CHRIS BELL – Chris’s last season as head football coach at South Newton High School was 2015. He had taken on the extra jobs of athletics director and dean of students in 2006. As of August 2023, he still held those jobs at the school. Bell left the head coaching job with a record of 118 wins and 100 losses. Bell says the current head football coach still uses remnants of the spread offense that he and offensive coordinator Blaine Durham introduced and implemented in the early 2000s. (Photo by Lori Murphy is used here with permission.)
For the past nine years, he has worked for Renovia, a commercial painting and repair services company. He served as operations manager for the company in Indianapolis and Nashville, and in 2022, he moved to Dallas, where he lives today and continues to work for Renovia. Today, he is regional vice president of operations, covering the Midwest (Dallas, Indianapolis and Nashville offices). (Photo provided by Eric Watt and is used here with permission.)
PAUL CURTIS – Before attending Tri-State University in 2007, Paul played quarterback at Ross Beatty High School in Cassopolis, Mich., leading his team through an undefeated season his senior year before losing in the postseason tournament’s district championship game. He played receiver all four years at Tri-State/Trine University and also returned kicks most of those seasons. He graduated in 2011 with a degree in kinesiology and exercise science. For a year and a half after college, he served part time as an assistant coach for the Trine football team. After four years in management at Enterprise travel services in Fort Wayne, Ind., he joined Cintas, also in Fort Wayne, in late 2016. He is a customer service supervisor for Cintas, which designs, manufactures and cleans professional uniforms for more than 1 million businesses in all industries.
BLAINE DURHAM – Blaine’s 9 to 5 job is doing business banking for First Financial Bank in Kentland, Ind., but he has been on the football coaching staff of South Newton High School since the new millennium. To this day, he is still the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
NATHAN ELLIS – Nathan could have
qualified for a medical redshirt because of the ankle injury his freshman year
at Franklin College. A medical redshirt would have earned him another year of
eligibility to play football for Franklin in 2012, but he elected not to pursue
it. Like Matt Zmich, Ellis also played four years of baseball for Franklin
College. A pitcher, he capped his career with 9-2 records in his junior and senior
years, leading the pitching staff in wins both seasons. He graduated in 2011
with a degree in secondary education and was a speaker at his commencement. He
gained some notoriety on YouTube when someone in the audience at the commencement
captured video of Nathan singing a few bars of Carly Rae Jepsen’s song “Call Me
Maybe” as an introduction to his speech.
He earned his master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of Indianapolis in 2019. Ellis worked a year as a teacher and coach in the Metropolitan School District of Mount Vernon in southern Indiana (Posey County) before coming home to Plainfield, where he has worked ever since. He has taught social studies to seventh- and eighth-graders, served as a coach in football and boys/girls basketball and baseball (middle and high school levels) and today serves as a middle school assistant director of athletics. At Plainfield, he worked briefly with college football teammate Nick Purichia when the latter came there to teach and coach. (Franklin College teammate Nick Cochran, also a PHS alum, also coached football at Plainfield for several years.) Nathan and his wife, Kaitlin, reside in Plainfield with their daughter, Mila. (Photo is self-provided and used here with permission.)
After college, Kolby lived with relatives in Savannah, Ga., for four years and became involved working for non-profit organizations while also attending graduate school at what was then Armstrong State University (it became a campus of Georgia Southern University in 2018). He earned a master’s degree in professional communication and leadership there in 2015. While in Savannah, he met his future wife, Danielle. In 2016, they moved to Ithaca, N.Y., where he got a job as executive director of Golden Opportunity, a non-profit that provides mentoring and tutoring to students of elementary school age through high school. The Harrells moved to Cary, N.C., in 2019 to be close to other family. There, Kolby continues to work with non-profit organizations, serving as a marketing specialist for veterans-founded Stop Solider Suicide. In 2014, he gave a lecture titled “Love and Basic Color Theory” at a “Ted Talk” conference.
In 2019, he enlisted in the Army National Guard and today serves as a military intelligence officer and is based in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. (Photo was provided by Karen Ray-Thomas and is used here with permission.)
RICK MINNICH – The longtime head coach of the Adams Central High School Flyin’ Jets, South Newton’s opponent in the 2006 postseason regional championship game, was the school’s head football coach for 32 years and director of athletics for 14 years before stepping down as coach after the 2008 season and as AD several years later. His record as a coach was 235-136. His teams won six Allen County Athletic Conference championships, 15 sectional championships, 10 regional championships, one semistate and one Class A state championship (2000). He is an Adams Central alumnus himself and played running back at Taylor University in Upland, Ind., before graduating in 1974. He is a 2009 football inductee of Taylor University’s Athletics Hall of Fame and a 2010 inductee into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame. In 2017, Adams Central renamed its football field in his honor. In retirement, he lives in Decatur, Ind.
In summer 2011, he said, “I asked myself if I wanted to give back.” When the answer was yes, he went to do volunteer work for an Oklahoma church mission camp for underprivileged children, where he realized he could have a greater impact in life by spending time helping youths. “We put together a sports camp for kids with spiritual themes. It was about a week long. … The impact I realized I could have just by being myself and being there in person was amazing to me … (as were) the relationships that were built in a week.” Later, while working as a graduate assistant coach at Taylor University in northern Indiana (which he did while Claire finished her studies and college basketball career at nearby Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion), he earned a teaching degree at Taylor.
While he and Claire taught grade school children in the Clark-Pleasant Community School Corp. in northeastern Johnson County, he served as an assistant coach for Whiteland High School’s football team for three years. When the Heritage Christian High School head football coach’s job opened in 2016, he applied for it on what he termed “a lark” … and was hired. He has been there ever since. For six years, he also taught fourth-graders in Heritage Christian Academy's elementary school, where he became well known for his Bow Tie Wednesdays (see photo below) to build a sense of community and to foster self-esteem within the student community. Kyle left the classroom to become vice principal of the academy's elementary school beginning with the 2023-24 school year. His football team’s records since he became head coach have been 4-5 (2016), 6-4 (2017), 6-5 (2018), 11-2 (2019), 8-3 (2020), 8-1 (2021) and 7-4 (2022 and ‘23). Kyle, Claire and their three children live in Fishers, Ind., a northeast suburb of Indianapolis. (Photos here are courtesy of Heritage Christian Academy and are used with permission.)
Beginning in 2008, Josiah spent five seasons on the coaching staff at Franklin College, serving in various positions, including running backs and wide receivers coach, quarterbacks coach, offensive line coach and offensive coordinator. Beginning in 2012, he served three seasons as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator at Wheaton (Ill.) College, after which he was hired as head football coach at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ill. In two seasons at Benedictine, the Eagles had records of 6-4 (4-2 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference) in 2016 and 7-3 (5-1) in 2017. Today, Josiah and his wife, Lyndee, and two children live in Carmel, Ind., a far-north suburb of Indianapolis, and Josiah works as a managing director for Oxford Financial Group. (Photo provided by Leslie Ray is used with permission.)
Dan and his wife still live along a lake near Angola, Ind., a four-minute drive from the Trine University campus. (Trine University photo is used with permission.)
Eric didn’t return to Italy for another season, partly because he wasn’t sure the Warriors wanted him back and partly because he wanted to return to the United States. He found the adjustment to foreign football difficult, mostly because of the communication and language hurdles. He said he tried to learn key conversational Italian via Rosetta Stone instruction before going over there, but it did not go as smoothly as he would have hoped. Fortunately, most of the players on his team had a decent grasp of English, so he could share plays in the huddles. Unfortunately, his coaches were not as good with English; they knew enough to exchange very brief small talk, and that was about it. Asked to say something in Italian, he chuckled … then tried to show how he would order a pizza.
Watt came back to the United States at the end of the Warriors’ 2012 season and initially hoped to explore opportunities in the Canadian Football League. “Coming out of college, I definitely wanted to go pro,” he explained. But he never did explore Canadian pro ball seriously; today, he can’t even remember if he ever hired an agent to help him find a pro team anywhere that would give him a look/see.
So Eric decided to settle into his “real life” and returned to Kentland to help run WTI, which he manages with older brother Keith. Eric said his great-grandfather started the business in the 1930s as a trucking company. Its focus and services have gone through several iterations over the years. The business once fell into the category of the classic trucking industry; today it manufactures fiberglass fenders and steel bracket parts for trucks. (Photo is self-provided and used with permission.)
LUANNE WATT – Eric and Michelle’s mother technically retired from the family trucking and fiberglass fender business in October 2021, but in summer 2022 she said she occasionally looks in on things at WTI and helps out. For years she had assisted – at various times – in such things as sales, accounting and reconciling bank statements. (Photo is self-provided and used with permission.)
Lehman makes ceramics slip, casting and other pouring room parts and products. It also is used to operate a lawn care service. Hoosier Metal Polish is a proprietary application used to protect metal and keep it shining even after multiple washings. (2012 family photo used with permission.)
South Newton surrendered the Bull traveling trophy back to Pioneer in 2007, but it took overtime for the Rebels to fall, 30-24, and it took a bizarre and lucky play for the Rebels to tie the score and take the game into overtime. South Newton trailed 24-17 late in the game and faced a fourth-and-20 situation. As Welsh went back to pass, the defensive rush powered past the blocking and was about to pounce on Welsh. At the last moment, he decided to drop the ball – yes, intentionally fumble – and hope for the best. Indeed, one of his blockers spotted the ball, scooped it up and ran it exactly 20 yards to get the first down. South Newton would score on that drive before the clock expired, taking the game into overtime, where Pioneer prevailed.
The 2007 Rebels were ranked seventh when they advanced to the sectional final, where they lost to Triton, 36-21. Welsh was named 2007 team MVP, Midwest Conference player of the year in both football and basketball his senior year, and enjoyed the novelty of throwing passes to his second cousin, Rebels wide receiver Tyler Welsh. Ben also was a member of the National Honor Society and played wide receiver in the 2008 Grange Insurance North-South All-Star game at North Central High School in Indianapolis. He led the losing North squad with seven pass receptions for 45 yards, most of which came on the North’s opening possession.After high school, Ben attended the University of Dayton, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering and played safety for the school’s football team. He was a member of the Pioneer Football League Academic Honor Roll. By the time he got to college, Ben – who as a high school freshman was slight of stature and had difficulty throwing forward passes because football shoulder pads hampered his throwing motion – stood 6-foot-1 and weighed 190 pounds. Today, Ben is manager of business development LTC for AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp. and works out of the corporation’s office in Austin, Texas. (2007 photo by Lori Murphy is used with permission.)
Schools that reached out to him included Trine University – where high school teammates Eric Watt and Andy Rodriguez were playing – and Wabash College. He said he did flirt with the idea of giving Division II or Division III college football a try. He acknowledged that Watt and Rodriguez talked to him a little about coming to Trine. But he said he didn’t feel he was good enough, that the cost of an education at a private school like Trine or Wabash was prohibitive – even if he did feel he could qualify for some aid money – and said he felt he was injury prone.
So in the end, Brice chose to attend Indiana University (he did not play interscholastic sports there), where he said he “stumbled into” a degree in education and obtained a Master of Business Administration. Since his college graduation, he has worked in the Hamilton Southeastern public school district in Fishers, Ind., northeast of Indianapolis, as a teacher, dean of students and, currently, is assistant principal of Sand Creek Intermediate School. (2007 Photo by Lori Murphy is used with permission.)
MAX WOODBURY III – Kyle Ray’s football teammate at Indian Creek High School and Franklin College graduated from the latter in the second decade of the new millennium. Since then, he has worked with the longtime Franklin family accounting, tax preparation and payroll services firm, which today is known as Max Woodbury Group. Max has been its owner since December 2018. He handled punting chores for the college team and punted and did place-kicking for his high school team. He volunteers for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the Boy Scouts of America and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
In the realm of newspaper archival clippings, which I researched almost entirely online through newspapers.com, I culled information from the Johnson County Daily Journal in Franklin, Ind.; The Franklin monthly news magazine of Franklin College; the Lafayette (Ind.) Journal & Courier; The Indianapolis Star and The Indianapolis News; the Martinsville Reporter-Times; the Richmond Palladium-Item; the Munster Times; the Logansport Pharos-Tribune; the South Bend Tribune, the Terre Haute Tribune-Star; the Bedford Times-Mail and the Jasper Herald. The Daily Journal, The Star and the Journal & Courier in particular did outstanding jobs with their high school sports coverage and reports in the areas of interest and years for which I conducted research, and for that, I am most appreciative.
I’m particularly grateful to college and university sports information directors, who toil so hard while recording, posting and archiving their schools’ team and individual player statistics for each football game every year – and then making that data accessible online.
Particularly useful for me in my research were the data available at Franklin College and Trine University, especially the play-by-play readouts for games. Many schools, including Franklin and Trine, were in transition with including play-by-play readouts with online game stats in the years for which I was doing research. Hence, play-by-play readouts for some games from 2007-2010 were not available.
But I will vouch for any SIDs out there who might question if that detailed information is useful ... that such data is, at least for researchers, very useful, if not also for nostalgia fanatics. The play-by-play readouts, in fact, proved to be invaluable not only to me, but also to some players and coaches who I interviewed for this project. More than 10 years have passed since the games that are mentioned in this series, and having those readouts handy to jog game participants’ memories was extremely beneficial.
In the realm of sports information directors, I extend a special note of acknowledgment and thanks to Ryan Thomas, assistant athletics director at Franklin College, who today wears many hats, including that of sports information director. Over the course of working on this project, I consulted him multiple times about several stats-related matters as well as with questions about the school’s football program. I caught him at an unenviable point of time; he himself was trying to find, research and/or re-create many years’ worth of Franklin College athletics department data, records and statistics that somehow vanished in the transition following the July 2015 death of former longtime SID Kevin Elixman.
I appreciate Ryan’s patience with me, especially on a couple of occasions when we both experienced frustration while seeking answers to crucial questions. Because of his kindness, I was more than happy to share with him and Franklin College my own research findings in certain areas, hoping that might be of assistance with some of his own difficult data research.
In some instances, coaches I interviewed had access to information such as a school’s career, season and single-game statistics and records and kindly provided those to me. Among those who did so were Mike Gillin (Indian Creek High School, now head coach at of Mooresville High School in Indiana), and Chris Bell and Blaine Durham at South Newton High School (Kentland, Ind.). I wish to thank them, too, for their assistance.
Probably the most critical portion of my “bibliography” were the individuals who agreed to submit to interviews that made the sundry stories in this project come alive. From South Newton High School, I start with former head coach Bell (now the school’s athletics director) and Durham, his longtime assistant coach and offensive coordinator. And there were Rebels players Eric Watt, Andy Rodriguez, Ben Welsh, Ryan Care, Brice Willey and Justin Wentzel. Also interviewed for the South Newton portion of the story were Eric Watt’s good friend Bobby Hanna; Eric’s parents, Ron Watt and Luanne Render Watt; and Eric’s sister, Michelle Watt Clement.
From Trine University, in addition to Watt and Rodriguez, there were fellow players Paul Curtis, Andrew Pickford and Levi Knach; quarterbacks coach Dan Simrell; and head coach Matt Land. From Indian Creek High School, there were then-head coach Gillin as well as Kyle Ray and his older siblings, brother Justin and sister Leslie Ray, and his mother, Karen Ray-Thomas; as well as Kyle’s lifelong friends and ICHS teammates Caleb Raley and Kolby Harrell; and there was a written response to questions from Kyle’s former Indian Creek and Franklin College teammate Max Woodbury III. Also interviewed was Kyle’s wife, Claire Freeman Ray.
From Franklin College, in addition to Kyle and Max Woodbury, there were former head coach Mike Leonard; former offensive coordinator Josiah Sears; and Kyle’s teammates Cody Bragdon, Nick Purichia, Nick Cochran, Nathan Ellis, Luke Floyd, Daymond Reynolds, Jesse Mercer and Matt Zmich. And from Indianapolis Cardinal Ritter High School, in addition to Purichia, there was teammates Luke Floyd and former teacher and administrator Matt Hollowell, who also briefly served at Ritter as an assistant football coach. A significant number of Ritter coaches and players who I wanted to interview did not acknowledge or respond to my reach-outs.
Also agreeing to interviews for this story were Rick Minnich, former Adams Central High School head football coach and director of athletics; former Franklin College President Jay Moseley; Jim Gagliardi, director of marketing for Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minn.; Matt Hoffman, a final four Gagliardi Trophy finalist in 2010; and Ryan Coleman of d3photography.com..
Aside from the curious lack of responses from Ritter players and personnel to agree to interviews, there were quite a few other people I reached out to and/or invited to participate in this project via interviews who also did not acknowledge or respond. But rather than dwell on the negative, I do want to note that some of the above people who did agree to interviews gave wonderful insights, remembrances and anecdotes, without which I would not have been able to continue pursuing the project’s concept.
I am especially grateful to several people who allowed me to use their photographs to enliven the prose in this series. Among them are South Newton High School art instructor Lori Murphy (her photos of the Rebels’ football teams through the years during Eric Watt’s time at the school were wonderful to have); Ralph Greenslade, whose photos of the Franklin College football teams in the 2010 postseason playoffs especially were excellent “finds” for me.
Also, Ryan Coleman of d3photography.com, whose photos from the 2010 Gagliardi Trophy presentation enlivened the text in that final chapter of the story; The Indianapolis Star, which was gracious in sharing photos of Indianapolis Cardinal Ritter players Nick Purichia, Joey Anderson, Obed Bailey and Luke Floyd; Heritage Christian School for its photos of Kyle Ray and Ray with his students on one of Ray’s many Bow Tie Wednesdays; Ritter High School for use of its photos of the Raiders in the 2006 IHSAA Class A state championship football game; and Trine University for its head shots of coaches Matt Land and Dan Simrell.
Also, Hamilton Hills Church in Fishers, Ind., for its use of the photo of Claire Freeman Ray; artist Luke Buck of Nineveh, Ind., for use of his striking painting of the former Nineveh School; Eric and Luanne Watt; Karen Ray-Thomas and her daughter, Leslie Ray; Franklin College through its Athletics Department; the Indiana Department of Natural Resources; and so many of the main characters in the story, who scrambled to accommodate my requests for personal, family and/or other pertinent images to help illustrate the story, especially the epilogue.
A note of special thanks to former Indianapolis Star newsroom colleagues Carl Sygiel, Brett Halbleib and Kelly Wilkinson; and Mike Fleissner, a high school classmate of mine. Your contributions might seem small in the big picture, but they proved important during the journey. Dean George, a correspondent for The Indianapolis Star with whom I worked for several years in the 1980s when I was the newspaper’s suburban news editor, offered me valuable encouragement to continue pursuing this project at a point when I was giving serious thought to abandoning it. Thank you, Dean.Previously in "On Hoosier Gridirons":
Chapter 2: Mastering the Spread
Chapter 3: The Kicker With the Ever-Present Smile
Chapter 4: Like Father, Like Son
Chapter 5: Where Legends Played
Chapter 6: A Moonlight Graham Moment
Chapter 7: 'Clearly the Best' Small-School Teams in Indiana
Chapter 9: Farewell, Levi ... and Welcome, Pup!
Chapter 10: Waiting Their Turns
Chapter 14: A Quarterback's Prayer
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