LANCASTER — When Dean Clark joined the Fairfield Union football team as a freshman in 2023, he said he and his classmates wanted to help change the program's culture.
Four seasons later, it’s safe to say mission accomplished.
In 2024, Fairfield Union made the playoffs for the first time in 18 years. In 2025, the Falcons again made the playoffs and then earned the school’s first playoff victory since 2001. Finally, on Friday night, Oct. 23, the Falcons ended another drought by clinching a share of its first Mid-State League Buckeye Division Title since 2006 with a 14-6 victory over Hamilton Township.
“I’m just really proud of our team,” Clark said of the win, which also clinched the school’s third-straight playoff appearance. “We’ve come a long way; we got the job done tonight.”
Clark and the Fairfield Union (8-2, 5-1 MSL) defense led the way to victory, and the offense picked up as the Falcons scored all 14points in the first half. The Falcons managed just one net yard of offense on four possessions in the second half as Hamilton Township (7-3, 5-1) shut down the ground game and pressured the passing game.
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And it was no easy task for the defense as the Rangers run a variation of a single-wing offense with no designated quarterback, instead featuring direct snaps to running backs with a mix of misdirection with the seven different ball carriers in the game. The Rangers were able to get some drives together and churned out 245 rushing yards; however, the Falcons defense seemed to always get a stop to force a punt or turn the ball over on downs when they needed it.
“Defense wins championships,” Fairfield Union coach Andy Clark said. “We knew it would probably be a low-scoring game, and points would be at a premium; we just needed to fight every play, and we just found a way to get some stops.”
The biggest stop came with 40 seconds left in the game and the Falcons clinging to their eight-point lead. The Rangers faced second-and-15 at the Falcons' 36-yard line, and with the clock ticking away, the visitors attempted only their second pass of the game. However, Dean Clark read the play perfectly from his safety position and jumped in front of the pass for the interception to seal the win.
“We knew that time was running out and they couldn’t keep running the ball like they were,” Clark said. “So we knew they would have to throw one eventually, and I saw the receiver head up the seam and I just made the play.”
To go with his interception, Clark, at quarterback, completed seven passes for 145 yards and a touchdown and ran for another 34 yards in the first half. On the Falcons’ first drive of the game, they were able to march down the field before Clark threw a screen pass to Lane Burkhardt on third down. Burkhardt made an impressive one-handed catch on the pass, and then was able to find space to run all the way to the end zone for a 39-yard touchdown to give the Falcons an early 7-0 lead.
Hamilton Township responded with a long drive that made it inside the red zone until the Falcon defense got a stop on fourth down to turn the Rangers over on downs at the Falcon 10-yard line. The Falcons, in turn, then marched 90 yards in seven plays — aided by a 48-yard pass from Clark to Kohen Arnett — and cashed in with another touchdown on a one-yard run by Burkhardt for a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter.
The Rangers scored their only touchdown with four minutes left in the second quarter when Dez Branch scored on a one-yard run. Branch led the Rangers with 114 rushing yards on 20 carries to go with his touchdown, while Suge Brown added 99 yards on 29 carries. But the Falcons defense forced the Rangers to punt four times in the second half as the unit kept finding ways to keep the Rangers out of scoring range.
“Week in and week out in this league you have to strap up and be ready,” Andy Clark said. “And for us climbing the ladder, you have to overcome the better teams in the league, Bloom-Carroll to Hamilton (Township), to Circleville, there’s no Friday night where you’re not concerned about the outcome. So, to at least get a piece of (the league) and knocking off a program like Hamilton that’s been playing the way they have the last few years, it’s a great accomplishment for these kids, they’ve come a long way. We’re excited, we’re going to celebrate this.”
The Falcons have clinched a home game for the first round of the Region 15 playoffs on Oct. 30, with their opponent to be officially released by the OHSAA on Sunday, Oct. 25.
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Fairfield Union clinches a share of the Mid-State League-Buckeye title