The South Newton High School football team’s defense prepared for the 2006 IHSAA Class A postseason regional championship game by concentrating on stopping the Adams Central Flying Jets’ vaunted running attack. And in the first quarter of the game, it worked.
“We were a running team for 32 years” of his time as Adams Central’s head coach, said Rick Minnich. “We threw the ball when we had to, and they did a very good job defensively and stopped our run.”
Like in South Newton's sectional final against West Central, Eric Watt was on the field for both offensive and defensive plays against the Flyin’ Jets. Behind center on offense, Watt put his team on the scoreboard first with a 28-yard TD pass to Scott Chapman – the receiver’s sixth touchdown in the 2006 playoffs – for the only score in the opening quarter.
“We had to turn to throwing the ball,” Minnich said, “and Aaron threw the ball very well to our receivers. It was a great game, because they were a throwing team, and we ended up being a throwing team after the first quarter.”
Minnich noted that his team had practiced the passing game during the season, but its running game had worked so well up to that point that it made sense to go with what worked. “We found out that Aaron probably should have thrown more” in the regional final. “Aaron was a great athlete, just like Eric Watt.”
The Jets’ success with the pass in the second quarter made South Newton play catch-up. Selking connected on touchdown passes to Anthony Hammond for 58 yards and to Barrett Brown for 24 yards in the quarter, giving Adams Central a 14-7 lead. (The following season, Selking and teammate Matt Medina, a defensive end and linebacker, would join Pioneer’s Nate Denton in becoming Eric Watt’s college football teammates).
But seconds before halftime, the Rebels put the Flyin’ Jets on notice that this was going to be a battle royale when Watt went back to pass at the Rebels' 40-yard line and threw long to a streaking Scott Chapman. Chapman hauled in the perfectly-thrown ball without breaking stride, then ran the remaining short distance to complete a 60-yard touchdown reception as the first-half clock expired.
“It was right at the end of the half, Minnich said. “Our DB (defensive back) did not play deep, and they got behind him and scored right before half.”
Minnich said he felt the play made the difference in the game’s outcome.
Rebels head coach Chris Bell agreed that the play changed the game’s momentum, but it also momentarily stunned Bell. After the dramatic score, an ecstatic Eric Watt – in a rare show of emotion – ran over to the sideline and jumped into the air so close to his head coach that as Watt returned to the ground from his jump, his helmet or shoulder pad struck Bell in the upper lip. The blow was hard enough to draw blood.
Ryan Care said he didn’t see Eric’s jump or his moment of unbridled ecstasy, but he said all of the teammates would eventually hear about how Eric had given the coach a bloody lip.
Care said he did see the Watt pass to Chapman on the field, and he declared it the best pass he’s ever seen a quarterback throw. “It was unreal. He (Watt) dropped it right in the bucket. There’s not a person who can cover Scotty Chapman one on one or along the sidelines.” (Sheridan High School's Nick Zachery would have a say about that the following week.)
The reason almost no one saw coach Bell get his lip bloodied, Ryan Care said, is because most everyone had run onto the field to celebrate the touchdown with Chapman, his seventh score of the postseason. Obviously buzzed by the memory of that play during the interview, Care went on to heap even more superlatives on Eric.
“He was so good. And he knew he was so good,” Care said. The discussion about Eric’s rare demonstration of emotion in response to the touchdown to Chapman continued for a bit.
Asked if Watt were always quiet or reserved, or if there was anything that could get him to raise his voice, Care said yes, there was, and Brice Willey concurred. In separate interviews, each said Watt would get loud to get players’ attention when he felt he absolutely had to.
Among reasons Eric might raise his voice was if one or more players weren’t doing what they were supposed to be doing – such as making their assigned blocks. Another reason, Care said, was if Eric felt his teammates needed encouragement because of the importance of the moment. He also said Watt’s language would get colorful on those occasions when he felt he had to turn up the volume.
Adams Central scored twice and South Newton once in the third quarter, giving the Flyin’ Jets a 28-21 lead entering the final period. In the fourth quarter, running back Jake Snodgrass scored on an 8-yard scamper, bringing the Rebels to within one at 28-27. Nelson Orellana’s extra-point kick failed, however, because of a bad snap from center.
The
Flyin’ Jets stretched their lead to 35-27 on a 38-yard TD pass from Selking to
Brown with 4:34 left in the game.
When
the Rebels offense took possession after the ensuing kickoff, Watt led the team
on a 10-play 69-yard drive capped by a 1-yard touchdown keeper (shown in Lori Murphy
photo below) with
only 1:18 left on the clock, trimming the Flying Jets’ advantage to 35-33. The
Rebels decided to go for two points on the conversion, calling a play the team
referred to as “the Welsh Special.”
South Newton had run the Welsh Special frequently in 2006 in games when they had gotten inside the 5-yard line, and it had been their favorite two-point conversion play during the season. The play has Ben Welsh running a corner fade route to the back of the end zone from the right slot position. It’s Watt’s job to loft the ball over any defender so it drops into Welsh’s hands for the completion.
What happened next is in dispute between teammates volunteering the story, but both Ben and Ryan felt the story was good enough to share. They just had slightly different versions.
Welsh said that everyone on the Rebels knew the Welsh Special would be used for the two-point conversion. So when he got near Andy and Ryan on the sideline, Welsh said, Andy snapped at him – in the spirit of well-intentioned encouragement, but also in consideration of the gravity of the moment – “Welsh, if you don’t catch the ball, I’m gonna kick your ass!”
But Care, when he shared the story, said it was he – not Andy – who spoke to Ben, and that Ryan laced his good-natured “encouragement” with language considerably more vulgar.
When told that Welsh’s version differed from his, Care emphasized the certainty that his version was correct by saying Welsh should have remembered it because when Care spoke to Welsh, he had grabbed his teammate’s face mask and used it to pull Ben close to him so he could yell it face to face.
It’s quite possible that Care and Rodriguez, both needing to relieve stress and anxiety at that moment, each said what was attributed to them – again, in the spirit of well-intended “encouragement,” of course.
Welsh did catch Watt’s two-point conversion pass behind Aaron Selking, as captured below in an excellent photo by Lori Murphy, and the two points tied the score at 35.
After South Newton’s ensuing kickoff, Adams Central could do nothing in three downs, and the Flyin’ Jets went into formation to punt. Most likely, they were hoping to bottle up the Rebels downfield until the clock expired, thereby allowing the game to be decided in overtime. But the center snap sailed over the punter’s head, and South Newton’s Ian Reed fell on the ball at the Flyin’ Jets’ 17-yard line (Reed is #81 in Lori Murphy photo below).
The excitement from this unexpected turn of good fortune on the South Newton sideline was thick enough to be sliced.
South Newton’s offense, gifted with an incredibly short field in red zone territory, carefully marched the ball toward the north end zone, reaching the Adams Central 3-yard line while also running down the clock before calling timeout with less than 10 seconds remaining. The plan was to bring in Nelson Orellana to try a game-winning field goal.
At this point, Andy Rodriguez remembered, he saw South Newton fans who had been sitting in the grandstands starting to climb down and line up along the track surrounding the gridiron, which had been roped off with yellow construction tape. The fans sensed – hoped, really – that a victory celebration was imminent, and they wanted to make it happen in short order when it was time to storm the field.
It would fall on Orellana to make that happen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Brice Willey said Orellana and his family had immigrated to the community from El Salvador and “probably had some family in the area,” because he thought Nelson had some cousins in South Newton schools. Willey said he remembers Orellana being “a blast” and had “great spirit.” Coach Bell concurred, saying “Nelly” was “a fun guy,” someone who “always had a smile on his face.”
Willey said Orellana, shown here in a 2005 Lori Murphy photo, would occasionally pull tame pranks on students he knew, such as his teammates, pranks such as surreptitiously untying a shoestring of an unsuspecting individual.
Bell said that in 2005, Orellana’s freshman season, he knew Nelly had played soccer, “so I knew he could kick the ball. He was simply a kicker.” South Newton didn’t have soccer teams, so football coaches recruited Nelly – the name teammates called him – to try kicking in their sport.“We sent him to the game field,” where coaches watched as Nelly kicked for long periods at a time, Bell said.
“Kentland and the other surrounding towns that funneled into South Newton had a decent number of Spanish-speaking families,” offered Eric Watt. “There is an egg farm and dairy farm in Newton County that would employ many of them, so I am sure Nelly’s family had the opportunity to move here for that purpose.
“I do not recall having class with him, but I do know we had several teaching assistants that spoke Spanish for this reason. I believe (Andy Rodriguez's) mom was still at South Newton at that time, so she would have been one to help with translation. We didn’t have a soccer team, so if I had to guess, he came out for the football team just to kick a ball. He definitely had a soccer-type approach” in his kick form.
Orellana’s kicks wouldn't go extremely far, Watt said, but Nelly was quick to the ball and accurate. There were a few other players from Central and South America that came after Orellana to kick for South Newton’s football team in later years, Watt added.
Another player said Orellana worked a job after school each day to help support his family, so Nelly wasn’t able to practice with the team most of the time during the week. Players understood Nelly’s school-work-football situation, and they said he did show up for every game and occasional practices. Everyone was cool with the arrangement; anytime a small-school football program like South Newton had an accurate place-kicker, it was considered a significant asset.
Until Nelson Orellana came along, South Newton football teams almost exclusively tried two-point conversions after touchdowns because they had no one who could kick accurately with regularity.
The Associated Press had named Orellana an honorable mention kicker on the Class A all-state team in 2005. And that was despite the fact that Orellana had missed several extra-point kicks and Bell could not recall Orellana kicking many field goals that year. One field goal he did kick in 2005 was a 19-yarder against Tri-County that proved to be decisive in a 31-28 victory.
Orellana apparently did not plan to return to the team for the 2006 season, and when team members caught wind of that, they went to work on Nelly to change his mind.
“We preached, and we preached, and we got him to come out,” Scott Chapman told reporter Kirk Emond, a correspondent for the Lafayette Journal & Courier.1
Indeed, Orellana’s decision to return for 2006 must have come at the last minute. South Newton faculty member Lori Murphy had been making a point to photograph each year’s team in a group photo and to capture individual player head shots before the first game of each season. She included Orellana in both a group and individual photo for the 2005 season photo gallery, but he does not appear in her team photo or with the individual shots in the 2006 gallery.
“He brought a whole new world to our team,” Brice Willey said of Orellana, underscoring Scott Chapman’s remark to the Journal & Courier, “and in that regional championship game, it all came down to his foot.”
And about those feet … Nelly started the 2006 season wearing blue shoes in games – on both feet – even though the school colors are red and white. But by the Sept. 15 homecoming game against West Central, the shoe color on his kicking foot – the right one – was now red, matching the school color, while the left shoe remained blue. He kept that two-color combination through the end of the season (see Lori Murphy photograph below).
Neither head coach Bell nor offensive coordinator Durham were aware of any particular story behind the kicker’s decision to mix up his shoe colors. Orellana could not be reached for comment.
Bell did say that Orellana was still trying to learn and improve his English in his time at South Newton. He said he thought Nelly understood a lot more English than he was able to speak, but players and coaches alike agreed that a lack of complete fluency would prove to be a factor in the last seconds of the 2006 regional championship game.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Before those critical final seconds of the game against Adams Central, Orellana had kicked only one field goal in all of 2006 – the 27-yarder in the sectional championship victory over West Central the previous week. Plus, he’d had the extra-point miss earlier in the Adams Central game following the bad snap from center.
So it wasn’t surprising that the Flyin’ Jets called time out before the field-goal attempt, or that their fans and players taunted Nelly, hoping to give him the jitters.
In separate interviews, Andy Rodriguez and Ryan Care said the joke ended up being on the Adams Central contingent because Orellana almost certainly did not understand any of the opponents’ taunts, they said.
Bell said he went out to the Rebels’ huddle during the timeout and told players
that Adams Central was trying to unnerve Nelly, but that it wouldn’t work
because Orellana wouldn’t know what they were saying, “so just go out there,
hike the ball and let Nelly do his thing.”
When play
resumed after the timeouts, Orellana – wearing one blue shoe and one red shoe –
was perfect on his 20-yard field goal, and South Newton pulled ahead, 38-35.
Brice Willey was blocking at one end of the Rebels’ special teams unit, and he said the ball went right through the middle of the uprights.
“I didn’t see the (start of the) kick,” he said, “but I heard the sound of it, and Ben Welsh was holding it. It sure sounded perfect.”
But confusion reigned on the field immediately after game officials on the field signaled the kick was good. First, the person responsible for managing the scoreboard clock neglected to stop it – as the clock operator should have done – immediately after the kick passed through the uprights. Instead, the clock was allowed to run down to zero.
Second, as officials tried to straighten out the clock snafu, Ben Welsh’s father, Jeff, who had been standing at the back of the south end zone opposite from where the field goal had been kicked, saw the clock supposedly expire and wasn’t aware there was an issue about it brewing. So when the clock struck zero, the proud and jubilant father immediately broke into a sprint onto the playing field and ran toward the Rebels players at the other end of the field, presumably to join a post-game celebration.
By the time Jeff Welsh reached the 50-yard line or so during his sprint, he realized something was amiss because he was the only non-player on the field. Ryan Care said that at that point, wrestling coach Bob Hayes, standing along a sideline, saw Jeff and yelled at him to get off the field. Jeff immediately complied.
“That would have been a good picture,” Ben said of his father, chuckling.
Ron Watt, Eric’s father, said he was behind the same end zone where Jeff Welsh would have started his sprint, but he said he didn’t see Jeff run onto the field. “I was throwing more charcoal on the grill,” getting ready to feed the Rebels players after the game, he said.
But Ron did say that during the last quarter of the game, a team bus transporting Sheridan High School’s head coach and players pulled into the South Newton High School parking lot. Its occupants then walked to the south end zone to watch the rest of the game while scouting their eventual opponent in the semi-final round of the tournament.
The Sheridan Blackhawks had defeated Pioneer – yes, that Pioneer – the previous night, 40-6. Ron said he even chatted with the team’s head coach, Bud Wright, for a few moments, although in 2023 he could not recall anything about what they discussed.
After sorting through the confusion, game officials had the scorekeeper put back some time on the clock – Ryan Care remembers it being 3 seconds. Once that happened, South Newton lined up to kick off – and hopefully run out the clock for real this time. Scott Chapman, not Orellana, handled the boot, and Care said Chapman hit a squibbler that went to about the 35-yard line of Adams Central. A Flyin’ Jets special teams player picked up the ball, and almost immediately was greeted by a tackle from Ryan Care.
That vignette of live action was enough to expire the 3 seconds, and when the clock again showed no time remaining, the gridiron quickly transformed into an impromptu outdoor party. South Newton fans who moments earlier had lined up on the surrounding running track sprinted to their team member heroes and did what ecstatic fans do. Jeff Welsh undoubtedly was among them.
Cheerleader Michelle Watt Clement remembers that exuberant players and fans picked up Orellana (first Lori Murphy photo below) and elevated him as high as their arms could stretch. Nelly raised his own arms in celebratory style.
Lori Murphy took a group picture of the regional champion Rebels (above) under the scoreboard after the game – with Nelson Orellana front and center, holding a regional championship ribbon and flashing the smile that head coach Chris Bell had described as ever-present. Immediately behind Orellana is Ryan Care (10). On the left in the first row are Josh Krug (64), Scott Chapman (88), Justin Hood (55), Eric Watt (13), Andy Rodriguez (56), Jake Snodgrass (30), Justin Sellers (57) and Keenan Whaley (58). Brice Willey (32) is in the second row behind and between Rodriguez and Snodgrass. Ben Welsh (3) is in the back row, slightly right of center. Other identifiable players are Ian Reed (81), top row, third from left; lineman Matt Winkler (52), to the right of Reed; running back Kirk Hughes (21), Kolton Wilson (59) to the right of Ben Welsh, and receiver Tyler Welsh (82).
Orellana gave a brief interview to the Journal & Courier’s Kirk Emond after the game, and Emond quoted Orellana in his game story saying, “I was a little bit nervous because it was only my second field goal (of the season). I feel so excited that we won the game.”
Contacted in 2022 about that interview, Emond said Orellana’s English did not require a translator, although Emond said it was possible that when he went to write the story, he had to fill in a word or two that the player might have missed in trying to express his thoughts.
Adams Central head coach Rick Minnich said his players took the loss hard and spent a long time to shower, dress and eat before heading home. “We had high hopes. We were at South Newton probably for two hours after the game before I could get them settled down” and before they began the long ride back to Monroe in Adams County, near the Ohio state line. “It was proof they really loved football.”
In the Adams Central community, high school football and wrestling are a huge part of people’s lives, Minnich said. Those sports are to be credited for keeping some of his players out of harm’s way, he added. His teams had won many conference, sectional, regional and semi-state championships through his years as coach, but his 2000 team was the only one to win a state championship – and it’s still the school’s only football state title.
That 2000 championship season is a great memory, and he and his 2006 team were hoping to earn themselves another one, Minnich said.
South Newton had not enjoyed nearly the postseason success as Adams Central through the years. But by beating the Flyin’ Jets, not only did the Rebels win their first football regional championship, but they were advancing to their first-ever semi-state round.
The Rebels’ foe in the north semi-state game would be top-ranked and defending champion Sheridan, whose coach, Bud Wright, had come to South Newton to scout the teams the night South Newton defeated Adams Central. Today, Wright is the winningest Indiana high school football coach ever. His 450 victories2 (as of the 2023 season) were amassed in 58 seasons, the last 57 of which were at Sheridan. He was in only season 41 in 2006 when Sheridan played South Newton in the semi-state round.
Coincidentally, Bud Wright has a connection to Newton County.
In 1965, just two years out of Ball State University, Wright coached for a year and taught vocational agricultural at a high school in Mount Ayr, which is about 20 miles northeast of Kentland. Very soon after Wright left that school for Sheridan, Mount Ayr’s school district consolidated with Morocco’s to form the present-day North Newton School Corp. Mount Ayr was where Wright notched his first head coaching win, and that victory is the only one of his career total that was not earned at Sheridan.
By the 2006 season, the Blackhawks had won seven state Class A championships under Wright, including one in 2005 over Knightstown. The Blackhawks were undefeated coming into the 2006 north semi-state. So dominant were the Blackhawks that season that only three opponents had managed to score in double digits.
Asked what they most remember about the semi-state game at Sheridan High School, Andy Rodriguez and Ben Welsh both remarked that the grass turf looked like Sheridan had run its sprinklers on it all week. In other words, it looked soggy, and the grass appeared to have been untrimmed.
Asked the same question, Brice Willey said, “Pure speed,” alluding to Sheridan talented quarterback Nick Zachery and running back Dustin Colvin, both of whom also played on defense. “They were like nothing we’d seen before. And they had huge size up front” on the offensive line. “We’d never seen that before.”
Coach Bell’s answer: “I remember the game had probably the two best athletes in the state” – Sheridan’s Zachery and his own Eric Watt. Zachery also was a kick returner on special teams.
At quarterback against South Newton in the 2006 semi-state game, Zachery led an outstanding Blackhawks’ rushing game – one that amassed 464 yards. It was so good that Zachery attempted only two passes in the game (both completions, and both to Carlton Summe for a total of 50 yards).
To
South Newton players on defense, Zachery must have appeared as a blur. Zachery
rushed 15 times for 247 yards and scored five touchdowns, three of which were
on long runs – of 65, 73 and 47 yards. Dustin Colvin had 116 yards on nine
carries and two touchdowns, one of which was for 79 yards, and fellow ball
carrier Taylor Scott ran for 101 yards on 26 carries and two more touchdowns.
If you did your math correctly, you counted nine total touchdowns, and all rushing. Zachery also was Sheridan’s place-kicker, and he kicked six extra points. He and Colvin also scored once each on two-point conversions.
Zachery intercepted two Eric Watt passes – one in the end zone to kill a Rebels drive, and the other (above), another fine Lori Murphy capture, a spectacular, one-handed circus grab in mid-leap along the right sideline that dropped the mouths of spectators, players and coaches alike in absolute awe. The pick came with 4 minutes left to play in the game, and it proved that Zachery is at least one defender who can keep up with Scott Chapman on a deep pass along the sidelines.
The picture above freezes action with Zachery in the air just as he snags the ball with his right hand. When he landed, he was still clutching the ball and managed to get at least one foot in bounds, which is all he needed to secure the takeaway. Intended Rebels receiver Scott Chapman (88) appears in perfect position to haul in the pass … if not for Zachery.
Eric Watt himself said Nick Zachery was the best athlete he ever played against. And that included Eric’s four seasons of college.
As for Watt, the other “best” player in the state (in Chris Bell’s assessment) who played in that game, the Rebels quarterback did his best to rise to the occasion.
He completed 29 of 50 passes for a school-record 385 yards, eclipsing the 356-yard mark he had set against North Newton in 2005 then matched in the win over Pioneer in 2006. (At South Newton, the school recorded the passing yardage against Sheridan as 409. But that was gross yardage without allowing for deductions due to sacks or for lost yardage). Watt also had four passes intercepted, including the two by Zachery as noted above. Watt ran for 38 yards on 13 carries, more than three times the rushing yardage gained by the next best Rebels ball carrier. It might help to know that South Newton had only 47 net yards rushing.
Willey also remembers South Newton fumbles – some of which the Rebels recovered, but others they did not. The lost fumbles “killed our momentum,” he said. And he remembers a lot of Rebels players barking angrily at teammates during the game, and he counts himself among those.
“I got into a couple of faces I shouldn’t have,” Willey said. “My best friend muffed a kick, and I got on him about it. It killed the energy.”
South Newton actually held a 14-7 lead in the first quarter, at which point the Rebels had already done better than all those Sheridan opponents who had failed to score in double figures that season.
Watt threw 28 yards to Scott Chapman to open the scoring, but any glee generated on the visitors’ sideline by that highlight was negated quickly. Sheridan’s Corey Hamersley took the ensuing kickoff and ran it back 59 yards to the South Newton 3-yard line, and teammate Taylor Scott took it into the end zone from one yard out three plays later. After Zachery’s conversion kick, the score was tied at 7.
Watt connected again with Chapman on an 8-yard touchdown pass on the Rebels’ next possession, and after Orellana’s conversion kick, South Newton led 14-7. Sheridan head coach Wright decided at that point to change his defense to a Cover 2, allowing for two safeties to play deep to deny any long-gainers on Watt passes.
Bell was aware Sheridan had adjusted its defense at that point, but he said that as far as he and the Rebels were concerned, it didn’t make a difference. The way they ran their offense, the Rebels would find ways to gain yardage regardless of the defense, he explained.
Sheridan came roaring back, first Zachery ran 65 yards for a touchdown, then Colvin hit paydirt on his 79-yarder. Zachery’s extra-point kick failed after the Colvin touchdown. Sheridan led at the end of the first quarter, but only by 20-14. Yes, 34 points were scored in just the first quarter, and yes, it was an omen of what was to come.
Watt scored on a 25-run in the second quarter, easily the longest rushing play of the game for South Newton. After Orellana’s extra-point kick, South Newton led 21-20. Before the half ended, Zachery and Colvin scored again on runs of 18 and 10 yards, respectively, and each also scored on two-point conversion runs, so Sheridan went into the lockers at halftime leading 36-21.
On its first possession after Zachery’s 18-yard TD to go up 28-21, South Newton had countered with a 72-yard Watt-to-Chapman touchdown pass, but the play was called back on an illegal shift penalty. Not long afterward, Sheridan’s Grant Gutwein intercepted a Watt pass intended for Chapman, and in just a few plays, Colvin scored on his 10-yard run.
The Blackhawks scored 27 more points in the second half, picking up a huge gust of momentum at the start of the third quarter when they successfully executed an onside kick and Zachery scored on a 3-yard run at the end of the Blackhawks’ short, ensuing 49-yard drive. The onside kick served as a gut punch to the Rebels.
“We just were not ready,” said Brice Willey, who was playing special teams and on the field for the kick. He paused several times while discussing that moment.
“We were ready for Sheridan. We knew who Nick Zachery was. Everybody did. Everyone knew about him since his freshman year. He had that aura about him. Now, we didn’t know much about Adams Central. They were on the other side of the state,” and when Adams Central shifted gears in the regional championship game and started throwing passes in the second quarter instead of running the ball like it usually did, the South Newton defense was caught by surprise, he said.
“Adams Central slung the ball, and I got beat on a couple big plays” while playing defensive back in that game, Willey said. “None for touchdowns, but they were big plays.”
Leading 43-21 after Zachery’s short TD run to open the second half, Sheridan coach Wright felt his team had the game under control. “We could trade (scores) with them” the rest of the way, he told Ted Schultz of the Noblesville Ledger after the game.
As it turned out, the Blackhawks didn’t have to trade scores. South Newton could muster only 12 more points, which came on Watt’s final touchdown passes of his high school career – 28 yards to Chapman in the third quarter (Chapman’s 10th and final TD of the postseason) following the first Sheridan score of the second half, and 8 yards to Brice Willey in the final quarter when the Sheridan victory was all but certain. Sheridan, meanwhile, tallied 20 more points and won 63-33, earning the right to play for the state championship the following week.
Watt got the bulk of his 38 rushing yards on the 25-yard touchdown scamper in the second quarter. While the Rebels’ rushing game gasped for air the whole game, each of Watt’s three primary pass receivers had more than 100 reception yards (Willey 11 catches for 125 yards, Welsh nine for 119 and Chapman six for 128 and three touchdowns).
The Rebels had given the Blackhawks a good fight for a quarter and a half, and in an interview with The Ledger’s Ted Schultz after the game, Sheridan running back Taylor Scott gave South Newton some props.
“They were a good team, probably the best offensive team we’ve seen this year,” Scott said. Sheridan defensive backs “had a tough job stopping those good wide receivers and that quarterback (Watt). They gave up a few plays, but overall, they played really well, and the D-line pressured the quarterback just enough to force some turnovers.”
Lafayette Journal & Courier sportswriter Nathan Baird wrote matter-of-factly, in the lead of the game story for the Nov. 18 edition of the paper: “The greatest football season in South Newton history ended because the Rebels (13-1) had no answer for Sheridan’s power rushing attack.”
In each of two interviews, conducted almost two months apart in 2022, Bell cited two primary factors in the loss. “Special teams betrayed us,” he said both times. The poor coverage on the early first-quarter kickoff was not an isolated case of special teams’ dereliction, he said. There was Sheridan’s successful onside kick in the second half, of course. And there was the lost possession on the fumbled kick that Willey cited.
Bell also said that game officials called back four South Newton touchdowns because of penalties. The illegal shift call in the second quarter that negated the Watt-to-Chapman 72-yard passing score is mentioned in the Noblesville Ledger’s Nov. 21 story from the game in 2006. But the story doesn’t say anything about any other Rebels TDs being called back, and there is no play-by-play accounting of the game readily accessible to pinpoint when the other ones occurred.
Asked about those TDs that Bell said were negated by penalties, Watt said he recalls that all of the callbacks occurred in the first half, all were flagged on the grounds of an illegal shift and that the majority of them – like the 72-yarder – were deep passes to Chapman.
“We would score later in the possession on a couple of those penalties,” Eric said, before shifting to a subjective mood.“The ref was on his high horse that game. We ran the same motion all year, and it was never called. Brice would motion from the slot to the other side of the field, and as he got closer to the other side he would veer closer to the line of scrimmage. So technically it was illegal (because the veer made Willey’s direction slightly forward), but it didn't put us in much of an advantage. I would have to go back and watch to be sure they were all illegal motion and to Chapman.”
Earlier, you read what coach Bell and a few South Newton players said they most remembered about the game against Sheridan. Ryan Care was asked the same question:
“The ride home. I’ve never seen so many 17- and 18-year-olds cry like babies like that before. That (game) was a big deal for us. It was the biggest crowd we ever played in front of.”
Asked if he watched the Class A title game between Sheridan and Indianapolis Cardinal Ritter the following week, Bell said he did, quickly adding: “I thought we would have been successful (against Ritter). I thought we matched up with them very well. But … it was just a luck of the draw” that the Rebels had to go through Sheridan first.
In further reflection, Bell said he thinks Eric Watt could have set and maybe even still hold many state career passing records if the coach had not pulled him out of games early when South Newton had huge leads. For instance, Bell noted that Watt did not play in the second half of the 56-0 romp over North Newton on 2006 Senior Night. He let Welsh, a junior, get experience at the position because Welsh would likely be the starter at quarterback in 2007.
Eric did not complain about any of the coach’s decisions to bring him out of games, Bell said. “Not one time. He knew what we were doing.”
For his high school career, Watt -- shown at right standing along the sidelines during the game against Sheridan (Lori Murphy photo) -- completed 479 of 866 passes (55.4 percent) for 7,225 yards and 82 touchdowns. His best marks for a season, 2006, were 204 of 345 for 3,447 yards and 45 TDs. As for his single-game bests, as noted earlier, they were the 35 completions and 53 attempts against Pioneer in 2006, and the 385 yards against Sheridan in his final game. His seven touchdown passes versus LaVille in the 2006 “seeing red” sectional game stand as the school’s single-game record.
In 2006, Eric was “total offense” in the purest sense of how the phrase is used by stats keepers. He also led the Rebels in rushing with 747 yards on 137 carries and 13 touchdowns. That’s 4,194 yards of total offense. Team offensive coordinator Blaine Durham said he believes Watt also had led the team in rushing in 2005, although he did not have his stats handy when he mentioned that.
“Looking back, Eric is kind of THE example of someone with a competitive nature,” said Ben Welsh, who also was a teammate of Eric’s on the South Newton basketball teams. “He’s not an out-there-and-in-your-face aggressive leader. That’s not his style. But gosh, he was competitive.”
“He’s a quiet guy who doesn’t like to talk about himself, affirmed Bell.
“He’s a quiet leader,” echoed Brice Willey, who like Welsh also played on South Newton’s basketball teams with Watt.
It was basketball against a northern Indiana rival, Rensselaer Central, that would lead Eric to a friendship with Bobby Hanna.
Eric and Bobby played on the hardwood against each other only once or twice a year, but the competition started in grade school, as Bobby remembers it. Rensselaer is about a 15-minute drive northeast of Kentland, and Bobby said the fierce competitions against South Newton schools – at least it was fierce according to Eric’s mother, Luanne – continued into middle and high schools.
Luanne Watt remembers her son and Hanna getting physical in those basketball matchups. “The two didn’t like each other in high school,” she said. “They were very competitive. They played basketball against each other, and one or the other always seemed to foul out.”
“Yeah,” Hanna observed. “I guess you would say … that he was the top dog (for South Newton), and I was the top dog (for Rensselaer Central). We had a lot of mutual friends, but we didn’t really know each other that well at all, so every time we played it was like, oh, I don’t know … ‘I’m gonna show you up,’ or ‘you’re gonna try and show me up,’ and we’d go back and forth.”
Brice Willey shared another side of football-playing Eric Watt, whom he credited for faithfully observing a ritual to help relax teammates at the start of every high school game. Willey said Watt would jot down a “bad joke” on a small card, tuck the card away in his gear, then reach for the card in the first offensive huddle of the game. Then he shared the bad joke with teammates.
Asked if he could remember even one of those jokes, Willey said they were akin to “What did the butter say to the bread? I’m on a roll.” Whether players laughed or groaned in response, Willey said, most of them appreciated the tension-breaker. “I know I did,” Willey said.
Willey would conclude an excellent career at South Newton the following season by finishing with 70 receptions, breaking Sam Logan’s school career record with 179. That same year, with Ben Welsh as quarterback, Willey also set the school season records for reception yardage (1,320) and touchdown receptions (20). The 20 reception TDs were the most in the state and five more than the next closest. The 1,320 yards were second-best in the state, just 35 short of the top mark, and he also was second in the state in average reception yards per game (110).
Andy Rodriguez led the 2006 team with 153 tackles (125 solo) and ranked 17th in the state (sixth-best in Class A) with 10.9 tackles per game. Ben Welsh wasn’t far behind; he had 132 tackles (98 solo) for a per-game average of 9.4, good for 20th in the state at all class levels and seventh-best in Class A.3
Rodriguez finished his South Newton career in 2006 as the school’s all-time career leader in tackles, a mark surpassed a few years later by Ryne Bell, the coach’s youngest son and a freshman on the 2006 team. Ryne, a linebacker, would lead the team with 131 tackles in 2007, set the season record for tackles with 184 in 2008 and finish his career with 430 tackles. Ben Welsh’s nine interceptions in 2006 fell one short of Sam Logan’s school single-season record, but they were good for a tie for ninth-best in the state at all levels and third-best in Class A, bettering even Sheridan’s Nick Zachery by two swipes.4
Watt, Rodriguez and Care have remained good friends in the years after high school. They talk to each other regularly, often weekly. In 2011, the three of them and a friend of Ryan’s took a road trip to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis., to see the NFL Packers defeat the Chicago Bears on Christmas Day. The photo below, provided by Eric, was taken at that game and has (left to right) Eric, Ryan, Andy and Ryan’s friend. Eric says Ryan is the Packers fan in the group.
The only South Newton player that made the Associated Press Class A All-State first team for 2006 was Scott Chapman – and he made it as the punter. His average of 36.2 yards per kick ranked third in the state at all levels and was tops in Class A.
Watt did make AP’s second team all-state, where he was joined, as first team honorable mentions, by Willey and Chapman (receivers), Andy Rodriguez (linebacker), Justin Hood (offensive lineman) and Ben Welsh (defensive back). Regional championship game hero Nelson Orellana, who had made the all-state team as an honorable mention as a freshman in 2005, did not repeat in 2006. Another honorable mention quarterback on the team was Sheridan’s Nick Zachery.
The quarterback on AP’s 2006 Class A All-State first team was Nick Purichia of Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis. Purichia was not among the IHSAA’s top 20 quarterbacks ranked by passing yardage per game that season.
But Eric Watt’s 246.2 YPG was ranked third in the state at all levels (and tops in Class byA). His 3,447 passing yards and 45 passing touchdowns were second best in the state (tops in Class A). The 45 TDs were just one behind the top mark of Concord’s Bob Cira (Class 4A), who also led the state in passing yardage with 3,931. The Top Class 5A quarterback, Timmy Fogarty of Anderson, had 2,930 yards, 29 touchdowns and 244.2 YPG.5
Also on the state’s Top 20 list of passing yardage per game was Indian Creek’s Kyle Ray, who placed ninth (208.9) at all levels and was tops for all Class 2A schools.
Although he didn’t make AP’s first team, Watt was one of two quarterbacks who made the Indiana Football Coaches Association’s Class A first team, and Chapman made the team as a wide receiver. The other first-team QB was Purichia, whose teammate, wide receiver Joey Anderson, also made the team.
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Eric might not have made AP’s first team all-state, but he was selected to play for the North team in the 2007 Grange Insurance North-South Football Classic, an annual summer Indiana high school all-star game.Watt rallied his team from a 7-0 halftime deficit by throwing a touchdown pass in the third quarter. The pass, the second score of the day for the North, would prove to be the winning points in the 20-7 victory.
Watt completed five of 10 passes for 41 yards and rushed eight times for 24 yards in the game, which was played in front of 5,862 spectators at Carmel High School in north suburban Indianapolis. Watt was named Most Valuable Player of both the North squad and of the game, which brings together star senior players of schools in all class levels of competition.
“It’s unbelievable. Words can’t describe it,” Watt told a reporter from the Lafayette Journal and Courier after the game. “I come from a small school, and you’d figure a 5A player would win these awards. I’m speechless. It’s a great feeling.”
According to the Journal and Courier’s report of the game, the score was tied at 7 when Watt dropped back to pass with just over 2 minutes left in the third quarter at the South 20-yard line. He stepped up in the pocket to avoid the defensive rush, and after appearing as if he were going to run with the ball, he stopped in his tracks and passed to Crown Point wide receiver Matt Ernest in the left corner of the end zone. Watt’s passing and running led to another score in the game.
A photo of Eric in his all-star game jersey (courtesy of the Watt family and used here with permission) appears above. With him is Chris Bell, his head coach at South Newton High School. Bell served as an assistant coach for the North in the all-star game.
Cardinal Ritter’s Nick Purichia also played in the game, but for the South squad.
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On the same day Sheridan High School defeated South Newton in the 2006 north semi-state postseason tournament battle to advance to the Class A Indiana high school championship game, Purichia led Ritter, the fourth-ranked Class A school in the state, to a 21-20 win over No. 7 Perry Central in the south semi-state contest.
The Ritter Raiders would play Sheridan in the championship game the following weekend.
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Footnotes:
1 - From the newspaper’s story of the South Newton-Adams Central 2006 regional championship game.
2 - According to a list of winningest Indiana high school football coaches found at the website of the Indiana Football Coaches Association
3, 4 & 5 - All stats according to those compiled by the Indiana High School Athletic Association.
Tomorrow in Chapter 4: Like Father, Like Son
Previously in "On Hoosier Gridirons":
Chapter 2: Mastering the Spread
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