Before Eric Watt and Andy Rodriguez returned to South Newton High School for their junior years in 2005, they spent considerable time in the weight room together, trying to get better toned physically and, at least in the case of Watt, to get even more fit and agile for the upcoming football season.
Getting Eric to the weight room was an accomplishment, Andy said, because his friend detested the weight room. But Eric’s goal and commitment to help his team excel in 2005 showed how determined he was to turn around the indifferent, on-field mentality of older players the two previous seasons.
Eric, Andy, Ryan Care and other team members in the junior class – and even guys a year behind them like Ben Welsh and Brice Willey – were serious about developing a winning mindset at South Newton High School in 2005. They were about ending the “we couldn’t care less” approach.
“We said this (2004’s 1-9 season) isn’t going to happen again,” Rodriguez said. And a change was seen almost immediately when players reported for training camp in late summer 2005. In the summer months leading up to that camp, the serious players had worked out together most days, and they played in 7-on-7 competitions locally and in nearby states. (More on the 7-on-7s later.)
At preseason camp in August, Rodriguez said, “the offense started clicking, and we’d gotten more mature with our defense.”
Andy switched positions on defense that year. In 2004, he had played end, and in 2005 he moved to the interior line at tackle (he would go to another defensive position the following year). The majority of the defense, in fact, was going through a transformation. Gone from the 2004 team were anchors Adam Rheude, a two-way player who started at safety, and linebacker Ben Carter. But Rodriguez, Care, Welsh, Willey and Justin Hood had gotten stronger and better, and they still had premier linebacker Brian Tebo, a senior, who would be named to the Class A all-state team at the end of the season.
Ryan Care said that in addition to the workouts with teammates, he took a summer school physical education class that enabled him to do weight work while class instructor Chris Bell, the head football coach, stood nearby to oversee and provide counsel. Care and some other players participated in the class at some point; Bell estimated that as many as 15 students, most of them athletes, were enrolled in it. And Care was back in the summer class the following summer, the one before his senior year.
Bell estimated that the summer P.E. class – which the school no longer offers – ran from about 8 to 11:30 a.m. Football team members then had a few hours break before any late-afternoon 7-on-7 competitions in the area during the week. The out-of-town 7-on-7s were limited to weekends, he said.
For the physical education class, students would do such things as literally push rolled-up wrestling mats as well as trucks – all designed to help build strength, Bell said.
As for the offense at preseason camp, Care said, the spread was being emphasized to the hilt. And once the season started, he added, “We were throwing it all over the place, and they (opponents) could not defense it,” repeating Rodriguez’s refrain from earlier.
Watt had given opponents a taste of the Rebels’ new offensive direction the previous year, but as noted previously, opponents did little to adjust because South Newton wasn’t winning games with it. In 2005, opponents that hadn’t seen a small high school use the spread, or teams that had seen South Newton’s meek version in 2004 but did nothing to deal with it, would end up paying the consequences. And those consequences would be considerably greater in 2006.
Coach Bell remembers that Watt was still somewhat lanky his junior year. But he had grown to almost 6-feet tall – and he now was extremely fast. That meant Watt could be a double threat – passing or keeping the ball and running with it, exploiting that improved speed.
Coach Durham went so far as to refer to Eric’s physical growth between sophomore and junior years as having taken “a huge leap.” Even more impressive, Bell noted, was that Watt now could “change directions on a dime” while running with the ball.
“He settled down and got more experience as a leader and became more flexible to run the offense,” Bell said.
Eric didn’t think he’d reached 6-feet-tall by his junior year; he estimated he was probably closer to 5-10 and had added at least 10 to 15 pounds (reaching about 150). He said the summer before that season, he also had begun to do workouts with an elastic resistance band – something athletes will slip over a door or onto some other firmly stable device, enabling them to pull the band back and forth repeatedly to build and tone muscle.
And it was in Watt’s junior year, Bell said, that his quarterback learned “how to throw his receiver open.”
Asked to explain “throw his receiver open,” Bell said that good quarterbacks learn that at the point a pass defender is running level with a receiver on the latter’s pass route, the receiver is technically “open.” And at that point, all a good quarterback needs to do is throw accurately – i.e., lead the receiver with the pass. And if he does that, the receiver should catch it. That is “throwing a receiver open.”
Bell says quarterbacks who are aware of that truism usually are successful. Those who don’t know or learn it, too often hesitate to the point of throwing errantly or simply won’t throw at all because they fear the defender will either intercept or deflect the pass, even if the aerial is thrown accurately as Bell described.
“He (Watt) picked up on that, and when he did, our offense went to a different level,” Bell said. Everyone at the South Newton preseason camp in 2005 quickly realized that the status of Eric Watt as the team’s starting quarterback was no longer in question. He had become the guy.
South Newton began 2005 with a blowout non-conference win at Covington. The Rebels led 57-0 by halftime, and by that point, Watt had thrown three touchdown passes, Marcus Schriner had rushed for two TDs and Brice Willey had returned a punt 52 yards for another score.
Coach Bell did not play Watt in the second half, and the Rebels still scored again – on a 92-yard run from scrimmage by backup quarterback Ben Welsh, accounting for the final score of 63-0.
The following week marked the beginning of the Midwest Conference portion of the South Newton schedule, and the Rebels secured a 35-20 win over Frontier. That brought South Newton to, in the third week of the schedule, what had become its annual supreme test: figuring out how to beat perennial conference champion Pioneer.
Assuming that was even possible.
Under longtime head coach Mike Johnson, a 2019 Indiana
Football Hall of Fame inductee, Pioneer had not experienced a losing season
since 1995 and won a state championship in 1997.
From 2002 to 2013, Pioneer also won all but one Midwest Conference championship – and only once had not gone unbeaten in conference play. Plus, Pioneer came into the 2005 game against South Newton with a 2-0 record and was ranked second in the state in Class A, the same classification as the Rebels.
On the field that game, Pioneer’s Matt Vianco ran for first-half touchdowns of 21, 55 and 59 yards, and the Panthers amassed 447 total rushing yards on 47 carries and had a 46-0 lead before South Newton scored the final 14 points of the game, both on Eric Watt touchdown passes – 78 yards to Ryan Hancock and 47 yards to Tony Metheny.
The Panthers won, 46-14, and were still kings of the hill. They would remain undefeated the rest of the regular season and claim yet another conference title. Eric Watt would now have just one more chance to help South Newton stop Pioneer’s dominance of his school on the gridiron, but that opportunity would have to wait until the following season.
The Rebels stumbled twice more in 2005 – both times to West Central, yet another traditionally strong Class A football program in northern Indiana and a fellow member of the Midwest Conference. The Trojans had won only one league football title – in 1998, the year after Pioneer’s first. The Rebels’ first loss to West Central in 2005 came in Game 5 of the regular season by a score of 45-20.
On Sept. 23, Week 6, South Newton had its annual rivalry game against Tri-County. In addition to proximity and being in the same conference, Tri-County is considered a big South Newton rival because, as Andy Rodriguez explained matter-of-factly, just like in the case of the North Newton rivalry, “We don’t like them, and they don’t like us.”
Teammate Welsh used virtually the same words to affirm South Newton’s animus of Tri-County: “It was just a matter of us not liking them.”
In the 2005 game between the schools, Watt completed 20 of 43 passes for 234 yards and three touchdowns. The Rebels built a 31-14 lead at the end of three quarters, after which Tri-County scored twice to bring the Cavaliers to within 31-28. Tri-County was threatening again late in the fourth quarter, too, but two-way player Welsh made a clutch interception in the end zone as the clock expired, sealing the win for South Newton.
The Rebels had at least two other high moments that year – a 47-33 win over Winamac – “a great win for us,” coach Bell said, because Winamac was yet another historically good team and had won four league football titles at that point – and a 49-7 rout of archrival North Newton in the final game before sectionals.
In the Winamac game, Watt threw for 297 yards and had five touchdown passes. Against North Newton, Watt threw for a school-record 356 yards and three touchdowns – two to Scott Chapman – and he ran for another.
Coach Bell missed that Winamac game (and a second game, versus Caston) in 2005 so he could be at Rensselaer Central High School to watch his oldest son, Christopher, play in the young man’s senior season. The Sept. 30 game vs. Caston happened to be Senior Night at Rensselaer. Because parents meet their sons on the field during a brief ceremony on Senior Night, it was another reason Bell wanted to be at his son’s last regular-season home game.
Unfortunately, when the postseason tournament began on Oct. 21, South Newton drew West Central in the first round of sectionals and lost again, 49-21. The Rebels played the Trojans close early on, down only 21-14 at half. But the Trojans owned the second half, beginning with a 95-yard opening kickoff return for a touchdown by Bryon Geyer. West Central outscored South Newton 21-7 the rest of the way.
Watt completed 20 of 42 passes for 311 yards and ran for two scores in the final game of his junior year, but it wasn’t enough to offset the Trojans’ powerful running game – 313 yards on 49 carries, including four touchdowns by Kayln Ballard. The Rebels finished the season 7-3, a significant improvement from the 1-9 mark the previous year.
Senior linebacker Brian Tebo was the only Rebel named to the main 2005 Class A All-State team. But four others – Watt, Willey, offensive lineman David Chapman and freshman place-kicker Nelson Orellana – were cited as honorable mentions. Orellana would not repeat as an honorable mention the following year, but he would nevertheless etch his name into South Newton lore by season's end.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Coach Chris Bell was effusive in his praise of his school’s football team of 2006. And who could question him for doing that? It was a team that would be one for the ages in southern Newton County.
Andy Rodriguez was asked to offer a personal overview of the 2006 season, and he paused for a long moment, exhaling audibly, as if he were allowing a montage of memories to play out mentally. He then inhaled and let out one more audible sigh before responding wistfully and in a measured tempo: “I ... remember it ... so ... well. It was so ... different.”
A huge portion of the “difference” Rodriguez noted could be explained by how key Rebels team members played another summer of 7-on-7 competitions.
In 7-on-7 competitions, schools take their core offense – in the case of South Newton, it was a center, a running back, the quarterback and four or five receivers (if they used five, then they skipped the running back). They also bring seven defenders – two safeties, two cornerbacks and three linebackers.
In 7-on-7s, there are no defensive linemen rushing the passer, but there is still pressure on the quarterback – in the form of a clock. Offensive plays have to be executed within a very brief period – sometimes three or four seconds – and there are game officials on the field keeping time and enforcing the deadline.
In fact, Ben Welsh (shown
in a Lori Murphy photo in the team’s 2006 season-opener against Covington) attests
that they won the vast majority of them.
And both Welsh and Willey said Eric Watt shined in those games.
“Eric was beyond belief in those competitions,” Welsh said. “Eric hands down was the best quarterback” in most of the tournament contests.
Coach Bell concurred: “We’d play against bigger teams, and we’d beat them and build confidence. It made them hungry out there.”
Welsh, Willey and Watt said the 7-on-7s helped raise the South Newton offense to new levels in 2005 and ’06.
“We came into the (2006) season with so much confidence. We had an attitude,” Welsh said. And almost more than anything else, he added, South Newton was bent on finally beating Pioneer. “And we knew we could do it.”
Watt said the 7-on-7s gave him and his receivers “a lot of reps together, and we were on the same page by the beginning of the season.”
“The kids liked being around each other,” coach Bell said of the 7-on-7s. “The nucleus group – they had fun and were competitive. It allowed them to work on fine-tuning, and the repetitions got them into great shape. It helped build camaraderie.”
Also helpful, offered Brice Willey, were Thursday-before-game-day quick-huddle drills prior to team dinners.
The excitement about what the Rebels began doing on the gridiron in 2006 permeated the South Newton campus, from the start of the season thereafter. The student body, faculty and administration alike jumped excitedly aboard the team’s steadfast, unwavering ship.
Throughout autumn in Kentland, there was a constant buzz about the football team and its fortunes, certainly more than Andy Rodriguez could remember seeing in his years in the community. The buzz enjoyed a season-long crescendo as the team’s success continued week after week. Pep rallies were packed with real energy. Indeed, at South Newton, “pep” lived up to its name when it came to the rallies and beyond.
Cheerleaders helped arrange the large on-field banners (see Lori Murphy 2006 photo above) that players ran through during pregame introductions, she said.
At first, banners were made out of paper. But by midseason, there was more community booster support, and hence, more money to enable cheerleaders to get nylon banners that were reusable week after week.
Brice Willey also recalls the school spirit increasing incrementally in 2006. He said it was an enthusiasm South Newton probably hadn’t seen since the school’s last sectional-winning team in 1992, a year when seniors on the 2006 team were mere toddlers. Support for an 11-1 South Newton team that won a conference championship in 2001 and lost to Pioneer 16-12 in the sectional championship apparently didn’t reach the level experienced in 2006.
For many seasons in the recent past, the home field grandstands at South Newton games usually had quite a few open seats, including 2004, Willey said. But there were fewer open seats in 2005, and almost none in 2006, he added.
“The community came together so much” in 2006, Willey said. “We were undefeated. In Week 5, they were putting ‘5-0,’ using Styrofoam cups, on the chain link fence” on school grounds. “The student body came up with really good themes” to promote support for the team, he said.
Watt reported to the 2006 preseason camp in his best physical shape yet in high school. He was now 6-feet-tall (if he hadn’t already been there the previous season by Bell’s estimation) and had added another 10 to 15 pounds. If he was a force to be reckoned with in 2005, he was a whole level above that in 2006.
And as talented as Watt had shown he was in his senior campaign, Bell said, credit also goes to the Rebels’ 2006 receiving corps of Ben Welsh, Brice Willey, Scott Chapman and Tyler Welsh, Ben’s cousin, as well as Ryan Care (in five-receiver sets) and the whole offensive and defensive squads.
Willey, Welsh and Chapman gained more than 100 pass reception yards each on multiple occasions in 2006. And they were very close to being the first school threesome to record 1,000 reception yards each for the whole season.
On Dec. 25, 2006, when the Lafayette Journal & Courier, announced its all-area teams and included Ben Welsh on its defensive team, it noted that Welsh “also caught 64 passes for 946 yards and 11 touchdowns” on offense, missing the 1,000-yardage mark by just 54 yards. Also making the team was receiver Chapman. Willey was an honorable mention on the team, so his stats were not in the article.
In Week 1, the Rebels logged another thrashing of Covington (in another Lori Murphy photo at left, Watt is pictured running against Covington in 2006) and the following week had a relatively easy time defeating conference foe Frontier.
That meant that in Week 3, it was time for South Newton’s annual supreme test – Pioneer, a team the Rebels had been preparing to meet for weeks, starting with summer workouts and those arduous 7-on-7 competitions.
Ben Welsh says the Rebels were stoked emotionally for the game. South Newton came into the contest with a 2-0 record; Pioneer was 1-1, having lost 27-14 to Lafayette Central Catholic in the opening week before defeating Winamac 48-6 in Week 2.
Pioneer had won – and had done so handily – its game against South Newton the previous year. The Panthers also had beaten South Newton in 2004. And in the year before that. And so on.
Here’s how the 2006 game at South Newton unfolded:
In the second quarter, with Pioneer leading 7-0 from a first-period score, South Newton sandwiched Watt touchdown passes of 22 yards to Brice Willey and 23 yards to Scott Chapman between a Pioneer passing touchdown. With a successful two-point conversion after the first South Newton touchdown pass and a failed two-point conversion after Pioneer’s second-quarter TD, South Newton went into the locker room at halftime leading 15-13.
In the third quarter, when Willey remembers that a fog started moving into the area, creating what he described as “eerie aesthetics,” the Rebels grew their lead to 22-13 when Watt scampered 31 yards for a touchdown. The Panthers then scored 27 unanswered points – all in the third quarter.
Pioneer led 40-22 when the fourth quarter started. At that point, the Panthers may have felt they were in the driver’s seat – and had good cause to believe they’d be leaving the field winners again, just as they had in previous years.
But then the Eric Watt aerial assault began and, just as importantly, the Rebels’ defense kept Pioneer out of the end zone for the rest of the game.
First, Watt connected with Scott Chapman on a 30-yard touchdown pass followed by a two-point conversion pass from Watt to Willey. The score was now 40-30. Then it was 19 yards from Watt to Welsh, making the score 40-37, and that was followed by an 18-yard strike to Welsh again. South Newton was now on top, 44-40.
And that lead stood up as the final score. Annual Supreme Test aced. Finally.
Watt
completed 35 of 53 passes for 356 yards (tying the school high mark he had set against North Newton in
2005) and had only one pass intercepted. Welsh hauled in 12 of those passes for
103 yards, and as a two-way player, he also made 12 tackles and had an
interception on defense.
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By Eric’s count, he was sacked 12 times, and he noted that eight of the 12 sacks were by 6-2, 195-pound lineman Nate Denton, who would be a teammate of Eric’s in college and was named a first-team Class A all-state defensive end at the end of the season.
Coach Bell said the Panthers’ defensive pressure on Watt came hard and often, no doubt accounting for the interception and the sacks. He was thrown to the turf by the sacks so often and so hard, Watt said, that after the game, “I was sore until Thursday.”
Eric’s 35 completions and 53 pass attempts set school records. The passing yardage mark he had tied would be bettered in only a few weeks. The Rebels gained only 31 net rushing yards – which equaled the entire distance of Watt's touchdown run in the third quarter. Pioneer gained 229 yards rushing.
The win enabled the Rebels to wrest the Midwest Conference traveling Bull Trophy from the longtime grips of the Panthers. The trophy stays in a school’s possession as long as that school continues to win games in the Midwest Conference. The holder surrenders the trophy only when it is beaten by a conference foe, which then holds the trophy until beaten by another conference school.
The Rebels’ possession of the Bull Trophy would last until their game against Pioneer the following season. The 30-24 overtime defeat in 2007 would be their only loss of the regular season.
In the 2006 Pioneer game, Bell said, Watt was running around a lot. “He collected himself well. He was so fast that very few people in the state could catch him (in the open field). Bud Wright (coach of the Class A football power Sheridan Blackhawks) would say Eric had shifty hips.”
This was the lead paragraph of the 2006 South Newton-Pioneer game story that appeared in the Lafayette Journal & Courier the following day:
“What transpired Friday night between South Newton and Pioneer will likely be talked about for a long time. The Rebels pulled off a dramatic comeback from 18 points down in the fourth quarter to stun Class A No. 6 Pioneer 44-40 in Midwest Conference action.”
Five years later, in a 2011 article about the Panthers published in the Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Pioneer’s 2006 loss to South Newton is referred to as “the Eric Watt game,” the only conference blemish for Pioneer in 72 games over a 10-year period. Indeed, South Newton had snapped a 31-game Pioneer conference winning streak.
The week after the conquest of Pioneer, South Newton entered the state rankings at No. 5. And the weekend after that, in a Week 4 game victory over Winamac, Andy Rodriguez enjoyed a small bit of redemption himself.
First, some background and a short flashback. The background is that from the beginning of the season, coach Bell trusted Eric Watt enough to allow his quarterback to change the offensive play Bell called with an audible at the line of scrimmage anytime – except inside the opponents’ 10-yard line. That, Bell said, gave Eric plenty of freedom to run the offense as the quarterback saw fit.
As for the flashback: On a play in the red zone in the Frontier game two weeks earlier, Andy Rodriguez had asked a favor of his buddy Eric: Would the quarterback help him accomplish something he’d been hoping to do before leaving high school – score a touchdown in a game?
So when the Rebels got close to the goal line late in the Frontier game, Watt told Rodriguez to run a tight-end delay pattern into the end zone. Andy ran the route, Watt spotted his buddy open in the back of the end zone and threw him the ball. Rodriguez dropped it.
The loss of the score had no effect on the game’s outcome; South Newton won 26-7. The drop didn’t deter Rodriguez from pursuing his dream, so in the Week 4 game against Winamac, once South Newton had the game firmly in hand and the Rebels were close to the goal line, Rodriguez asked Watt to try the tight-end delay again. Watt initially told him no because of coach Bell’s admonition against running plays that superseded the coach’s call inside the 10-yard line.
But friendship has its benefits, and Watt relented. With the Rebels leading 33-14 and the ball on Winamac’s 1-yard line in the fourth quarter, Watt called the tight end delay play in the huddle, overriding the play Bell had sent in.
This time, Rodriguez caught the ball for a touchdown. After the extra-point kick, South Newton’s lead grew to 40-14, which was the final score. And after the score, Rodriguez said, coach Bell was furious with him and Watt, the game’s certain outcome notwithstanding. The two players and buddies took the coach’s heat and moved on.
On Sept. 15, Week 5 and homecoming weekend, South Newton dispatched West Central, 42-7, avenging one of the two defeats to the Trojans from the previous year. The Rebels scored all of their points before the Trojans managed to get their touchdown in the fourth quarter to avoid a shutout. Watt completed 13 of 22 passes for 224 yards and one touchdown. He also ran for two touchdowns in the second quarter.
Coach Bell also put Watt in the defensive backfield the whole game, which produced a dividend in the third quarter when Watt intercepted a pass and returned it 87 yards for a touchdown.
Bell inserted Watt into games on defense occasionally for a number of reasons. One was that Watt’s speed was a huge asset to counter a dangerous, speedy receiver. But often, it was simply because Bell felt the Rebels’ pass defense needed coverage help. Other times, it was to implement a specific Cover 2 defense, which is when the pass defense divides the field into five zones. Each of the three linebackers and two defensive backs take responsibility for one zone between the scrimmage line and the deep area behind them, while the two safeties, who play behind the five other pass defenders, split the field in half, each taking one deep half.
On Sept. 22, Week 6, South Newton faced the first of its two archrivals, Tri-County, which came into the game with a 5-0 record just like the Rebels, and both schools were 4-0 in conference play. That meant the outcome of their 2006 meeting could determine the Midwest Conference championship, although Tri-County had yet to play Pioneer (to whom the Trojans would lose two weeks later).
The Rebels defeated the Trojans, 41-19, and a large reason the game was such a rout was because Rebels players had gotten motivated – incensed, really – about something they’d learned in the days leading up to the game.
One of those things came on the afternoon of the game – from the mother of Ben Welsh, who taught accounting at Tri-County High School. Ryan Care said Mrs. Welsh had her son and Ryan over to the house that day for sandwiches – just like she often did on Fridays before games. On this particular Friday, she happened to tell the boys that during her week in classes at Tri-County, she overheard some students throw shade on the South Newton team.
But much earlier in the week, South Newton coaching staff showed their players copies of news articles quoting Tri-County players disparaging the South Newton team. And on one day that week, copies of the quotes were left at the lunch table where players usually sat in the school cafeteria.
The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back came on the game’s opening play on Friday night. Brice Willey, one of Watt’s top receivers who also returned kicks for the team, caught the ball on the kick-off, saw a seam to exploit, beat one defender to it and then shifted into high gear along the right sideline. “I thought I was going to score,” he said.
But just inside the 10-yard line of Tri-County he was brought down short of the goal line with a ferocious horse-collar tackle. He lay stunned, having had the wind knocked out of him. As it turned out, he also suffered an ankle sprain during the awkward jolt and fall to the ground.
“I was pretty beat up” from the play, Willey said. “If I’d just been a little faster, I would have scored.”
South Newton did eventually score on the possession, and Willey said he played sparingly the rest of the game. Fortunately, the ankle injury was not serious. He recovered in time to be in the starting lineup the next game.
But the hard tackle on their valuable teammate intensified the Rebels’ motivation to play as if there were no tomorrow. And they didn’t let a thunderstorm delay of an hour and 20 minutes just before halftime knock them off task.
“When we made tackles in the game,” said Ryan Care, “we wanted to beat them more than we wanted to beat LaVille (in the 2006 postseason, for reasons to be explained later).”
And after dazzling opponents in the air up to this point of the season, Eric Watt showed the Cavaliers he was equally adept at running with the ball. It almost was as if he were running on fumes. He rushed for 154 yards and three touchdowns and threw for 124 yards and another score – all before halftime. He finished the game with 183 yards rushing on 15 carries and completed 12 of 24 passes for 134 yards and two touchdowns.
The most notable of Watt’s three rushing TDs, as recalled by teammate Ben Welsh, came early in the second quarter. With the score tied at 7 and the Rebels on offense at their own 43-yard line, Welsh described what happened:
Watt ran a quarterback read, rolling right with two running backs leading him as blockers. As Watt neared Welsh’s slot position, Welsh threw a block that Watt used to make such a radical – but beautiful – cut that it made three Tri-County defenders simultaneously miss making the tackle. Watt continued running, going about 15 yards downfield when the quarterback spotted open space on the other side of the field, so he made yet another dramatic cut to the left and finished the scamper unmolested and in the end zone for a 57-yard touchdown.
In the locker room at halftime, said Ryan Care, the Rebels’ head coach gave a most passionate pep talk. “Coach Bell is pretty good with inspirational speeches,” Care said. “He may even be the best on the planet.”
It wasn’t until after the Rebels won the game that coaches confessed to the players that all the “quotes” from “Tri-County players” that they had been shown from "news articles" and on the slips of paper that had been left on the cafeteria tables … were bogus. Every one of them.
The coaches had made them up to look authentic to ensure that their players were focused for a game against a key rival. Coaches fessed up now because they wanted to be sure their players didn’t try to act out their animus beyond the playing field under false pretenses.
“Beating them was nice,” Brice Willey said, “because they were beating us consistently in basketball.”
Willey said he thinks assistant coach and defensive coordinator Phil Halsema probably hatched the idea for the bogus articles because Halsema was an information technology specialist on the South Newton faculty and possessed the skills to create such things and make them appear genuine.
Asked about the “articles” and told of Willey’s guess about their origin, head coach Bell chuckled and offered yet another confession: “Yeah, that was one hundred percent Phil Halsema.”
“I can’t believe we bought it,” Willey said. Some of the quotes in the articles, he explained, just didn’t sound like something most kids their age would say.
As an example, he remembers one of the Tri-County players being quoted in the “articles” saying that beating South Newton “ ‘would be like taking candy from a baby,’ or something like that. But we had a creative coaching staff. It worked. We were out for blood in that game.”
The game was notable, too, for a strange fourth-quarter play in which South Newton scored its last touchdown. In the game summary (or box score), the touchdown is recorded as a fumble recovery in the end zone by Rebels defensive lineman Blaine Bond. But the play had started 60 yards downfield, and Ben Welsh was instrumental in triggering it.
As Welsh tells it, he was on defense covering Tri-County’s tight end, and on a play-action and rollout to the left, Cavaliers quarterback James Taulman threw to his tight end. Welsh said his hands met the ball and the receiver’s hands simultaneously, and in a split second, Ben had won possession of the ball for an interception.
Welsh, now hovering precariously close to the sidelines, turned his attention to running toward his goal line. But he said he did so in a most peculiar way. For its duration, the runback was anything but normal and certainly not artful.
“I had trouble with my balance,” Welsh said. As he tried to describe it, it seemed he was in as much disarray choosing his words as he might have been trying to get his legs to work properly on the field at that moment.
Perhaps because of sluggish footing in the soggy turf, or maybe because he was dealing with the thrill of the highly unexpected sleight-of-hand larceny he had just committed, or because he was so close to the sideline – and risked going out of bounds inadvertently – he characterized his run forward as clumsy. Or as Ben described it:
“I stumbled and bumbled my way downfield. The whole way. The (Tri-County) tight end and quarterback were chasing me,” although he said he was far enough ahead of them that they never got close to being a threat, and Blaine Bond – who had good speed for a lineman – caught up to him at some point.
“I just kept stumbling. I could never get complete balance. But there was nobody else out there” to stop the play, nor would there be.
When Welsh’s clownish frolic of a runback reached the 5-yard line, just a few steps from the goal line, Welsh had a brainstorm to preserve his "pick six": Put the ball in both hands, stretch the hands straight out in front of him and dive into the end zone.
But as he tried to transition from Step 1 – putting the ball in both hands – into the dive of Step 2, the ball slipped from his grasp, dropped to the ground and bounced into the end zone. Non-stumbling and non-bumbling Blaine Bond was the first to get to the ball, and he fell on it for a touchdown.
The Rebels spanked the Spartans, 54-0, a fitting performance on Senior Night, which most high schools schedule for the last regular-season home game. Parents of senior players join their sons on the field in a pregame ceremony in which the players are recognized on the public address system and saluted by fans attending the game. Above, in another Lori Murphy photo, Eric is accompanied by his parents during the 2006 Senior Night ceremonies.
After throwing for 129 yards and four touchdowns in the first half against North Newton, Watt sat out the rest of the game.
With the regular season over, it was time for the postseason and sectional play. South Newton, now ranked third in the state in Class A, defeated LaVille (51-20) and South Central (28-12) in the first two rounds of sectionals.
The LaVille game was one players and coach Bell remember vividly because of disparaging remarks – this time, for real – that LaVille tailgaters made about the Rebels’ players physical size as the visitors disembarked their chartered bus upon arrival at LaVille for the game. And yes, the tailgaters uttered the remarks loud enough for South Newton players to hear them.
It was curious that anyone from LaVille would denigrate South Newton, given that the Lancers entered the game with a 2-7 record, giving them virtually no defensible position to talk trash about their undefeated and third-ranked opponent.
LaVille played in a strong conference (the Northern State), Bell surmised when questioned about the tailgaters’ remarks, so maybe the school’s fans thought they had grounds to criticize. “But we played in a good conference, too,” Bell added, referring to the Midwest.
The Rebels’ head coach acknowledged that South Newton players weren’t as big as players on many other teams, but he said what the Rebels might have lacked in size, they more than made up for in skill, athleticism and heart.
“So many teams said we were undersized, or small,” Ben Welsh confirmed. “That always got us angry. When we heard that from LaVille, we just saw red,” and the Rebels resolved to play with no let-up for the game’s duration.
Ryan Care remembers that after coach Bell heard the disparaging remarks from tailgaters, he told the team it would not use the LaVille school locker rooms to dress, change or gather for the halftime meeting. At Bell’s direction, players dressed and held their halftime meeting outside the building, Care said.
If there were any doubts that the Rebels were motivated, Welsh recalled that in the third quarter, defensive players Ryan Care and Matt Winkler sacked LaVille quarterback Aaron Bettcher in the end zone for a safety, hitting Bettcher so hard that they bent the quarterback’s face mask.
Even coach Bell got caught up in the “not-quite anger management” approach to dealing with the Rebels’ opponent. He said that at the team’s outdoor halftime meeting, he devised a specific play for the team to use early in the third quarter. He described it as a “receiver screen,” and it involved one of the Rebels offensive tackles “taking out a (LaVille) cornerback to send a message not to mess with us.”
The play worked, and probably beyond expectations, too. Wideout Scott Chapman caught the screen pass and scored on a 56-yard play to open third-quarter scoring.
And in the game’s final moments, with South Newton well ahead by 51-14, Rebels defensive players Welsh, Care, Justin Hood and Andy Rodriguez bore down hard on a LaVille receiver as he approached the goal line on a short pass play, only to fail in stopping him from scoring. “The game was well over, but we were cussing each other out for not keeping him out of the end zone,” Welsh said.
Not to be overlooked was the fact that Watt threw a school-record seven touchdown passes in the game, which also were one short of the state high school record at the time.2 Ben Welsh caught three TD passes, and Brice Willey and Jake Snodgrass had one each.
“We didn’t know Eric was close to a state record,” coach Bell said. “Nobody knew about it. Our players didn’t get into worrying about stats. They played to win. … They were into sharing the wealth.”
Against South Central, South Newton was behind 6-0 at halftime. But the Rebels pulled ahead 13-12 by the end of the third quarter. And in the fourth quarter, Mr. Postseason, Scott Chapman, caught two touchdown passes from Watt – for six and 42 yards, respectively – to put the game away for South Newton.
The opponent in the game for the sectional championship was West Central, presenting a golden opportunity for the Rebels to avenge the second of two losses to the Trojans in 2005. South Newton would have the advantage of hosting the game.
The two schools had starkly different off-the-field motivation entering the game on Nov. 3, 2006. After the win over South Central, Rebels coaches had promised their players the coaches would shave their heads if the team won the sectional title the following weekend. Added motivation was, well, it was West Central they were playing, a team that had beaten them twice the previous year.
South Newton coaches presented the light-hearted head-shaving motivation before they learned of West Central’s situation in Pulaski County, where the community was dealing with shock and grief. On Oct. 29, West Central junior running back Cody Heims, who had gained 228 yards in the Trojans’ 10-7 sectional semifinal win over Whiting two days earlier, was killed when the car he was driving struck a tree in an early-morning accident.
On sectional championship game night at South Newton, the Trojans were fueled by the memories of their teammate. Eric Watt said both teams felt sadness about Heims’ death.
As the game progressed that night, the Rebels used several long-yardage plays to catapult them to a commanding 30-7 lead by halftime.
Watt got the Rebels on the scoreboard first by connecting with Brice Willey on a 68-yard touchdown pass. After the Trojans tied the score on a 13-yard run by Nathan Williams, Watt ran it into the end zone from 10 yards out to pull the Rebels ahead 14-7.
The
second and third quarters belonged to South Newton. Early in the second, Ben
Welsh got the ball to run on a jet sweep, and a defender tackled him by
grabbing one of Welsh’s legs and pulling him down. Welsh said his left knee hurt
from the tackle, but Welsh hung around for at least one more big play.
School spirit decorations at South Newton High School, like the one above before the sectional final against West Central, reached over-the-top levels. (Lori Murphy photo)
With South Newton on offense still in the second quarter, Watt came up to the line of scrimmage to call signals at the Rebels’ 22-yard line. He looked to both sides of the field, as he always did, and when he looked right, he noticed something he had seen before often: Ben Welsh was giving him what Welsh referred to as “the look.”
Watt said he was unfamiliar with Welsh’s term “the look,” but he did say that since sophomore year, he and his slot receivers, Welsh and Brice Willey, had been coached to give each other subtle gestures anytime one of them recognized that the receiver(s) had “inside leverage” on the outside linebacker or if the outside linebacker was lined up in such a way that he appeared to be blitzing. Welsh said the advantage usually materialized when a linebacker lined up in front of a slot receiver – and within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage.
Willey said the gesture could be any number of things. One was as slight as a receiver changing his stance on the line of scrimmage. For example, a slot receiver, who ordinarily lines up standing upright, might put a forearm down on the turf.
Still other times, he said, a slot receiver might simply lift a hand or arm up or, getting even more conspicuous, just point to an area on the defense while looking at Watt, and the quarterback would immediately understand that the receiver was drawing attention to an area on the field to possibly exploit, which usually was tied to a specific route the receiver would run. And other times Watt would simply call an audible himself, and everyone would know what was in store by the signals Watt would call out.
“I would put my hand up,” Willey said of how he usually gestured to Watt. “Or sometimes we’d just nod as if to say, ‘Look at this gaping seam,’ and he would nod back. But you could always tell if he recognized it. … We were always looking for the seams. There were at least five defensive linemen (on a play) in Class A, so we forced teams to use linebackers to cover us, and Eric was so accurate he could put the ball in play all of the time.”
Ordinarily, linebackers are not as fast as slot receivers and wideouts, thereby giving the offense an advantage when linebackers cover a receiver.
Watt said he would verify the audible by using a code word, a specific color, in his signals.
The usual cadence series was "Down. Set. Color. Number. Color. Number. Hut," he said. So if Watt were confirming Welsh's alert, he would say, "Down. Set. Black 32. Black 32. Hut," meaning the slot receivers should audible to the inside seam route.3
"It was a quick throw for me, in the six- to eight-yard range," Watt said. "The receiver would press the inside shoulder of the backer. Or, if the (linebacker) was blitzing, he (the receiver) would just head straight up field."
Willey said there was a check code for receivers to run slant routes as well. In either case, when receivers got the call to run a seam or slant, it often led to big-yardage gains.
But black, Willey said, was THE call. "When we audibled to black, and those seams opened up, we got some big plays. It was money."
On this occasion against West Central, Welsh said Watt saw nothing that would compromise the seam audible, so the quarterback followed Welsh’s cue and checked to black in the signal-calling, then ran the play. It worked to perfection.
In fact, Welsh said, he had no other defender to worry about after blowing past the linebacker and catching the short pass. And even though he was running with a slightly hurt knee, he covered the full distance to the goal line for a 78-yard touchdown.
"When Ben or Brice would catch these and get past the linebacker," Watt said, "they had enough speed to split the two high safeties right up the middle, so yes, they were typically large gains. I do recall Ben's big touchdown in sectionals. I'm just not sure" if it involved one of those subtle-gesture 'code black' situations.
Watt said he did not have any similar audible calls for his wideouts, such as Scott Chapman. "All his long catches just came from out route combos we had in the regular offense," he said.
Later on defense in the quarter, Watt intercepted a West Central pass and returned it 33 yards for a touchdown. Teammate Nelson Orellana added a 27-yard field goal, giving the Rebels a 30-7 halftime lead.
Scott Chapman put the icing on the long-play scoring barrage when he returned a kickoff 78 yards for a score in the third quarter, rendering meaningless the Trojans’ Nathan Williams’ second rushing touchdown, which closed the game’s scoring in the fourth quarter.
With the 37-13 win, South Newton (12-0) and its soon head-shaved coaches enjoyed their first sectional championship since 1992 and advanced to a regional contest at South Newton against No. 5 Adams Central (11-1).
In the week leading up to the regional game, the Lafayette Journal & Courier newspaper’s Nathan Baird wrote a story spotlighting the Rebels’ defense and interviewed Andy Rodriguez.
Rodriguez mentioned that he had played on the defensive line the previous year and that he didn’t like it at first when coaches wanted to move him to linebacker in 2006. But he said he grew to enjoy the position, calling it “one of the greatest positions on defense, I think.”
The prospect of winning a first regional championship was resonating so fervently on the South Newton campus, that cheerleaders went into overdrive to decorate the school and campus to boost spirit and draw attention to the weekend’s big game. There were posters plastered everywhere and sundry window paintings supporting the team.
Outside at the field, extra bleachers were set up behind both end zones to accommodate an expected overflow crowd, which, indeed, showed up for the big game.
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Footnotes:
1 - Pioneer would win two more state titles, in 2017 and ’18, after Johnson had left in 2015 to coach at Logansport (Ind.) High School. The 2018 team scored a state record 936 points and tied a state record with 11 shutouts, including 86-0 over South Newton.
2 - Drew Schnitz of Huntington North raised the bar of this record in 2012, throwing nine touchdown passes in a game.
Tomorrow in Chapter 3: The Kicker With the Ever-Present Smile
Previously in "On Hoosier Gridirons":
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