Week 9 Home Team Friday Recap - Her Name is Rio!

After the insanity of the Week 8 show, I am happy to report that Week 9 was pretty smooth.  Stress level was high, but that is always the case. 

Here we are, mid-October and the regular season is over in Indiana.  At this time next week, nearly half of the teams will be eliminated in the Hoosier state.  It is so sad for us on the HTF staff when the season winds down.  We truly love covering football on such an intense basis.

Let’s start the recap of rivalry week with the game that I normally look forward to the most:  Reitz vs. Mater Dei.  It is amazing how this rivalry has come full circle again.  After the Cats won five straight from 1997-2001, now it is the Panthers who have won five in a row.  What is more amazing is that Reitz has shutout Mater Dei three straight years. 

You could see this lopsided game coming.  Mater Dei is very young, and pretty thin in some spots.  The Cats will be just fine in the playoffs.  I’m sure MD’s confidence has been shaken these past couple of weeks, but starting on Saturday, I really think the Cats can make a run in 2A. 

As for Reitz, what more can you say?  It is almost becoming impossible to come up with different angles to look at this team.  The last five weeks in particular, Reitz is averaging nearly a whopping 50 points a game!! (47.2).  Only twice has the defense given up double digits in points all season, and they are now averaging just a shade over a touchdown per game. 

Quarterback Matt McIntosh has blossomed this second half of the season.  He is as healthy as he has been his entire career.  Alordo Bell had a monster night with 200 yards rushing and 4 touchdowns.  How about giving some credit to both lines?  The big guys are quick enough to block downfield on so many of the screen plays.  Size and strength is always the number one asset for lineman, but for Reitz you have to be quick to get into the linebackers and secondary on those screens.  The defensive secondary for Reitz has been great in the passing game, but they can also play near the line of scrimmage to control running teams. 

I knew Reitz would be good this season, but I honestly didn’t know the Panthers would be this strong.  It is not just the fact they are 9-0, it is how high of a level they’re playing the game.  I would be interested to know how many Reitz fans even saw this dominant of a team coming.

Next up: North.  Our photographer the Blaine Train was worried that after he left the Bowl for Central Stadium he might miss all of the Bears touchdowns.  He was worried that the game would be lopsided in favor of Central.  I have to give myself a little bit of credit on this one.  I told him, that this rivalry is truly one where the cliché of throwing out the records really applies.  It is amazing how many times the favorite in this series gets upset! 

Great win for Mike Wilson’s club.  As I have said 1000 times, Wilson’s teams may start off slow, but they always seem to make a run at the end.  Tailback Richard Compton rushed for 261 yards and 3 scores.  North has had a tough year with youth and injuries, but the win over Central I would imagine has erased some of the bitterness of the season.  That shows what a coach Wilson is.  He had his guys prepared, even with a 2-6 record.  North is now at New Albany for the 5A Sectional, while Central will try to regroup against Harrison at Enlow Field in Class 4A.

Speaking of Harrison, what a wild game at Enlow for the Eastside rivalry between the Warriors and Bosse.  I covered this game.  If you have been reading my blogs each week, you know what I think of Bosse.  The Dogs are fun to watch, and are much better than their 2-7 record.  Harrison fans were pinning their hopes of ending their three game losing streak against Bosse. 

We probably set some kind of nationwide record in this game.  We have to be the only station to have 3 different photographers covers a game with a combined record from the teams of 1-15.  I had a lot of highlights while I was there shooting the first half.  Josh Pendleton was just unreal this game.  He rushed for a jaw dropping 344 yards and 7 touchdowns!!

At half the game was tied at 19.  I was determined that if Harrison broke the streak, that we had to have a camera there.  I called Blaine to ask him how he was doing up at Central Stadium.  He said he got a touchdown from the Bears, and they are down 20-14.  I asked him who has the ball, and he said Central. I told him to stay for the Bears drive then head to Enlow.  He called me back a few minutes later.  Central scored a touchdown to go up 21-20 in the fourth quarter.  He left thinking he may have the game-winning touchdown for the Bears.  Of course Compton and the Huskies rallied to win.

Blaine got to Enlow and Harrison is down 5 points but is driving.  I called Blaine and he answered and is talking to me on the phone while shooting the highlights. (not easy!) You can literally hear him on HTF show saying “Harrison just scored” on the phone to me during that highlight.  Harrison would get the 2 point conversion to go up 34-31 with 7:30 to play.  Blaine now had all of the Reitz/MD highlights, the Central/North highlights and this Harrison TD.  No way could I have him stay that long.  I told him to get all of that back to the station.

Now my mind is scrambling.  Harrison is up three.  The Warriors could break this streak, and they would surely celebrate like crazy.  David Heckard covered the Memorial at Castle game and was almost back at the station.  I grabbed his disk full of highlights and sent him right back to Enlow.  Yep, that’s right…a third photographer at the Bosse/Harrison game!  It’s kinda funny now looking back on it.  I gave our meteorologist/sports guy a microphone.  I told him whoever wins will be celebrating, so make sure to get some good video, and to interview the winning coach.  I told him Andrew Weinzapfel is a great guy if Bosse comes back.  

So David got to Enlow, and Bosse is already up by three.  Again, I am eager to hear what is going on, and I called him.  He answered and said Bosse is up three….errrr….they just now scored a touchdown!  I asked him if he shot it.  “Nope, I was formatting the disk.”  Oh well, we had plenty of Bosse highlights.  David got the Dogs dancing and celebrating the win with the Eastside trophy.  He interviewed Coach Weinzapfel, and that aired on Saturday.  As for the Warriors, another regular season without a win.  I truly feel horrible for those players.  To think how they work that hard from two-a-day practices in the summer to now and never have a win.  I can’t imagine how tough that must be.

Let’s go to Reo for another awesome HTF Showdown game, and another game with a team trying to snap a streak.  I have to tell a funny and perhaps corny story first.  Every time I drive to South Spencer high school, I sing Rio from Duran Duran.  I am showing my age.  I do it every time.  I sing that dumb song even in the newsroom when we start talking about traveling to South Spencer.  I apologize to my Rebel friends for incorporating Duran Duran into your school!  What is worse is I always combine two songs: “Her name is Rio and she dances like a wolf.”  I probably need some kind of therapy for that.

Ok, I digress, on to the game.  Heritage Hills had beaten South Spencer every year since 1991.  It is hard to imagine the streak is that long with so many great Rebels teams.  That just goes to show you how awesome Heritage Hills has been.  However, this was the year all of the Rebels were pointing to end the streak.  The Rebels have a great team, and they had their county rival at home. 

In the sloppy field, the defenses dominated the game.  That wasn’t a huge surprise.  After all, both schools had some of the best defenses in the Tri-State.  For the second straight week, the mud really hampered the Rebels passing game with quarterback Zeke Harmon.  You just cannot expect to be able to throw deep in those kinds of conditions.  The Patriots were just suffocating on defense, and they were great on first down. 

With the game tied at 7, Heritage Hills had the ball at the Rebels 30 with 1:00 left.  However, the Rebels came up with an interception and returned it to midfield.  So now the Rebels had a chance with: 40 left.  However, the Patriots picked off a pass, and they’ve got the ball back down to the 30.  The Rebels hold to end a furious final minute and this game went into overtime.  Heritage Hills stuffed the Rebels, and the Patriots end it with a touchdown run.  Final score 13-6, and the streak continues.

Video can be so moving, and can really be transcending.  The instant the Patriots won the game; the Rebels Zeke Harmon fell to the ground pounding his hand into the ground in what must have been a crushing moment for him.  Just moments later, a Heritage Hills player showed amazing class in bending over to console Harmon.  He told him to keep his head up, that they were a great team, and he knew they would make a deep run in the playoffs.  Randall got this shot, and overhead the entire exchange.  It was a piece of video I will never forget, and what makes high school football in our area so great.  Here are two bitter rivals, after an extraordinary overtime game showing the ultimate sportsmanship.  I don’t know that player for Heritage Hills offhand, but if I find out, I will write about it in the future.

Congratulatons to one of, if not the best, coach in the Tri-State.  Bob Clayton earned his 300th career victory with the Heritage Hills win.

Randall had his own crazy night.  On Thursday our satellite truck broke down and had to go into the shop.  Our other main live truck was already in the shop!  So we were in a bind.  Our boss Mark Glover stepped up and had the mechanics patch together a temporary fix for our regular live truck so we could use it for HTF.  Here is the problem; Reo/Rockport is on the very fringe of being able to getting a live shot signal.  If we couldn’t get it, we didn’t have a satellite truck to make it happen.

Randall and Aaron Hancock made their trip out early in the afternoon to go test the signal.  No go in Reo.  It just was not a strong enough signal.  Ugh.  So for the 6pm show, I told them to try and go to Yankeetown elementary school (yours truly is an alumni…go Yanks!)  I thought that would be close enough to get a signal.  They make it to Yankeetown up on the hill, but the video was scratchy, and the audio was definitely crackly.  It was now time for both of them now to get to their games.  I told them that after the games to go to the Newburgh Lock and Dam.   My last words to Randall were, “as long as the HH/SS game doesn’t go to overtime, we should be OK.” 

So here it is, Randall is in Reo.  The game has ended, he has to get to the lock and dam to meet Aaron to feed back, and the worst part, he now has to fight traffic out of Reo!  Randall told me he was pretty sure every living person in Spencer County was at the game, making the traffic a nightmare.  Here is where it kind of gets funny.  Being a Newburgh native, I know that the Lock and Dam is a popular spot for young couples to make-out.  Of course, I would never know about this first hand.  Anyhow, here comes Randall screeching into the parking lot of the lock and dam with a NEWS 25 vehicle, and a NEWS 25 Live Truck.  He said he saw some cars with some fogged up windows.  He laughed and told me, I can only imagine how much they were freaking out seeing the news crew there!  Somehow, Randall managed it all.  He edited his entire story and fed it back in plenty of time for the show.  That is why Randall wasn’t live in Reo. 

In Newburgh, Castle hosted rival Memorial.  I really thought this could be the best game of the night.  Because of that, I had David Heckard shoot just this game.  I wanted to make sure to get a lot of highlights, not only for HTF, but for file video to use in later stories.  It seemed to me that Castle Stadium was the sloppiest of all fields.  Players were just covered from head to toe in mud. 

It was tough going for either of the talented quarterbacks to be able to pass.  However, once again Grant Gribbins put together a spectacular highlight.  It was very similar to the best play from 2008.  Gribbins scrambled far to his right, made a sliding stop in the mud, and went the other direction eluding the Castle rush.  He made it all the way to the other side, keeping his head up the whole time looking at his receivers, and then he stopped again, barely planted his back foot and threw it all the way across back to the right side to Jonathon Wandling for a touchdown.  It was simply amazing, especially in those conditions.  That wasn’t the play that won it for Memorial.  It was Ryan Hatler’s kickoff return for a touchdown to start the second half that put the Tigers on their way to their sixth straight win. 

Doug Hurt’s team now has a tough opponent to start the 5A Sectional.  The Knights are at Jeffersonville.  The Red Devils are 5-4, and boast a solid defense.  Castle is the defending sectional champ.  Memorial meanwhile starts its hopeful second straight run to Lucas Oil Stadium with Mt. Vernon.  The game will be played at Central Stadium.

The only other 9-0 team besides Reitz is Jasper.  The Cats ended the regular season with Mt. Vernon.  Jasper won 49-13.  Taylor Day had another typical night for him:  193 rushing yards and 5 touchdowns.  Jasper has so many weapons on offense.  Because Aaron was late getting out of Yankeetown, he missed the very beginning of the game. 

Jasper plays 8-1 Northview in the first round.  The game is in Brazil, but despite all of that, I predict the Cats win by 28 or more.

The other game that I was very interested in was in Illinois.  Mt. Carmel hosted Boonville.  This ended up being the Runner-Up Bowl for the Big Eight.  Obviously Jasper was the champ, but the race for number two was interesting.  I really thought this would be a closer game.  Boonville was coming off an impressive shutout win against South Spencer.  However, the Pioneers were blitzkrieged by Mt. Carmel.  The Aces just opened it up in the first half.  It was 28-0 in a hurry.  Mt. Carmel has really put together a nice season.  Darren Peach is one of our favorites.  The Aces are now 6-2 with one more regular season game to go at Robinson before the Illinois playoffs start.

Other news and notes from Indiana.  Southridge and North Posey both had shutout victories.  Those two meet in Poseyville for the opening round of the 2A Sectional.  The Raiders won easily in the regular season.  I was surprised Perry Central lost.  The Commodores dropped their first game of the year.  A home loss against second ranked Paoli 14-13.

In Kentucky, Henderson County has won five in a row.  I knew the Colonels would whip up on Marshall County.  Henderson has such a physical defense.  We went out to Cols practice today and Coach Clay Clevenger explained how they give out “Big Hit” hats for the best hits in the game.  That attitude carries over the field.  Not a lot was expected from this young group, but here they are with a 6-2 record and a great chance to get the top seed in the district.  Henderson hosts Apollo Friday night for Senior Night. 

It was not pretty, but Owensboro outlasted Hopkinsville 16-6, and Owensboro Catholic hammered Todd County Central 49-0.

We also made another trip to see Union County.  The Braves were on the road at Webster County.  Union County wins again.  The Braves host McLean on Friday.

Our main director for Home Team Friday was on vacation.  Filling in was Gary.  He had a pretty much flawless show.  The only minor error was the wrong background under the full screen scores, but that was no big deal.  I’m sure none of you even realized it.  Thanks to Gary. 

If I can find the time, I will do a special blog entry for Sectional Previews. 

Thanks so much for reading and watching each and every week, and I look forward to reading your comments below.

I leave you with this song in hopes you get the chorus stuck in your head!  You need to feel my pain.  It is my gift to you!  Crank it up and enjoy!

 

Comments

[Brandon Phillips]

Lance thanks for the update, great reading about the Rebels!