Week 10 Home Team Friday Recap

I have had a pretty hectic week, so my apologies for getting this out later than normal.  Since it is already Thursday, I will make this both a recap, and a preview of tomorrow.

We set another record on Home Team Friday.  We had 17 games of highlights.  It was a lot of fun to see if we were up to the challenge of being able to pull it off.  It wasn’t easy! We went right up to the final seconds.  Overall, I thought it was a great show.

There were very few intriguing matchups in Week 10.  Nothing at all jumped off the page.  The favorite won every game, but one.  In 2A, North Posey avenged a regular season loss to Southridge.  The Vikings Cameron Calvert has really lifted his team.  He has been a huge spark on offense.  Quarterback Colton Motz continues to make the highlights.  For the second straight year North Posey is trying to get to the Sectional Championship.  That should happen. The Vikes have Tell City at home.  North Posey handled the Marksmen pretty well on the road just a few weeks ago.

The other 2A semifinal features Mater Dei at South Spencer.  This is a game I am really looking forward to.  I wish I was able to cover it.  Randall will have that honor in our Showdown game.  Wayne Hart says we will have heavy rain tomorrow night.  So does that favor the Rebels or the Cats?  Normally, I would say it would help South Spencer.  However, the Rebels passing game is pretty strong.  The Rebels only two losses came in sloppy muddy conditions against Boonville and Heritage Hills.  However, Mater Dei has played the majority of its games on the turf.  So it is hard to say what kind of advantage Mother Nature will play for either team. 

MD had its best win in throttling Forest Park.  I thought that game would be much closer.  Cats head coach Mike Goebel told us they caught the Rangers without their best player, and FP was battling the flu.  Goebel gave a lot of credit to Terry Wagner and Forest Park.

South Spencer advanced last week with a win at Sullivan.  We had some pretty good highlights from that game from our friends at WTHI.  That game was close all the way to the end when the Rebels pulled it out 30-20.  I am sure Mater Dei scouted that game Friday, and South Spencer scouted MD on Saturday.  Should be a great one in Reo tomorrow night!

Let’s move over to 4A.  Aaron Hancock covered the game for us at the Bowl.  Reitz hosted Seymour.  It was an early 6pm start time, and Aaron called me before I was going on the air for my 6pm sportscast.  He said, “I don’t know what Seymour was thinking.  The Owls stomped on the R in pre-game, and then Reitz promptly scored a touchdown in just 57 seconds!”  Just a few minutes later I got these texts on my phone:  “14-0 Reitz”  “21-0 Reitz, the beating is on”.  Ironically, Reitz only scored in the first and fourth quarters. 

The Panthers now have an interesting matchup with Central tomorrow night.  I say that because of how the first game between these two teams played out.  Reitz just blasted the Bears 55-7.  Obviously, Central is much better than that.  The Bears just had one of those nights.  You know Coach Andy Owen will have his team remembering that loss, and I can imagine the Bears have had some pretty lively practices all week getting ready for Reitz.  On the Panthers point of view, even though this is a playoff game, I am sure it is hard not to overlook the Bears a bit for the possible matchup with Jasper. 

Even though this has the markings of a letdown game for Reitz, I don’t think that will happen.  Coach Tony Lewis’ demeanor will really help in this game.  He and his team never get too high, or too low.  That even keel will keep the Panthers focused at the task at hand.  We were out at practice yesterday, and Lewis told us that exact thing.  The only thing Reitz is worried about this week is Central.  However, I cannot help but get a bit excited about the possibility of Reitz versus Jasper next week.

Speaking of Jasper, wow what a statement the Cats made in the opener!  Jasper had to play on the road at Northview (north of Terre Haute), and the Knights were 8-1.  Now if you read my recap last week, I predicted at least a 28 point win.  As a matter of fact I told photographer Blaine Jasper would win by 50.  Well, that is exactly what Tony Ahrens team did.  The Cats turned in a 50-0 shutout on the road.  Both Jasper and Reitz are just obliterating teams.  How can you not look ahead if you are a fan?  Tomorrow night Jasper hosts Boonville.  I am not slighting the Pioneers at all.  Boonville has had one of its best seasons in school history.  The Pioneers will have an uphill battle tomorrow night in Dubois County.

I was really happy for Doug Hurt and Castle.  They have the hardest draw of any of the 5A teams in that sectional.  I knew it would be tough to win at Jeffersonville.  Our old HTF photographer Greg now works at WHAS in Louisville.  Greg was nice enough to shoot some great highlights of both Castle at Jeff, and North at New Albany.  Knights’ tailback and HTF MVP Logan Hayford had some spectacular runs.  That game was close the entire way, but Castle pulled it out 21-14.  I think the Knights loss to Memorial the week before in the muddy slop helped Castle in this game.  Jeffersonville’s field was pretty beat up too, and the Knights seemed prepared.

Castle now hosts BNL in a mud bowl tomorrow night.  I was pretty confident the Knights would win, but with the prediction of heavy rains, it is hard to be confident in any pick.  I think for any teams playing in horribly muddy conditions, scoring first will be huge.  It will be much easier to play with the lead in a low scoring slop game.

No surprises in 3A.  Memorial is the clear favorite in Sectional 24, and Heritage Hills will win Sectional 23.  I thought Mt. Vernon would be able to score on the Tigers, but I did not see how they could stop Memorial’s offense.  That was pretty much the case.  Memorial won 44-21.  The Tigers offense is absolutely peaking right now.  During the Tigers 6-game winning streak, they are averaging 37 points a game.  I think the Memorial/Bosse game will be similar for the Tigers.  Bosse won’t be able to stop the Tigers, but I do think the Dogs will be able to put up some points.  I give the Bulldogs a puncher’s chance with that dynamic offense.  Weather could be a factor with quarterback Grant Gribbins passing game even on the turf if it is windy.

Bosse won at Pike Central.  The Dogs had a 31-7 lead, but the Chargers made a furious comeback.  I got an email from a viewer and a Pike Central Parent named Jennifer.  She said PC should have won.  Here is what she wrote me:

Just to let you know, Pike Central scored a touchdown in last few seconds of Bosse game and should have won.  Even the radio announcers said it was plain as day.  For some reason the refs refused to call it.  Game film clearly shows they were in with time to spare. If the refs would have called touchdown correctly we would have won and should be advancing to next round.  The team is absolutely devastated!  I have never seen anything like this and wow I'm still in shock.  It will be protested by Pike but what good will that do.  We should all be celebrating, instead there is pain and shock.  Our boys played the best game of the season and did in fact beat Bosse.  Please give Pike Central the credit they deserve and make it aware we had a clear victory taken away.  How awful for these boys.  Those refs should never be allowed to officiate another game, ever!

I don’t know anymore to that story than her email.  If anyone else can shed some light on this, please make a comment below.   

Gibson Southern is at Washington in the other 3A semifinal.  I will give the edge to the Hatchets in this one.

It is hard to write much about Heritage Hills.  The Patriots play in such a weak sectional.  Bob Clayton’s club has won every sectional this decade except one.  The Pats have Salem in The Jungle tomorrow night.  I’m going with a 35-0 prediction.

The best 1A game in the entire state will be in Leopold.  Perry Central hosts North Daviess.  Both teams have had great seasons.  It is another game that could be affected by the weather.  I picked the Cougars to win the Sectional, so I will stay with that.  However, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see PC pull it out.

There is still one week left in the regular season in Kentucky.  Henderson County is at Owensboro tomorrow night.  Before the season, I think most of us would have expected the Devils to win in a blowout.  Not now!  The Colonels are playing so well.  Henderson has won six straight, and the Colonels have won the district.  The Devils have struggled scoring.  In their last four games Owensboro has posted scores of 10, 16, 16, and 16.  I still think Owensboro is the favorite, but not by much.

Henderson had a thrilling win at home against Apollo.  The Colonels erased a late six point deficit by scoring twice and rallying for a 27-20 win.  I talked to one Colonels fan this week that said it was one of the most thrilling games he had seen in years.  Randall talked with head coach Clay Clevenger this afternoon.  The staff was scouting their playoff opponent tonight.

Union County wins the district.  The Braves used another great defensive performance to win 19-2.  Union County is down at Hopkins Central this week.

Illinois playoffs start Saturday.  Mt. Carmel throttled Robinson last week.  Quarterback Alex Hale rushed for 285 yards in the win.  The Golden Aces have a tough opponent at the Snake Pit in the first round.  Mahomet will be the favorite.

As for the HTF show, it was more insane than I would like.  I was at Enlow Field for the Bosse/Harrison game.  Fewest fans I have ever seen there.  I got back and edited my game, plus the Reitz and Memorial games.  We had three different feeds.  2 games from WTHI in Terre Haute, 2 from WHAS in Louisville, and Ryan Jenkins shot some games and fed out of Newschannel 15 in Mt. Carmel.  It was a lot to organize.  We had all kinds of troubles getting our 2 games from WHAS.  We literally were able to pull them off the satellite about 5 minutes before the show.

We have a very short amount of time after the 10pm newscast ends and HTF begins.  My first mic didn’t work, so I tried a second, and it didn’t work!  That never happens.  So I had to use Brad Byrd’s mic.  So literally after Brad signed off, he ran over to me to give me his wireless mic.

The HTF open is playing, and I am try to run the mic under my shirt, by pants are undone, belt out(it was quite the site I’m sure!)  So I am tucking everything in, making sure that production is receiving good audio levels.  I am still getting together when BAM I’m on camera.  I needed just 10 extra seconds to take a breath and get my composure. 

However, time does not stand still.  I knew I had 17 straight games of highlights to get through, and I am thinking in the back of my mind, “God I hope I zipped my zipper!”  I wasn’t even sure what the first game was, and I looked at my scripts and saw Reitz.  That is why I said, “Let’s just get to the highlights as we start off with Reitz.”  After I got going, all was well, and as I said before, I thought it was a pretty good show.

Editor Erica had 27 pieces of video to keep straight with those three different feeds, and she made deadline for every single one of them.

Now that we are losing teams, our shows won’t be so jam packed.  I will miss that.  However, we will now go longer with our highlights as we go deeper into the playoffs.  We have 13 games tomorrow night on the schedule.

Thanks as always for reading.  It means a lot to me that you take the time.  If you ever want me to touch on anything else, let me know.  I will see everyone tomorrow night at 10:35 for NEWS 25 Home Team Friday Live!

 

Week Six Home Team Friday Recap

I am on vacation here in Kansas City, but because I know a few of you very nice peeps enjoy my high school football recaps, I will deliver for you.  By the way, if you are ever in KC, Gates BBQ is just out of this world.  I am addicted, and if anyone wants to make some money, we should open up a Gates restaurant in Evansville!!  We would be rich!  Oh and one other thing before I get to football.  Every time I come here, I wonder what it would be like to do sports in this city.  You could argue that KC has the worst NFL and MLB teams!  That would be rough to have to do stories on them every night.  Great fans though, and fantastic stadiums. 

I try to write as much as I can about each school.  As always, any and all feedback is very much appreciated.  Especially if there is a school, player, or topic you want me to focus on in the future. 

I will start with Memorial.  The Tigers put together their best game of the season.  I was pretty unsure of how the Catholic Rivalry would play out.  I was at the Tigers practice last week.  You could really get a sense that Memorial had found its identity.  After a team has a season like last year, it is easy for fans, and even the school to get caught up in repeating the same success.  However, Memorial lost so many great players from that 2008 team.  Perhaps the greatest challenge for the Tigers is an all-new offensive line.  I asked Grant Gribbins how the new line was coming along.  He emphatically told me how great they have played and how well the offense was syncing up. 

I could write a whole blog on Gribbins.  He is really enjoyable to watch play.  He can throw every pass.  He throws great on the run.  He has a big arm, and I have seen countless of times how he can really put nice touch on the ball.  How a D-I school hasn’t offered him a scholarship blows my mind.  I gave up on trying figuring out recruiting years ago.  How not a single school in D-I took a shot on Mater Dei’s Jake Schiff I will never know. 

Back to the game, Memorial really put together 4 great quarters of football.  The Tigers are clicking, and that really will make for an awesome 3A Sectional.  Mater Dei head coach Mike Goebel told us he was worried about the upcoming schedule.  As he put it: ‘Murder’s Row’…Memorial, Mt. Vernon, Castle, and Reitz.  The Cats are still in great shape.  They are playing so many young guys that are learning and getting better every week. 

BREAKING NEWS FROM CENTRAL STADIUM: Reitz just scored again!  Good grief.  I said last week that Reitz was putting it together.  Well, I guess you can put an exclamation point on that.  Think about what the Panthers have done in two weeks.  Reitz has gone on the road to two of the best teams in the SIAC and put up 42 points at Castle, and 55 points at Central!! 

I knew I was going to lead Home Team Friday with Reitz at Central.  I never like to lead the show with our Showdown Game.  That way it breaks things up a little bit.  It also gives me a chance while Randall is on the air to get any last second scores, shot-sheets, or script changes from my producer Jason.  I also knew that Ryan Jenkins was our photographer for the Reitz/Central game.  This was only the third week he has ever shot games.  I put a little pressure on him to make sure he had great stuff since it was the lead game.  Did you see how awesome his highlights were?  Fantastic job by Ryan!  We had so many great plays from that game; we left a few out due to time constraints!  Typically a set of highlights runs between :45 seconds and 1:00.  We had so much great stuff, it ran 1:45.  Props to Ryan.

Matt McIntosh was one big highlight reel.  Throwing tight spirals all over the field, and running all over the Bears’ defense.  Did you see that block by Jeff Hudson on the second touchdown?!  He had the perfect angle and just erased the safety opening up the lane for McIntosh to score.   Central has been dominant in victory, and not so much in defeat.  In the four Bears’ wins their average score is 39-24.  In the two losses they are outscored:  43-7.  It doesn’t get any easier for the Bears as they have Memorial this week.

Castle rebounded nicely from the loss to Reitz.  I thought the Knights might have trouble at Bosse.  Give credit to Coach Hurt and his staff for erasing that week five performance, and putting together a nice gameplan against the Dogs.  Kyle Pitlick carried the load for the Castle ground game.  The Knights have Harrison next, then the Saturday showdown with Mater Dei at the Bowl.  It’s another tough loss for the Dogs.  Keep your head up Bosse!

I went outside the city this past week.  I traveled to Boonville for the Mt. Vernon game.  It was an important game in the Big Eight.  Clearly, Jasper will run away with the title, but the fight to see who is second best is pretty interesting.  It was homecoming for the Pioneers, and their bleachers were full.  Since this was my first time seeing Boonville in person, I didn’t realize how much the Pioneers run the ball.  It was the fastest first quarter!  The Pioneers run a lot of misdirection.  It is really tough to figure out who has the ball.  I like the 1-2 punch of Kyle Whitten and Jacob Winsett.  They are physical, and can really get after it. 

I have to tell this story.  Boonville is on the one yard line getting ready to score the first touchdown of the game.  I am in the corner of the endzone.  Shooting one yard touchdowns are just the worst from a visual standpoint.  There is nothing to them.  Half of the time you cannot find the ball in the mass of humanity in the middle.  So I am zooming in trying to make sure I have the right player.  Then I nearly die.  No joke!  The Army was there…I assume recruiting.  They had a real cannon just a few feet from me.  I had NO IDEA it was there.  So as I am focusing in on who scores BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!  I really thought al Qaeda just bombed Boonville.  My heart literally stopped.  I swear, I thought I was dead.  When I realized what happened, and I knew I was still alive my next thought was, “I hope I didn’t lose control of my bowels!”  Luckily, for everyone near me, I did not.  It honestly took me a good 45 minutes for my heart to beat correctly. 

Anyhow, my clean underwear aside, the Pioneers put up 40 points on Mt. Vernon.  James Blankenship’s club is now 5-1.  They have Princeton next, so that should be win number six on the season.  I still didn’t get a good feel for Mt. Vernon.  The Pioneers dominated the time of possession while I was there.  I think MV would have benefited with a drier track.  The timing on passing plays was off with the sloppy field. 

One nice thing about being in Boonville is I could listen to two of my favorite radio guys.  Southridge’s Kurt Gutgsell and Jasper’s Walt Ferber are two of the best.  Both of them called very lopsided games.  The Raiders took care of Tell City 31-14, and Jasper really dominated Princeton in the first half.  The Cats won 46-0.  While I was listening to WITZ, Ferber was saying that Princeton had 2 personal foul calls, the last was roughing the holder on an extra point, and it was maybe getting a bit chippy.  Jasper was up 40-0 at the time, and then my radio started breaking up.  I believe Jasper may have recovered an onsides kick, or maybe Princeton fumbled, but it sounded like it got kind of ugly. 

The entire radio station dynamic has really changed for us.  Before the internet, we would bug the radio stations all of the time trying to get scores.  Now with our online scoreboard, the roles have reversed a bit.   Most of the radio stations now use us for their scoreboard mentions.  It is really a great two-way relationship now between HTF and all of the Tri-State radio stations.  I thank all of them for helping us out, and I hope they appreciate our live online scoreboard.

I did not want to miss getting highlights of the South Spencer game.  The Rebels were at Pike Central.  So I sent a photographer to shoot that game as well as Mt. Carmel at Washington.  Both South Spencer and Mt. Carmel were impressive on the road.  The Golden Aces are really improved from last year.  Quarterback Alex Hale is running the option well.  The Aces will have all they can handle and more this week as Jasper visits the Snake Pit.  I know firsthand, there is no love lost between the two schools.

The Rebels are now 6-0 with the 43-0 shutout of the Chargers.  They should probably beat Forest Park this week, then end the season at Boonville, then at home against arch rival Heritage Hills.  It will be an interesting end to the regular season for Bruce Green’s team.  The Rebels have only given up 13 points a game this season.

North Posey and Heritage Hills both rolled to victories in the PAC.  The Patriots have Southridge at The Jungle this Friday.

In Kentucky, you had to feel sorry for Ohio County.  The Eagles could not have had a worse schedule.  It was already going to be a major challenge for Ohio County to win at Owensboro.  Then you add the fact that the Devils were stinging mad from their first loss to Bowling Green.  The end result: Owensboro wins 63-0.  This week Owensboro is at Christian County for another tough game.

Henderson County wins again.  The Colonels had an old fashioned slugfest with rival Daviess County.   There was only one touchdown the whole game, and luckily our HTF camera was there when it happened!  The Colonels led 9-0 at the half.  Believe it or not, that ended up being the final score.

Apollo and Owensboro Catholic both had nice victories as well.   The Aces won at home against Henry County, and the Eagles at Marshall County.

Our Showdown Game is in Kentucky this Friday.  Hopkins Central takes on rival Madisonville.  Both schools are better known for basketball, but don’t let that fool you.  They can play some pigskin as well!  It should be a great night in Hopkins County.

I am going to enjoy my final two days off here in Kansas City.  I am going to see Dave Matthews Band tomorrow night (shocker I know).  Then it is back to work on Friday!  I can’t wait to cover more football.  I hope there are some close games. 

Any questions, comments, or anything specific you would like me to talk about, leave a comment below.  As always, thanks for reading and watching, and I will see everyone at 10:35 Friday night for HTF!

 

Week Five Home Team Friday Recap

Before I dive into my week five recap of high school football and Home Team Friday, I wanted to address a few comments and emails I have received. 

First off, thanks so much for the feedback.  Many of you are shy and email me directly instead of leaving posts at the bottom of the page, and that is just fine.  A few people have said they like the behind the scenes comments I put into the recaps, so I will try to add a few more of those, just to give you a feel for what it is like back at the station. 

Also, a big thanks to Rudy over at reitzfootball.com.  He was gracious enough to make a post on his forum page, and I had a lot of Reitz peeps read the blog.  Because of that I will try to put some extra Reitz stuff in each week.  I have said this in a few speeches that I have made over the years at Reitz and Mater Dei, but it is worth repeating here…growing up in Newburgh my whole life, we are raised to dislike the Westside.  However, over the years in my job at NEWS 25, I have met my closest friends either at Reitz or Mater Dei.  I have always found Westsiders to be very appreciative of stories or highlights that I have done in the past.  Afterall, my grandma(maiden name Doris Saltzman), was a Panthers cheerleader on the hill.  I believe she graduated in 1942, but I am going to have to ask her again.  So I do have some Westside roots!  I am one of the few weird ones that honestly likes both Reitz and Mater Dei.  Now that I have completely sucked up as much as possible…I might as well start with Reitz…

I have to start by giving myself props.  I was editing around 6:10pm on Friday and I got a call from our Internet Radio play by play man Warren Distler.  He asked me my prediction on the Reitz/Castle game.  I told him I thought the Panthers would win by 28.  Of course, that is not any kind of knock on Castle.  I am a Knight afterall.  However, Castle is such a young team.  Doug Hurt’s squad has really been a heckuva lot better than I thought at this stage.  Think of the talent Castle lost to graduation.  Combine that with the fact that Reitz is pretty loaded, especially at the skill positions.  The Panthers had not really put together a solid 4 quarters of football all season up to that point.  Tony Lewis had a lot going for him with motivation, and he certainly got the most out of his kids.  The perfect storm came together for the lopsided 42-7 victory.  Lewis really kept his offense balanced with the pass and the run.  Matt McIntosh had 271 total yards and two touchdowns.  I think we saw the true potential of the Panthers this season, and if you are a Castle fan, there’s no reason to hit the panic button.  The Knights will continue to gain experience, and as Coach Hurt told us in the pre-season, his team will come together late in the year.

On my Friday 6pm sportscast, we had our first three wrap preview since Bo McFall left us for WFIE last year.  Bo and I are still close friends, and we go out at least once a week.  A wrap is a report from a stadium that usually has interviews from coaches, but not always.  We keep them shorter than a regular story.  Anyhow, Randall did a wrap from Castle, David Heckard made his sports debut from Enlow Field, and ace reporter Aaron Hancock had one from Central Stadium.  It looked great.  Hopefully, we will be able to pull it off again this Friday.  We are down a sports person.  Because of the sagging economy our station did not allow us to replace our #3 position.  So it is just me and Randall holding everything together.  It has been a real challenge, so any and all help from others in the building is greatly appreciated!  David is an enormous football fan, and no one works harder than Aaron. 

I better get to an Eastside school, or I am going to lose my membership card!!  So after anchoring the 6pm sportscast, I head to the game I am covering: North at Memorial.  It was an awesome atmosphere at Enlow Field.  There was a ton of tailgating before the game.  I saw a lot of that the previous week for the Reitz/Memorial game.  I took a picture with my iphone.

I knew this would probably be a lopsided contest.  The Huskies are without their quarterback, and let’s face it…Memorial is pretty darn good despite its record.   On the first drive, North got the ball near the red zone, but a 4th down conversion failed.  On the Tigers first play from scrimmage, quarterback Grant Gribbins hit Jon Wandling on a slant and Wandling did the rest going all the way down to the 10.  Next play Ryan Hatler threw his body over the goalline for a touchdown.  However, it wouldn’t be that simple of a night for Memorial.  The Huskies did a good job of containing Memorial’s offense for most of the first half.  North benefited from a mind-boggling awful call by the refs.  I am sure you saw it on HTF.  When I am shooting a game, I typically stay on the sideline.  However, with Gribbins, I intentionally went to the back of the endzone.  The reason is Gribbins can literally go anywhere on the field.  He can roll one way, and throw the other.  So by being in the back of the endzone, I am less likely to get faked out, and I might luck into a sweet highlight. 

Memorial is on the three yard line and is about to score.  DW Sexton fumbles the ball.  It squirts through a few hands and lands in the endzone, where it is clearly scooped up by a Memorial lineman.  What is more amazing is one of the referees couldn’t have been more than 5 feet from the recovery.  Now of course I know Memorial recovered it.  Heck the Tigers lineman is holding the ball.  The referees all huddle right next to me, and I can see it in the back judge’s eyes…he has no clue what to call.  In comes another official saying, “I have white ball”(North was wearing white).  I was almost tempted to say to the refs, “It was clearly a Memorial touchdown.”  Of course there is no way I would ever do that.  Indeed, they call it a touchback and give the ball to North.  I showed a few people on the Memorial sidelines the replay in my camera.  I don’t want to be too rough on the refs.  They get it right most of the time.  At the same time, that was a huge missed call.  It not only took 7 points off the board for Memorial, it gave North the ball!  The Tigers got the ball right back off an interception.  Gribbins threw a perfect spiral to Hatler right at my camera for a second touchdown (thanks Grant!).   Now with: 35 left in the half, I head to the exits to get back to the station.  One of my co-workers was in the stands and told me I missed a third touchdown.  He was getting food and he missed it too.  I still don’t know how Memorial scored to make it 20-0 at half.  I assume it was a defensive score.  The Tigers end up rolling to a 40-13 win.  That sets up their Catholic showdown with Mater Dei on Friday.

Speaking of Mater Dei, the Cats had a hard fought victory against Harrison.  Tailback Cody Hess had another great game on the ground for MD.  He rushed for 139 yards and 3 touchdowns.  Mater Dei is now 4-1, and is still that 2 point conversion in overtime against Central away from being 5-0.  Mater Dei hosting Memorial will be our HTF Showdown game.  I hope it is a good one.

The best game in the city took place at Central Stadium.  Last week, I said Bosse was going to chalk up an impressive win this season.  It almost happened against the Bears.  The Bulldogs had a 28-13 lead late.  Then a wild fury of touchdowns began.  Central quickly scored twice to make it 28-27.  There is only around 6:00 left in the game, and I am scrambling to find a photographer that can get to the Northside for the ending.  David Heckard was coming from Washington, but when I got a hold of him he was almost back to the station.  I called Aaron, and he had just left Central Stadium.  It was 9:05pm.  Aaron still had to drive all the way to Castle, edit his two games he shot, feed them back to the station, then setup to shoot Randall’s live from Paradise.  I almost had him go back, but I couldn’t chance the whole show going down the crapper.  Too much was on the line, and all of their games were near the top of HTF.  The Dogs counter with another score going up 35-27 with 3:00 left in the game.  Central scored, but missed the two point conversion to make it 35-33 Bosse.  The Bears had one more touchdown left in them, and pulled out a wild 39-35 victory.  It is another gut-wrenching loss for Bosse.  Andy Owen’s team is 4-1.

Heritage Hills received one gift after another in Poseyville.  The Vikings fumbled the opening kickoff to the Patriots.  If you are trying to upset the Pats, you cannot turn the ball over!  North Posey never recovered, but the Vikings did shutout the Patriots in the second half.  Heritage Hills looked out of sync on offense, but won 26-7.

Jasper had no problems with Vincennes.  The Alices program has really fallen off.  Someone told me the school’s enrollment is way down.  I hope Lincoln can bounce back soon.  Jasper is now 5-0 and looks pretty unstoppable.

If someone can figure out Mt. Vernon, please email me.  It has been five weeks of ups, downs, lefts, rights, and even some diagonals for the Cats!  Washington is a good team.  The Hatchets beat 1A power North Daviess the week before.  However, Mt. Vernon makes the long bus trip to Hatchet country and comes away with a very impressive 21-13 win.  Props to MV.

Another unbeaten resides in Spencer County, but it is not Heritage Hills.  South Spencer is 5-0.  The Rebels are for real.  This team could be as good as the ’03 semi-state team.  Bruce Green has now beaten two of his possible sectional opponents in Southridge and North Posey.  We still have four weeks to go, but it could be a Mater Dei vs. South Spencer matchup for 2A.

Back at the station, we are all keeping an eye on the Owensboro at Bowling Green game.  It pitted two of the very best teams in the entire state of Kentucky.  We could have asked our ABC sister station in Bowling Green to shoot the game for us, but for a game of this magnitude, I like to do things ourselves.  The Blaine Train made the trip to BG.  Blaine could only shoot for a half because of the hour and a half drive, but he still got ever touchdown scored in the game.  I hated seeing that the Devils lost 26-21.  I really thought they would go unbeaten.  One of my twitter followers @jcknox80 told me the Devils dropped a lot of passes. 

We got our first look at Perry Central.  The Commodores have been one of the best teams in 1A.  They also have the most complaining fans in the Tri-State.  I appreciate their loyalty to their team, but I was already getting emails that they don’t get enough attention after just ONE home game.  My PC peeps, please know we would have highlights from the Commodores every Friday if we could.  However, geographically that is impossible.  It is over 90 minutes from your field to our station.  It also hurts, that most of your road games are even further away from us than Leopold.  We will be there for your home game with Mitchell on October 2nd.  Plus, you have a Wilkerson at tailback!!  You know I have to get him on the air!  Mike Spencer is one of the best coaches in the Tri-State.  Coach Spencer has a mind-boggling record of 106-18 in a decade at the school.  The Commodores win over Tell City improved PC’s record to 5-0.

Week 5’s HTF show was the first one of the season that wasn’t insanely stressful.  I was actually able to take my place on the set a good 5 minutes before I went on the air.  That is huge for me.  Time to collect my thoughts, go over my shot sheets (scripts with the highlights written on them), and makes sure I have all of the scores.  Even though we had photographers in Washington, Vincennes, Perry Central, and Bowling Green, we were organized enough to have it all come together really smoothly.  Our only technical glitch is the scoreboard with the games we didn’t have highlights of did not run where it normally does.  However, because of quick thinking by the HTF producer Jason, you couldn’t tell on the air.  About 5 seconds before I was supposed to say, “Now here’s a look at the rest of the scores”, Jason said in my earpiece “NO SCORES, NO SCORES”.  So I just tossed it to commercial break.  It turned out when I typed up all of the full screen scoreboards, I used the wrong template.  You have to use the correct template for any kind of graphic that you see on the screen.  Luckily Jason caught the mistake, and quickly changed every single scoreboard during the 2 minute commercial break in time to get all of the scores on when we returned.  It also gave me a chance to give props to Forest Park for another win.

This week I will be at the Mt. Vernon at Boonville game.  Maybe I can see for myself what is going on with the Wildcats!  The Pioneers are 4-1.  Their lone loss was to Jasper.  Not too shabby for Coach James Blankenship’s club!

Thanks for watching HTF every week, and thanks for reading my ramblings!  Please spread the word about my blog.  If you have any questions or if you would like me to talk about a particular team, leave me a comment at the bottom, or email me using the link on the left.

See y’all at 10:35pm Friday for NEWS 25 Home Team Friday LIVE!