On Teacher Appreciation Night at Colerain Stadium, Middletown football coach Troy Everhart was going to help his Middies learn one thing.

There is no surrender.

Trailing 41-7 after three quarters with Colerain making wholesale substitutions, the Middies stuck to their starters in a 41-14 setback that dropped them to 2-5 overall and 1-3 in the Greater Miami Conference.

“I don’t think getting beat 41-14 teaches you a lesson,” Everhart said. “Keeping them in until the end, showing them they are not going to be surrendering the Middletown football program teaches them to keep battling.

“It is battle courage under fire right now, but we are trying to build a program.”

The Middies learned at the hands of the rulers of the GMC, the program that took the throne from Princeton in the 1990s. Colerain blocked a punt, recovered three of Middletown’s seven fumbles, picked off Jalin Marshall twice and piled up 497 yards of offense – 325 on the ground – in moving to 7-0, 4-0.

“Colerain has been in control in the 1990s and 2000s and someone needs to take the torch from them and it might as well be us,” Everhart said. “I am proud we kept battling all the way through, but eventually we have to stop playing on pride.”

Colerain ran off the first three scores before Middletown got on the board with 1:52 left in the half when Williams Peters busted around the end for a 58-yard scoring run to trim the deficit to 27-7 at the break. Middletown also scored the last touchdown on a 5-yard run by Yvonte Glover, but in between the Cardinals ran off 21 more points.

“There were some good things,” Everhart said. “At the half we had surpassed the total yards we had last year against them. We had a couple of big plays, but what stops us is putting the ball on the ground and fumbling snaps. We got to keep fighting.

“I am proud of our defense because we put them in some holes early in the game and they rallied and were able to stop them.”

Middletown will hit the road again next week, traveling to Lakota East.