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Ohio BACF all-star team deep at quarterback

Ohio head coach Greg Adams will look to a trio of signal callers to lead his offense Friday night in the 21st annual Battle Of Cystic Fibrosis (BACF) Football Classic at Parkersburg High School and the Belpre Golden Eagles head coach has been quite pleased with the performance of all three in pre-game practice.

“We’ve got three quarterbacks who all offer a little bit of something different back there,” said Adams, coaching the Ohio squad for the very first time. “We’ve got one who is a drop-back passer and one who likes to get out and run and one who likes to do a little bit of both.”

Fort Frye’s Chandler Lang, Warren’s Austin Klintworth and Marietta’s Anthony Kimbrough all figure to get plenty of snaps behind center Friday night and Adams will likely give the hot hand the majority of the playing time.

“They all three will get plenty of playing time and we will find out which one of them is on that night,” said Adams.

Adams knows all too well about the talent of one of his quarterbacks in the BACF as he witnessed Lang engineer a second half come back win for Fort Frye over his Golden Eagles in week two last season.

“We were leading that game going into halftime against Fort Frye and we were feeling pretty good,” recalled Adams of the week-two, 41-28 loss to the Cadets. “They came out and dominated us both offensively and defensively in the second half and Chandler was a huge part of it.”

Lang, who led the Cadets to playoff appearances in both his junior and senior seasons, is looking forward to getting to work with some of his long time Pioneer Valley Conference rivals instead of against them.

“I know a lot of these guys from seasons past and it’s just makes it a lot of fun,” said the 5-foot-10, 158-pound Lang. “It’s great we are going to get to play with them instead of against them for a change.”

Klintworth, who missed Monday night’s practice with an illness, is the drop-back passer of the trio.

“Klintworth has looked really good in practice,” said Adams, “He’s doing a real good job of learning our system and picking up on our plays.”

The Warren Warrior graduate, who will be going to Marietta College this fall, will have a familiar target to throw to in big tight end David Ryan (6-4, 220) who also graduated from Warren last month.

Kimbrough possesses the ability to both run and pass, giving Adams another tempting option at the quarterback spot.

“We honestly have worked on a little bit of everything offensively so far,” said Kimbrough, who is joined on the Ohio roster by Marietta High School teammates, Brent Huck and Matt Morris. “We’ll just have to see what we use on Friday and we have a lot of weapons.”

Among those weapons that the Ohio quarterbacks will look to get the ball to include Damon Jones from Meigs, C.J. Huck from Fort Frye as well as Bryan Duffy from Monroe Central.

Both Lang and Kimbrough are well aware of the Ohio sides struggle in the BACF game as they have won just three times in the last 10 games and are 7-13 in the 20 prior games.

“It would feel awesome and I would love to help bring the title back to Ohio,” said the 6-1, 175 pound Kimbrough. “I feel like our team is coming around really well.”

Lang knows the challenge will be a tough one Friday night but feels if his team can continue to progress in the balance of practices this week an upset victory is certainly not out of the question.

“Execution is going to be the key,” said Lang. “If we execute our plays on offense and play hard on defense I think we are going to be alright.”

Kick-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.

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