The Middies are tempered like the steel that made Middletown | Opinion

Middletown head coach Kali Jones watches his team before the Middies' football game against Hamilton on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025.

A city once defined by Armco and Jerry Lucas finds new pride in its football team’s historic run.

For generations, Middletown has carried the weight of its past. Their city once thrived on the strength of Armco Steel, the factory that defined their skyline and sustained their families. Their basketball dynasty, led by Jerry Lucas in the 1950s, gave them statewide fame and a sense of invincibility. Three straight championships made Middletown synonymous with excellence. But as the decades passed, their factories closed, their jobs disappeared, and their civic pride dimmed. Too often, the refrain was that their best days were behind them.

This fall, their football team has given them reason to believe otherwise. With grit and resilience, the Middletown High School Middies have reached the state semifinals for the first time in school history. Their playoff run has electrified the city, uniting generations who remember Lucas’s glory and those who have only known struggle. They are one win away from playing for a prize that has eluded every generation before them: a football state championship.

Against Cincinnati St. Xavier, the Middies will be underdogs. St. X has the tradition, the titles, the depth. Middletown has something harder to measure: steel. Not the kind forged in furnaces, but the kind forged in resilience. The kind that comes from a city that has endured closures, layoffs, and setbacks, yet still finds ways to stand tall. The kind that shows up in a defense that has shut out two playoff opponents, and in a senior like Jordan Vann, who scored the winning touchdown and sealed victory with an interception in the final seconds against Wayne.

This team represents a city that refuses to quit

Their team is more than a football story. It is a civic story. It is about a city rediscovering its pride, about young men carrying the weight of history and proving that Middletown’s legacy is not confined to the past. If Jerry Lucas and the basketball dynasty were the polished glory of a booming Middletown, then this football team is the gritty counterpoint − a reminder that even in hard times, greatness can rise again.

The echoes of Armco Steel are everywhere in this run. Their parents and grandparents built lives around the mill, and when the jobs disappeared, so too did much of the city’s confidence. But the steel never truly left. It lived in their spirit, in their fight, in their ability to endure. Now, under Friday night lights, their football team has become the vessel for that steel. Every tackle, every interception, every touchdown is a declaration: Middletown is still here, and Middletown still matters.

The Middletown Middies traveled to Lakota West on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025.

Whether the Middies hoist the trophy or not, they have already given their city something priceless: hope. They have reminded their neighbors that history is not a ceiling, but a foundation. They have shown that glory days are not confined to the past − they can be forged anew, in the grit of underdogs who refuse to quit. And in doing so, they have given Middletown a gift as enduring as steel: belief in themselves.

Now it is their community’s turn to carry the torch. Their fans must fill the stands in purple, their alumni must lift their voices, and their neighbors must rally behind the team that has brought Middletown back to life. This is more than a football game. It is a chance for their city to stand together, to show that steel still runs through their veins, and to prove that Middletown’s best days are not behind them − they are being written right now, under the Friday night lights.

Dennis Doyle

Dennis Doyle lives in Anderson Township and is a member of the Enquirer Board of Contributors.