong in the playoffs.”