The Marlboro football team have been the kings of the mountain in Section 9, Class B for the past decade, fighting off countless challengers to their throne in the process. On Friday night at Port Jervis they knocked off another contender, as the Dukes claimed a hard-fought 28-20 road win over Port Jervis to clinch the top playoff seed in Class B, Division I.

Both Marlboro and Port Jervis entered Friday night’s matchup with a 2-0 record in division play this season, and it was the Dukes (6-2) who emerged undefeated in league play with an impressive win over a Raiders (6-2) squad they could see down the line in the postseason.

With the top seed in the division in the bag, the Dukes will now travel to Kingston on Saturday afternoon to square off with Highland in a Class B semifinal contest at 3 p.m. at Dietz Stadium.

With a victory this weekend, the Dukes will get a chance to defend their Section 9, Class B championship on Nov. 8 in Middletown against the winner of the Burke-Port Jervis semifinal, as Marlboro aims for a section title three-peat.

“All week we’ll be grinding, just grinding all the way until we have to play again,” Marlboro senior running back C.J. Faircloth said. “We have to play every game like a championship game and work throughout practice like everything is for the championship.”

With the Dukes in a tight game for division supremacy deep into the second half on Friday night, Marlboro turned to its fearsome running attack, paced by sophomore running back Elijah Williams (171 yards rushing on 20 carries), to pull out the victory against Port Jervis. “There’s plenty of weapons back there that we can just show off and show out,” Williams said.

The Dukes took an 8-0 lead with 4:35 remaining in the first when senior quarterback Christian Diorio (6-9, 86 yards passing, 2 TDs) threw a laser to senior running back Armani Banton for a 22-yard TD score. For good measure, Banton then ran it in for a two-point conversion to give the Dukes the early advantage.

While the Marlboro offense was humming on Friday night and the team’s defense was stout, the Dukes’ special teams made a pair of costly mistakes in the Oct. 25 game, beginning with a punt return midway through the second quarter that Banton touched that was recovered by the Raiders on the Dukes’ 14-yard line. Port Jervis junior running back Colby Elston soon powered in an eight-yard touchdown run to cut the lead to 8-6 with 5:59 left in the first half.

Marlboro quickly bounced back, however, as Diorio threw a 49-yard bomb over the top of the defense into the waiting arms of junior wide receiver Jaden Rios for a highlight reel touchdown reception to make it 15-6 Marlboro with 3:41 left in the second, a lead the Dukes would take into intermission.

With the Dukes seemingly in control halfway through the third frame, a botched snap on a Freddie Callo punt attempt gave Port Jervis a first and goal on the Marlboro 5-yard line. Raiders senior quarterback Logan Hammock (8-23, 169 yards passing, 2 TDs, 1 INT) then found senior Rob Filancia for a four-yard TD reception to slice the Dukes’ lead to 15-13 at the 6:36 mark of the third quarter.

With their backs against the wall and the top seed in the division on the line, Marlboro went to its versatile backfield attack, as Williams slammed into the end zone for an eight-yard TD run to give Marlboro a 21-13 lead with four minutes left in the third quarter. “It’s outstanding,” Faircloth said of the team’s array of offensive weapons. “We have a lot of people that can run the ball. It’s crazy good. Everybody that’s running the ball is working just as hard as everybody else. Anybody can run the ball on our team.”

After Banton intercepted a Hammock pass on the Raiders’ 18-yard line with 5:37 remaining in the game, Williams blasted through the line for a 15-yard touchdown sprint to make it 28-13 Dukes with 2:39 left in the fourth. “I just saw clear grass like always,” Williams said. “I just ran behind my line, behind my center, and they made a big hole for me. I’m glad for that.”

Hammock then found junior Noah Brown for a 40-yard touchdown reception to shrink the lead to 28-20 with 1:52 left on the clock, but the ensuing Raiders’ onsides kick only traveled four yards and Williams was able to gain a pair of first downs to seal the Dukes’ win. “It was the same thing as every game - we just came together as a family and believed in each other,” Faircloth said. “I’m proud of everybody, because they (Port Jervis) came back and scored pretty fast and our team came together. I’ve never been on a team that came together like that. It makes me want to play better and work harder in practice when we do stuff like that.”

The high-pressure road game to decide the division’s top seed was an early taste of the playoff atmosphere the Dukes could face over the course of the next month. “We talked about it all week that this was a playoff game for us,” Marlboro head coach Brian Beck said. “We said at the beginning of the week that it might not be pretty, but you have to find a way to win this time of year. We’re just happy that other people stepped up. The defense got us out of some holes there, and the offense picked it up at the end. It was a team effort tonight. If one guy was a little bit off here or there, another guy stepped up and picked him up.”

Marlboro thrashed Highland (1-7) in a 56-3 road victory on Sept. 13, but the Dukes know anything can happen in a single-elimination playoff game. “We have to come together and get ourselves a little bit healthier,” Beck said.

“We have to work on our special teams, which we were a little bit off with tonight. We have to prepare. We’re playing on a Saturday at 3 p.m., which is foreign territory for us, but we have to find a way to get it done.”