That wasn’t a swipe at incoming starting quarterback Kyle Ray; it was because, he said, in 2006 the Braves had a proven running back in junior Justin Cave.
“We’re going to really try and establish the run a little bit more even though we still look to throw the ball 25 to 30 times a game,” Gillin said. “We’ll try to put the ball in Justin Cave’s hands a little bit more.”
With Rogers at quarterback in 2005, Cave had rushed for a team-high 547 yards and eight touchdowns, so it was not surprising that coach Gillin thought Cave – who would have three returning starters from the offensive line (Mike Elmore, Evan Lattimore and Jared Waltz) blocking for him again – loomed as a major offensive weapon for the Braves in 2006.
Gillin told the Daily Journal he was confident that Kyle Ray could lead the offense. There was even more optimism for Indian Creek to succeed in securing its sixth consecutive winning season: Returning were eight starters on defense – including Ray at safety in addition to starting at quarterback. Experience is the defense’s top strength, Gillin said.
Finally, the team had a lot of returning seniors, a distinction the Martinsville Reporter-Times featured several weeks into the season with an article published Oct. 12, accompanied by a group photo (reprinted below with permission from the Reporter-Times). In the article, coach Gillin saluted the group for not only giving the team great depth, “but they have come to work every day with great attitudes, and they lead by example. Whether they are vocal leaders or silent leaders, they know what we want to get accomplished, and they work together to get it done.”
That 2006 team ended up with a respectable record (8-3), losing only two regular-season games, one to Johnson County non-conference rival Whiteland, a Class 4A school, 33-21, and the other to Mid-Indiana Football Conference foe Triton Central, 30-7.
Caleb Raley, who had been a top receiver for Matt Rogers the previous year, remained a top passing target for his longtime friend Kyle Ray in 2006 as well. Caleb pointed to his familiarity with Kyle from the many years they threw the ball together as kids all the way through middle and high schools. Those repetitions served the combo – and the team – well that season.
Ray said the loss to Triton Central was one of the toughest for the team that year because both teams entered the game ranked in the state polls, and – most importantly – the game decided the conference championship.
Ray and the Braves started the 2006 season auspiciously, using a stifling defense to overwhelm hapless fellow Johnson County school and conference foe Edinburgh, 76-0. The Braves scored touchdowns on interception and punt returns, and the offense was gifted short fields most of the game, enabling the offense to amass 300 total yards – 156 on the ground and 144 in the air. Cave gained 90 yards on eight carries rushing, and Ray completed 12 of 16 passes, including four for touchdowns. Coach Gillin took out the starters in the second half when the rout became certain.
Reality check time came the following week in the loss to Whiteland, which stopped the Indian Creek running game, limiting the Braves to just 70 yards on 47 carries, less than two yards per carry. The Warriors’ offense, meanwhile, ran rampant with the ball, amassing 337 yards on 45 carries – led by Elliott Dutra’s 178 yards on 23 carries and four touchdowns. Whiteland’s fifth touchdown also came on a run.
Ray completed 19 of 37 passes for 247 yards and two touchdowns.
Following Whiteland, the Braves had five easy wins in a row. The first, 29-8 over Eastern Hancock, avenged a loss to the Royals the previous year. Ray was 23 of 27 for 202 yards and a touchdown and was 17 for 18 for 136 yards in the first half alone, exploiting the Royals with an effective short-pass game.
Cave scored three rushing touchdowns and gained 112 yards on 20 carries. The last touchdown was set up by Ray’s longest pass of the night, a 43-yarder to Cory Baxter on a critical fourth-down play. It was Baxter’s only reception of the contest. Sophomore Zac Tharpe was Ray’s top receiver in the game, hauling in nine passes for 79 yards, including one for 10 yards and a touchdown in the first quarter.
The following week, the Braves notched another vengeance win, 28-18 over Brebeuf Jesuit, which had thrashed Indian Creek 56-7 in 2005. But the victory didn’t come easily.
Indian Creek played a mistake-filled first half and trailed 10-7 when teams went to the locker rooms at the halfway point. But Justin Cave had another big night – 171 yards rushing on 29 carries – and Indian Creek as a team had 231 yards rushing. Kyle Ray even got into the act, gaining 58 yards on 14 carries, and he kept Brebeuf off balance with his passes, completing 14 of 20 for 172 yards and two touchdowns.
Indian Creek struggled again early the following week, trailing Brown County 6-0 after the first quarter. But Ray and Cave again rose to the occasion. Ray completed 18 of 23 passes for 259 yards and four touchdowns, including two long ones in the second quarter, a 39-yarder to Kyle Baird and a 56-yarder to Tharpe. Cave gained 153 yards on 20 carries and scored on runs of 22 and nine yards, in a 52-14 conquest.
Next was a 59-6 homecoming weekend drubbing of conference foe Milan that was interrupted by a rain deluge that suspended play for 90 minutes in the first quarter. At that point, Ray had already thrown touchdown passes of 83 yards (this coming on the first play from scrimmage), and 77 and 19 yards, and the Braves were leading 21-6. The delay didn’t help Milan.
When play resumed, Indian Creek resumed the onslaught. When it was over, Ray had thrown for 335 yards and five touchdowns, the latter tying for third best in school history.
Next up on the schedule was 4-2 North Decatur, and the Braves tallied three touchdowns quickly, two on Ray TD passes, and won 35-6. Ray completed 22 of 25 passes for 311 yards and three TDs. Cave gained 120 yards on 17 carries.
The Braves then traveled to Triton Central. Going in, Indian Creek had lost just one conference game in head coach Mike Gillin’s six seasons and had won four of the past five conference football titles.
After a scoreless first quarter, the Braves tallied first with 4:38 left on the clock in the second quarter when Ray threw 17 yards to Kyle Baird on an end zone corner route to go up 7-0. The Braves were fortunate to get that much out of the drive. They had started on their 5-yard line then stalled, forcing them to punt. But game officials flagged Triton Central for running into the punter, giving Indian Creek a second chance to get more out of the drive.
Ray took advantage, leading his team downfield on 16 plays, ending with the scoring strike to Baird. Unfortunately, those were the Braves’ only points of the night.
The Tigers’ Ted Stokes threw 44 yards to Justin Ratliff with 1:29 left in the half to pull Triton Central to within 7-6. In the second half, Stokes scored on runs of 13 and 26 yards and gained 155 rushing yards on 31 carries for the game.
Ray threw 41 times, but completed only 19 for 179 yards and had one intercepted. Cave, who was the county’s second-leading rusher coming into the game, was held to 46 yards on 17 carries, or an average of 2.7 yards per rush.
The Braves were 6-2 going into their final regular-season game on Oct. 13 against South Decatur, but it would not be an ordinary game – or week.
On the day before the game, everyone at Indian Creek High School learned that sophomore Emily Downey, a member of the Braves’ girls tennis team who was crowned 2006 Indian Creek Homecoming Princess, had died of injuries from an ATV accident in September.
“I walked into the locker room (on game day), and it was just quiet,” Ray told correspondent Joe Skeel, who wrote the game story for the Daily Journal. “We all cared about her. Some of us didn’t know her as well as others, but when you lose a classmate, it’s hard. We just wanted to come out and play for her.”
Perhaps inspired by the memory of Emily, the Indian Creek aerial game picked up against South Decatur in a 30-15 win. Ray threw 31 passes, completing 15 for 198 yards and three touchdowns. He had just one pass intercepted.
Indian Creek opened IHSAA Class 2A sectional play with a 7-2 record and a trip to Lawrenceburg, the same place where Kyle’s father, Rob, saw his season and high school football career end in 1975 just a game short of playing for the state championship.
At Lawrenceburg, the 2006 Braves scored early and held a 21-7 lead at halftime before breaking open the game in the second half behind two touchdowns by senior Kyle Kuntz, one on a 13-yard pass from Ray and the other by returning a punt blocked by teammate Brandon Collins, a play that coach Gillin said sealed the victory.
Indian Creek’s Justin Cave led all rushers with 120 yards, putting him over the 1,000-yard mark for the season. Ray completed 16 of 21 passes for 235 yards and three touchdowns in the 42-7 triumph.
Indian Creek hosted Brownstown Central in the second round of the sectionals. The matchup was not an enviable one, given Indian Creek’s poor results against the Jackson County school in recent years, all in sectional competition. But it was a chance to end a losing streak to an opponent that had become a thorn in Indian Creek’s sectional championship aspirations.
Brownstown Central had won eight of the two schools’ nine previous meetings and had knocked Indian Creek out of sectionals the past three seasons. Going into the game, the teams looked evenly matched on paper. Indian Creek (8-2) averaged 37.0 points per game and gave up 13.7 points a game; Brownstown Central (8-1) scored 34.8 points a game and gave up 10.7 per game. This also would be a chance for Kyle Ray to help his school claim another bit of revenge in the 2006 season.
Brownstown Central player Daymond Reynolds, who would join Kyle Ray at the same college the following season, recalls the game “very vividly.” By this time, after his school had met Indian Creek so many times in the sectionals, he explained, Brownstown Central – whose team name, Braves, was the same as Indian Creek’s – considered its Johnson County opponent a sectional rival, even though Reynolds’ school had held the upper hand in almost all of the previous encounters.
“We were the Braves, and they were the Braves. We kind of considered it a competition to see who the real Braves were,” Reynolds said with a chuckle.
Another non-enviable factor this time around, one that turned out to be considerable, was Mother Nature. On game day, Oct. 27, it rained throughout the day and into the night in much of Indiana, and sometimes those showers were heavy. At kickoff time, the Indian Creek field was so drenched that puddles had formed on the grass turf, and the downpour did not let up during the contest.
How bad was the downpour? Game officials were wiping the football before each play, placing it on the turf only as the offenses broke huddle and approached the line of scrimmage. And despite doing that, said Brownstown’s Reynolds, conditions were so bad that when officials finally did put the ball on the “ground” to begin the next play, mud and water levels on the turf were higher than the ball itself, instantly returning the pigskin to its slippery, slimy state.
“It was a swamp,” Reynolds said succinctly, and Kyle Ray concurred: “I have never played in a game where it was that hard to throw a pass,” Ray said. “I couldn’t grip the ball. Our field was awful. It was a Mud Bowl.”
Compounding the misery were temperatures, which were in the mid-40s at the game’s start, and they would fall slowly through the night.
The game didn’t begin well for the host school. Brownstown recovered an Indian Creek fumble on the latter’s first offensive play, and things got only worse from there.
The wet weather crippled Indian Creek’s aerial attack, enabling the Brownstown Central defense to sharpen its focus on stopping the running game. The host school was limited to 63 yards rushing and 40 yards passing, and Brownstown intercepted two Kyle Ray passes.
The Indian Creek Braves might have had a better chance if they had been able to turn to their usually strong running game to counter problems with the aerial attack – or at least to balance the mix of offensive plays. Indian Creek’s rushing game had done well most of the time during the regular season behind Justin Cave, who had gained 1,034 yards and scored 12 touchdowns up to that point in the season.
But Cave was not allowed to play that night; school officials were disciplining him for violating a team rule that put the use of tobacco off limits for athletes playing interscholastic sports.
“It was Friday morning – the day of the game – when we all learned about Justin,” Ray said. “He was a good back, a physical back. I think he would’ve gotten some tough yards for us.”
The Brownstown defense was well aware of Cave’s absence on the Indian Creek offense. In his interview 16 years after the game, Daymond Reynolds volunteered that detail before it ever came up in a question.
“Every time we played Indian Creek,” Reynolds said, “they’d throw the ball 50 times a game and average 300-some yards. But that night, they weren’t able to finish off the game, really.”
Kolby Harrell agreed that Cave would have made a difference to his team: “If Justin Cave plays, I think we’d have had a chance to win. It would have so changed our offensive approach. But we couldn’t throw the ball.”
As much difficulty as Indian Creek was having, Brownstown wasn’t finding things a lot easier.
“We had a wing-T offense, and even our misdirection didn’t work because we couldn’t do anything with speed because of the slop,” said Reynolds, who played center on offense and end on defense for the visitors. “So we just put in a bigger fullback and basically ran power and dive.”
After a scoreless first quarter, one of those Brownstown power-and-dive plays worked in the second quarter when senior Levi Shiner, who had missed several games earlier in the season with bone bruise and knee injuries, broke through on a 37-yard gallop for a touchdown. That seemed to give Brownstown the spark it needed to stick to the game plan and make it work.
After Reynolds’ touchdown on the fumble recovery in the third quarter, Brownstown scored twice more, both on Teddy Stucker runs. The first, in the third quarter, was for six yards, the second, in the fourth period, was for 24 yards, putting the visitors on top, 32-0.
Despite several Indian Creek lopsided victories earlier in the season, Kolby Harrell still hadn’t seen any live action in his high school football career. Then, late in the final quarter against Brownstown Central, with a losing outcome now certain, several Indian Creek players, including Kyle Ray, approached head coach Mike Gillin and asked him if he would put Kolby into the game – and maybe even give him a chance to carry the ball.
Gillin readily agreed. In fact, Gillin was preparing to send in an offense consisting of all seniors to toast their accomplishments at the end of their four-year ride together. So the coach called Kolby over and told him he was going in with the offense at running back.
The assignment was a shocker to Harrell, who for three years had practiced only with the varsity’s defensive and special teams units. He had never practiced with the offense, much less gotten any repetitions carrying the ball.
Indeed, it loomed as a kind of “Moonlight Graham” moment.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, born in Fayetteville, N.C., in November 1877, was a professional left-hand-hitting baseball player whose career in the pro game, from 1900-08, was spent almost entirely in the minor leagues, splitting time with nine different teams over that period.
In 1905, when he was with the New York Giants’ Class B Minor League affiliate in Binghamton, N.Y., the parent Giants summoned Graham to the Major League club. After languishing on the Giants’ bench for several games, Graham finally got into a game. But his entire live-action Big-League experience consisted of playing a single half-inning of defense in right field – recording no putouts or assists – in the bottom of the ninth inning for the visiting Giants on June 29.
Actually, Graham had been inserted into the lineup at the top of the ninth inning and was on deck to hit next when the batter ahead of him made the Giants’ final out. The Giants won, 11-1. That half-inning of standing in the outfield, however, did make Graham eligible for inclusion in the Major League Baseball Encyclopedia, widely regarded as the sport’s Bible.
That half-inning novelty also was a key sidebar in the 1982 W.P. Kinsella novel Shoeless Joe and in Field of Dreams, the 1989 motion picture adaptation of Kinsella’s book.
Graham began attending medical school while in the minor leagues and completed his training at the University of Maryland the same year the Giants called him up to the big leagues.
He played with the university’s football and baseball teams in 1904 and ’05 and obtained his medical license in ’06, upon which he began practicing medicine in Chisholm, Minn., during baseball’s offseason. When he ended his baseball career in 1908, he returned to Chisholm to work full time and served as the school district’s official physician from 1909-59. He died in Chisholm at the age of 87 in August 1965.
According to various sources on the Internet, how Graham got his nickname “Moonlight” is not known for certain. It is speculated that it was because, according to his medical school yearbook, he enjoyed moonlight walks on the beach during his years at the University of Maryland. Or perhaps it was simply because he “moonlighted” as a doctor in his last years of playing Minor League baseball.Curiously, news articles in his baseball playing days referred to him by the nickname “Deerfoot” because of his speed on the base paths.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After coach Gillin sent Kolby Harrell and other seniors onto the field for Indian Creek’s final offensive possession of its 2006 sectional game against Brownstown Central, the seniors huddled for what would prove to be the last play.
Quarterback Kyle Ray called his buddy Kolby’s number to take a handoff on a draw play. Ray quickly coached Kolby on how he was to move on the play: He simply had to step slightly right when Kyle came back to him for the handoff, then take off running when the ball was securely in Kolby’s grasp.
“We could have just taken a knee, but they wanted to give me a chance to experience” live action, Harrell said.
When the offense came to the line of scrimmage to run the play, with Harrell hunched and set in the backfield, Harrell overheard the Brownstown Central middle linebacker – Daymond Reynolds identified him as Dustin Allman – bark out an alert to teammates: “Watch for the draw!”
Harrell said he thought to himself, “Oh, boy … ”
When the center snapped the ball to Ray, Harrell paused in his tracks as he was supposed to on a draw play. But Kyle said Kolby neglected to also step right, and there was an awkward convergence moment with Kyle during the ball exchange.
But Kolby hung onto the ball and took off running to the right as hard and fast as he could. He said he managed to gain five yards (the game stats in local newspapers the following day confirmed the yardage gain) on his burst before being brought down on a hard tackle – by the alert-shrilling Brownstown middle linebacker.
Ray said the moment was therapeutic for him because he was able to see his good friend and great teammate finally get a moment to shine. “He went all those years without playing and never complaining, and to see him get a run like that … I tell you, I was grateful.”
Harrell described that moment as every bit the thrill you might have expected for someone who was getting his first taste of varsity action by running with the ball on the last play of the last game in his high school career. Plus, he had been given the handoff from a longtime friend, a guy with whom he had shared so many good times in the years leading up to that point. And although the game was now over, for that brief moment, the spotlight on that wet, soggy swamp of a field was on Kolby Harrell.
Immediately after Harrell hit the wet turf on the tackle, senior center Mike Elmore walked up to Harrell, saw tears in Kolby’s eyes and asked him if he was all right.
Harrell said he told Elmore that yes, he was just fine. He explained that the tears were tears of joy. What he didn’t tell Elmore was that in those few seconds, beginning when he jogged onto the field for the last play until he fell to the turf on the tackle, he had been overwhelmed by emotions and memories.
He had thought of his team’s 17 seniors, many of whom had played together every year since Bantam ball, and how this was the last time this amalgam of football talent would play together as a high school unit on the same gridiron of competition.
His flashbacks went back a few years to eighth-grade games, when Kolby was keeping team stats and how Kyle Horton, one of this year’s seniors, engaged Kolby in a playful, oft-reprised routine along the sideline. After a certain play, Horton would ask Kolby if he had given Horton credit for the last tackle, even on occasions when he didn’t make the tackle. Kolby said other guys noticed Horton’s stunt and started doing it, too, just to see if they could get away with it. Or they did it just to get a piece of that fun interaction with the good-natured Harrell.
Even though he didn’t get onto the field to play that eighth-grade season, Kolby recalled that the eighth-grade football team’s coach, Rob Ray, his friend Kyle’s father, gave him a team jersey at the end of the season, a token of gratitude that Kolby truly appreciated.
Teddy Stucker led a 279-yard Brownstown Central rushing game by gaining 131 yards on 15 carries and the two touchdowns. The visitors had 12 first downs to Indian Creek’s six.
And Ray would end his high school football career completing only seven of 17 passes in the game. Ray said coach Gillin tried to console him afterward. “He told me he didn’t think he’d have been able to throw well in those weather conditions either,” Kyle said. “I appreciated that.”
Brownstown’s dominance over Indian Creek wouldn’t end in that 2006 sectional; it would continue for the next two sectionals as well.
Before leaving the Indian Creek campus the night of the muddy 2006 sectional round game, several victorious Brownstown Central players celebrated by enjoying what Mother Nature had handed them.
“They were doing belly-flops and baseball slides” in the muddy pools on the field, said Daymond Reynolds. “I remember one of our sophomore starting safeties took off running, and I bet he slid over 10 yards on his chest.”
Such stunts resulted in mud reaching at least one place of the Brownstown players’ gear that might have escaped getting fully soiled during the game – shoulder pads. Reynolds said that after the mud-slide antics, participating team members stepped into the showers with their pads still on, using the water to clean off the gear.
Kyle
Ray said the 32-0 loss to Brownstown Central – the first time an Indian Creek
team had been shut out in Mike Gillin’s tenure as head coach at the school – contributed
to what was for him a depressing season aftermath. And he said a mid-game distraction
along the sideline made matters a little more unsettling for him and teammates.
Justin Cave’s father showed up on the host school’s side of the field and tried to give coach Gillin an earful of his opinion about the pre-game disciplinary action against his son, Ray said. Security staff and some physically large assistant coaches stepped between the angry father and coach Gillin, preventing an even uglier scene, he added.
The loss and lousy weather of that last game aside, Kyle Ray had enjoyed a remarkable senior season, his only year as the starting quarterback for Indian Creek. He finished the year completing 180 out of 280 passes for 2,298 yards and 28 touchdowns and had only seven passes intercepted, among the lowest on the state’s Top 20 list of quarterbacks of all classes as ranked by the Indiana High School Athletic Association by yards per game. Ray’s 208.9 average yards per game ranked ninth at all class levels and was tops for all Class 2A schools.
According to the IHSAA, Ray’s total yardage and passing TDs were second only to Fort Wayne Harding’s Devin Dominguez’s 2,711 and 30 TDs in Class 2A. At Indian Creek, Ray today ranks high in multiple passing records, despite only one full season at quarterback, according to data kept and provided by coach Gillin. As of the end of 2021, Kyle was:
*** Sixth in school history in career touchdown passes (with 30).
*** Tied with Matt Rogers for fourth in TD passes in a season (28). (Note: An article in the Martinsville Reporter-Times published in the days before the final game against Brownstown Central said Kyle had only 27 touchdown passes that season.)
*** Tied for fourth among the school’s longest pass-reception plays from scrimmage (an 83-yard pass to Kyle Baird against Milan in 2006).
*** Eleventh in career passing attempts (311), seventh in single-season passing attempts (263) and tied for fifth in passing attempts in a game (41). (Note: The aforementioned article in the Reporter-Times said Kyle had attempted 263 passes in 2006 before the final game against Brownstown Central. He would throw 17 more passes in the sectional loss).
*** Among the school’s top 10 in career and season passing yardage with 2,585 (ranks eighth) and 2,251 (in 2006, ranking him sixth), respectively. Coincidentally, the 2,585-yard career passing mark stands just ahead of the 2,305 passing yards gained by his father, Rob (Class of ’76). (Note: According to the Reporter-Times article cited previously, Kyle had 2,301 passing yards in 2006 entering the sectional championship game against Brownstown Central. He picked up 45 more passing yards in that final game).
Asked what lasting impressions he has from his years on the Indian Creek varsity, Kolby Harrell took about 6 seconds or so to think. He rattled off a montage of memories: Two-a-day practices at the end of summer … the simple walk to the practice field every day … the ramp-up of excitement before the start of the season … loud music playing in the locker room to energize players before a game. (The song Thunderstruck by AC/DC was on the playlist. “It was a tradition.”) … How in the relatively rural Johnson County community, it was not unusual for someone on the team or in the school to drive to practice with their vehicle loaded with watermelons to share as refreshment for all team members during breaks …
Then Kolby found more fluency.
“Football, for me, a lot of the time, was just hanging out on the sidelines,” he said. “We wanted to win a state championship. That was always the goal. … A lot of these kids played together their whole lives, and so (being a part of that) still stands out as special. Our community is so small that everybody in town knows everybody else. Football was a way for me to start learning how to wrap my arms around this small town and be part of something special, even though we were blown out by Brownstown Central.”
In
late November, the Associated Press announced its all-state football teams for
Indiana. In Indian Creek’s Class 2A, one Brave made the main team – Evan Lattimore as a defensive
lineman. Three teammates were listed as honorable mentions –
quarterback Kyle Ray, wide receiver Zac Tharpe and linebacker Kyle Horton.
In a family photo above, Kyle posed with his father on the night of high school graduation.
Ray said coaches from Franklin College, an NCAA Division III school, had come to see him play during his senior year at Indian Creek. He also said Franklin head football coach Mike Leonard attended one of the Braves’ basketball games in 2007, and in a meeting after that game, Leonard told Ray he’d like the athlete to play football at Franklin.
“Franklin seemed real interested in me, plus my dad went there,” Ray said, so the Grizzlies had that working in their favor.
But Franklin wasn’t the only school calling on him. Ray said coaches from the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), let him know they wanted him to consider coming to their school.
Ray went to the St. Francis campus for an official recruiting visit that winter. While he was there, St. Francis threw him for a loop – in a good way – by offering him a partial scholarship to attend and play ball there. NAIA schools, unlike Division II and III schools in the NCAA, are allowed to offer athletes scholarship money to offset the costs of their education.
“I said ‘Whoa,’ ” Kyle said. St. Francis’ scholarship of about $13,000 a year would cover more than half of the $25,000 annual tuition at the time, he said, and being a good student in high school, he probably would have qualified to receive academic scholarship money as well.
“It was the cheapest option for me by far,” he said, and it would have helped his parents and him deal with the high cost of a college education at a private school. Franklin College, also a private institution, was much closer to home for him, but it was a member of the smallest division of the NCAA. The affordability of St. Francis loomed as a significant deal-breaker for Kyle and his parents.
“My parents were very proud of me, and I felt so proud and excited to have been offered a scholarship to play football. We just weren’t expecting that.”
Kyle noted that St. Francis had reached the NAIA postseason championship game the previous year, losing to No. 2 Sioux Falls, 23-19. (In fact, the Cougars had made it to the championship game in each of the three previous years, losing each time. They would return to the title game in 2016 and 2017, winning both times). Furthermore, the Cougars had won or shared their conference championship for eight consecutive seasons, and in the process, lost only one league game. So Kyle would be joining a program very much on the rise.
St. Francis’ scholarship offer and team success story were enough to sway Ray in his decision: He would go to college in Fort Wayne, beginning with the fall 2007 semester. He gave the news to Franklin coach Mike Leonard, whom Ray said accepted the news graciously. “He was classy,” Ray said.
Before starting any classes that fall, Ray attended the St. Francis summer football training camp in Fort Wayne. Ray said it didn’t take long before he started to have misgivings about the decision – and about being so far from home.
“I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,” Ray said. “I felt I wasn’t in the right place. I told my parents, and my dad drove up, and I told all the St. Francis coaches I was going to transfer to Franklin. They were classy about it (too).”
After making his decision to leave the Cougars for Franklin College, Kyle Ray called Mike Leonard to tell him about his desire to come to Franklin after all and make sure the coach still wanted him. Ray said Leonard welcomed the decision.
When he got to Franklin, starting quarterback Chad Rupp was in his junior year, so Kyle knew he would have to wait a while to get his chance to move up as a starter. But Kyle had done this waiting stuff before – three years behind Matt Rogers at Indian Creek High School.
It was not anything new to him.
Tomorrow in Chapter 7: 'Clearly the Best' Small-School Teams in Indiana’
Previously in "On Hoosier Gridirons":
Chapter 2: Mastering the Spread
Chapter 3: The Kicker With the Ever-Present Smile
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