All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz
It rained much of the last full week of September 2009 in central Indiana. But on Saturday, Sept. 26, rain clouds gave way to sunshine for most of the day.
Temperatures reached the upper 60s and low 70s by early afternoon, and by kickoff time of the non-conference meeting between Franklin College and Trine University at Stewart “Red” Faught Stadium in Franklin, Ind., it was a perfect day for college football.
Like always, fans socialized outside the stadium before kickoff. Many of them were part of sundry tailgating stations, relaxing in folding chairs and tending to food being cooked on portable grills while they chatted with family, friends and other tailgaters.
Faught Stadium was named for the legendary Franklin College football head coach, who had steered the team for a phenomenal 32 years. From 1957 to 1988, his teams won 160 games, lost 139 and tied six, making him the winningest football coach in school history.
Fans knowledgeable about small-college football were aware that the game would feature strong and ascending NCAA Division III football programs based in Indiana. Franklin had dominated the annual series with Trine, now in its sixth and final year, winning the first four meetings. Trine claimed its only victory, 30-27, the previous season at Angola, Ind.At game time, there were a few shallow pockets of rainwater along the sidelines of the grass field, the last vestiges of the week’s rainfall. But the playing portion of the gridiron appeared to be in good condition. The 2009 season would be the field’s last with a natural grass surface; after the last game of the season, the school would begin replacing it with artificial turf.1
This
game also would be notable for how Franklin head coach Mike Leonard would move in a
different direction in managing the offense’s leadership. In the first two games,
Kyle Ray and Nick Purichia had taken equal amounts of turns at quarterback,
using a rotation of two possessions on the field, then two possessions off.
Against Trine, Ray started the game at quarterback – and he remained there in the first half for all but a few downs in the second quarter when Purichia was behind center. Ray also would start in the second half.
“The Trine game, he (Leonard) met with us before and said Kyle was going to go, and they would have a couple packages (of plays) for me,” Purichia said.
By
this third game of the season, explained Franklin offensive coordinator Josiah
Sears, “We really wanted someone to win the job,” so coaches decided to give Kyle
Ray a chance to do that. Specifically, they hoped the vote of confidence would
produce a leadership consistency that had been missing.
Both teams started slowly in the 2009 game, each sputtering on their first possessions and punting on fourth down. Franklin got a break on Trine’s punt by Jeremy Howard, though; the kick went only 17 yards before being downed at the Grizzlies’ 48-yard line.
The drive stalled there. A short run, a short pass completion and a third-down incompletion brought out place-kicker Machy Magdalinos to try a 37-yard field goal, but he missed it wide right.
The home team reached the Trine 23-yard-line in six plays. On that sixth play, the Trine defense was penalized 11 yards for a personal foul, putting the ball on the 12-yard line. Alas, the Grizzlies’ offense sputtered again. After a short run and two pass incompletions, Magdalinos returned, and this time, he converted on a 27-yard field goal. The Grizzlies had the first lead of the game, 3-0.
Trine would then score 13 unanswered points, although the Thunder missed a golden opportunity to get even more.
The Thunder gained 13 yards on a run by quarterback Eric Watt (No. 13 in photo at right, chased by Franklin safety Jesse Mercer), followed by seven more yards on a scamper by running back George Outlaw and another 17 yards on a run up the middle by Devin Leas.
Two short rushing plays later, at the 28-yard line, Watt threw long to junior Paul Curtis. The wide receiver leapt high behind Franklin strong safety Matt Gore, did a scissors kick while in mid-air and twirled to his left just after snagging the ball inside the 5-yard line.
“I think I ran a post and kept it skinny,” Curtis said of the touchdown play. “Kept it skinny” referred to how he stretched out his angle toward the goal post. He said the ball was thrown slightly behind him, “so I had to do a kind of pirouette” to make the catch.
photo at right) punted 35 yards, and the ball was downed on the Trine 25-yard line.
Watt then drove Trine downfield in 12 plays, rushing 8 yards himself on an important third-and-6 play and tossing a 20-yard pass to Curtis (#5 in photo below) on the second play of the second quarter. Curtis made the catch across his body at the 50-yard line and fought his way to the Franklin 43. It was Curtis’ 50th career reception at Trine.
On a fourth-and-2 at the Franklin 35-yard line, just 2 minutes into the second quarter, Trine called time out to decide if the offense would stay on the field and, if so, to devise a play to get the first down. The offense did stay on the field, and Watt got more than the 2 yards he needed when he ran for 12 yards, which took the Thunder to the Grizzlies’ 23-yard line. The Thunder were near red zone territory and in position to pad the 6-3 lead.
On first down, Watt gained a yard on a keeper, and on second down, he threw 6 yards to Nick Leeman, presenting Trine with a third-and-3. Watt said the play call for third down was a boot, a term describing how the quarterback rolls toward one or the other sideline with options that include a play fake to freeze the linebackers, or pitching or passing to a running back or receiver. Trine usually used the boot only once per game, Watt said, but it used it as many as five times against Franklin that day.
“This might have been the first or second time we used it in the game,” Watt recalled. In this case, he said, Franklin’s defense defended it well.
Taking the snap from center, Watt ran the boot to his left. In reviewing tapes of the game and the play in 2022, Watt noticed that Trine’s tight end, one of his primary pass options on the play, had gotten entangled with a game official while running his route. With the tight end preoccupied and his other primary options covered, Watt said, he saw running back Jeff Langley – “someone I rarely threw to” – open for a moment in the end zone to the right.
Watt stopped his rollout, planted his feet and threw. Franklin senior safety Jesse Mercer, who had been on the right side of the end zone, saw Watt make his pivot for the throw and responded by heading toward the middle of the end zone toward Langley. If hash marks were extended into the end zone, Mercer said, he felt that he probably was where the right hash mark would be when Watt let loose with the pass.
Mercer,
making only his third career start at Franklin, tracked the ball to his right, reached
for it and made the interception (see photo below). He said the reach he’d made for the ball was so awkward he couldn’t land on his feet, so he fell to the ground in the end
zone for a touchback. The photo doesn’t suggest a lunge or reach was involved, but it’s
not uncommon for memories to become hazy on small details after 13 years. An image taken by another photographer at the game shows Langley and a teammate bringing Mercer down after the interception.
Mercer said he didn’t think Watt would have had a completion if Mercer had not been there to intercept it. “It seemed overthrown for it to be a reception. It just hung in the air.” But he acknowledged that the passage of time might have clouded his memory about that detail.
Watt said Mercer’s recollection isn’t quite right, although Watt had the benefit of reviewing the play in 2022 in copies of game tapes he possesses, something Mercer did not. Watt said the pass was lower than Mercer described it and that he felt Langley would have had a chance to make the catch if Watt had not thrown the ball behind the receiver. That appears to be what happened based on the position of Mercer and Langley in the end zone in the author’s still photo above.
Watt also said that head coach Matt Land told him after the interception that Watt “had space” on the play. “Had space” meant that Land saw open room in front of Watt for the quarterback to have run with the ball and get the 3 yards needed for a first down.
“It was such a pivotal point in the game. It was huge for us because Eric Watt was the best quarterback we saw that season. He was a very outstanding player.”
After the interception, the Franklin offense took over at its own 20-yard line. Alas, it would soon be the Grizzlies’ turn for a little heartbreak, although things started encouragingly.
Magdalinos had kicked 22 of 28 field goals – including seven of seven in 2007 – in his first three seasons at Franklin. But he had missed two of three in this game and would finish his senior season four of nine.
Both teams punted on their next offensive possessions. Franklin’s Max Woodbury's punt went 37 yards, and the Thunder’s Paul Curtis caught the ball at the 50-yard line and returned it along the left sideline all the way to the Franklin 28-yard line, aided by a key block from Aaron Selking.
The Thunder gained nine yards on the first three downs and chose to go for the first down on a fourth-and-1 play at the Franklin 19-yard line. It worked. Watt got 2 yards on a quarterback keeper, and Trine earned another series of downs.
On the next play, receiver Paul Curtis lined up on the right and found himself open on a slant pattern. Watt saw him and threw, and Curtis caught the pass and ran it into the end zone for a 17-yard score. Howard connected this time on the extra-point kick, and the Thunder led 13-3 with 2:13 left in the half.
After an incompletion, Ray rushed for 4 yards and threw for 14 more yards to fellow junior Matt Zmich, putting the Grizzlies on the Thunder 34-yard line. On third-and-6, Ray threw 8 yards to Sean Walton for a first down. Then Ray threw 20 yards to Mellencamp, putting the Grizzlies on the 2-yard line.
On first down, Nick Mongan ran for a yard before Trine’s Andrew Pickford and Chris Eichman stopped him short of the goal line, and with the clock at 0:33, Franklin called time out. Mongan got the ball to run on the second-down play, too, but once again Pickford stopped him from entering the end zone.
Franklin called another time out with the clock now at 0:24.
Pickford sheepishly confessed that he had called two wrong defensive formations on each of those downs, and yet he managed to be in the right place to make or help make stops to prevent a score. He said he would call another wrong formation on third down, and he thinks Franklin was aware of it and called its next play to exploit it.
On third down in the power-I formation, Ray pitched the ball to Nick Mongan (pictured at left during a first-quarter 8-yard pass reception and run) on a toss sweep play to the right.
Mongan got the ball across the goal line, his first touchdown of the season.
Magdalinos added the conversion kick, trimming the Thunder lead to 13-10, which is how the half ended.
This confrontation between emerging small-school powers in Indiana was turning out to be as good as expected.
On its first possession of the second half, Trine padded its lead to 16-10 when Jeremy Howard kicked a 32-yard field goal following a 12-play drive, aided by a 20-yard run by Devin Leas on the first play and a second-and-5 run by Watt for 15 yards that put the Thunder on the Franklin 20-yard line.
Franklin’s offense stalled on its next possession, and after a punt, the Trine offense started from its own 14-yard line. The Thunder marched downfield in short order, gaining yardage on every play except one 2-yard rushing loss. Watt completed five passes for 35 yards and ran for 20 more yards before the Thunder reached the Franklin 21-yard line.
Nick Cochran said upperclassmen on the Grizzlies who played with Chad Rupp knew of Franklin’s ability to bounce back when facing deficits of more than one score like this. So he said he wasn’t too concerned yet.
“No lead of three touchdowns or more was too far out for our offense,” Cochran said. “Maybe it was for freshmen and sophomores who remembered what happened with Butler (the previous game), but it wasn’t for us juniors and seniors.”
On first down after the ensuing kickoff, Ray threw to Deffner for 5 yards. On second down, he went to the air again, rolling to his right. But there was no receiver open on that side. Instinctively, he looked left and spotted a possible target. Still moving to his right, he twisted his upper torso left and threw in that direction as hard as he could. As he did, out of the corner of his right eye, he saw a Trine defender bearing down on him.
The instant Ray released the ball on that twist to the left, the Trine defender hit him in the exposed right side of the rib cage. The pass fell incomplete, and Ray fell to the ground, where he paused for a moment to catch his breath.
After a few moments, he made it to his feet and left the field. He described the hit, years later, as a simple matter of getting the wind knocked out of him. “I could have come back into the game after the next play,” he said.
But head coach Mike Leonard had other ideas. With just 10 points on the board, down two touchdowns and the game well past the halfway point, Leonard sent Nick Purichia onto the field to take Ray’s place, hoping to find a hot hand quickly.
The ask of Purichia was daunting. Purichia was coming in on a third-and-5 situation. Would an unsuccessful third-down play demoralize the Grizzlies, not to mention Purichia?
Purichia noted that he wasn’t entirely cold coming in; he’d been on the field for that "package of plays" in the first half, and he said that was important for him to get acclimated to game conditions.
Still, ice had to have been flowing in Purichia’s veins at that moment because he responded to the challenge by completing an 8-yard pass to Sean Walton to secure the first down.
After a first-down incompletion, Purichia threw 22 yards to Ryan Momberger, putting the ball at the Trine 15-yard line.
On the next play, as he prepared to hand off on a run-pass option play, Purichia noticed two things: A Trine linebacker was headed his way on a blitz, and that the blitz left Momberger open on the right side, so Purichia faked the handoff and tossed a quick pass to Momberger.
With the blitzing linebacker now out of the receiver’s way and running the wrong direction, Purichia said, “all (Momberger) had to do was outrun the few remaining defenders,” which is exactly what Momberger did, marching into the end zone untouched for a touchdown.
“It was a pretty easy score, really,” Purichia said. “It just happened to be a good read.” (Momberger is shown below on the start of his run toward the end zone after catching Purichia's pass.)
Magdalinos’ extra-point kick was good, and the Trine lead had been trimmed to 23-17 with 40 seconds left in the third quarter.
Trine chewed up 3 minutes and 6 seconds on its next drive, most of which came early in the fourth quarter. After nine plays got the Thunder to the Franklin 32-yard line, Trine faced a fourth-and-13 and elected to punt the ball, hoping to pin Franklin deep in its own territory. Jeremy Howard’s punt didn’t go as well as the Thunder had hoped; the ball was downed at the 18-yard line.
Up until that moment, Purichia didn’t know if Kyle Ray would be returning to the field as quarterback for the Grizzlies. But he said the offensive line coach told him to go back on the field, and so Purichia did, and he started the next drive in excellent fashion.
He completed four consecutive passes – eight yards to Deffner, 39 yards to Mellencamp, 19 yards to Momberger and six yards to Deffner again, the latter coming on a first-down play that put the ball on the Trine 10-yard line.
Purichia said he could sense things were clicking for the Grizzlies’ offense, and he could feel an adrenaline rush himself.
“The big part was the pass to Mellencamp for 39 yards,” he said. “That was kind of like a double boot on the outside. He looked like he was wide open when I was throwing it, but then when I went back (later) and watched it again, he wasn’t as open as I thought, which was huge as far as how I felt confidence-wise at that time. … We were in a rhythm, and I think that throw right there … I kind of had it in my head where everything felt like it was open, and clicking, and I felt that at that point, I could make every throw, and we were rolling.”
After Mongan rushed for no gain on second down, Purichia completed yet another pass to Deffner, who fumbled the ball. Fortunately, Deffner not only recovered his own fumble, but he did so at the 6-yard line – the exact spot Franklin needed to reach to earn another full set of downs.
Franklin defenders Jesse Mercer (33) and Joe Rush (47) combine to bring down Trine’s JaVontae Hence after a 6-yard pass reception in the third quarter.
On first and goal at the 6, Trine’s Aaron Selking and Aaron Shoemaker combined to tackle Nick Mongan for a 3-yard loss on a run play, dropping the Grizzlies to the 9-yard line.
On second down and Purichia in shotgun formation, he ran a quarterback counter, a designed run that started with a fake handoff to a running back to hopefully pull defenders in one direction while a Grizzlies’ guard pulled away in the opposite direction to lead Purichia through an open seam at the scrimmage line. It fell into place perfectly, and Purichia had a mostly clear alley into the end zone.
“A couple (of Trine) dudes dived at my legs” as he neared the goal line, Purichia said, “and I just kept my knees high” until crossing the chalk line.
“On that (counter) play, you want to pull the fake (handoff) long enough not only to get the defenders to flow (in the wrong direction), but you also want to give that (offensive) guard time to pull up and into that hole, and I’m following him. I just remember our O-lineman made one block, and there was nobody else there.”
Purichia said he had scored on the same play in the loss to Butler in the previous game except that he didn’t make it all the way untouched that time. He said two Butler defenders sandwich-tackled him just as he crossed the goal line.
After Magdalinos’ conversion kick, Franklin went ahead in the score, 24-23, its first lead since 3-0 in the first quarter.
There was 9:38 left on the clock, and game officials had placed the ball at the Thunder 21-yard line for the Trine offense to begin its possession after the kick-off. But as the Thunder offense broke huddle and approached the line of scrimmage for the first play, a bizarre scene unfolded.
Franklin’s defense was scrambling to get 11 players onto the field, and with only 10 defenders set, Grizzlies’ defensive end Daymond Reynolds began to run onto the field to give his team its 11th player. He was still running to get into position, simultaneously trying to fasten his helmet strap, when Trine quarterback Eric Watt took the center snap to start the play.
Game officials threw penalty flags, ruling that Reynolds had not made it to his position in time. The official violation for the penalty against Reynolds was “illegal participation,” and officials advanced the ball 15 yards from the point where the play began (which had been the 21-yard line), placing it at the Trine 36-yard line. Trine also was awarded a new first down.
“Oh yeah, there was no one out there,” Reynolds said. “They had another receiver doing a deep route of some kind, and if I hadn’t been there, he (Brown) could have potentially scampered down the sideline all the way.”
Reflecting on the commotion that started the problem moments earlier, Reynolds explained that he was a defensive end, and he had thought he was “on a break” from having to be on the field at the time.
“The coach (defensive coordinator Matt Theobald) was yelling, ‘We don’t have enough, we don’t have enough!’ And I thought he also said (to Reynolds), ‘Get in there,’ so I took off running. I was running to what was an outside linebacker’s spot, which is not my position; I’m a lineman.”
He paused a moment to chuckle before continuing.
“I didn’t make it inside the numbers (the yard-line numerals on the sideline portions of the field) before they snapped the ball, and (Brown) ran a short little ‘out’ (pattern), and he was running right at me, and as soon as he caught it, I just smoked him. I ended up being in the right place at the wrong time, basically.”
As things turned out, the incident only delayed Trine from scoring a touchdown on the drive; the one thing the Thunder really lost was some time on the clock, but only about 2½ minutes.
Purichia was asked if the rare “illegal participation” penalty was discussed much by Franklin team members at the time or after the game. He said he didn’t even remember the play.
“When you’re the team that wins, you don’t really think about it that much,” he responded with a chuckle.
When normalcy resumed, and the ball at the 36-yard line after the penalty mark-off, George Outlaw gained two yards on a run, which was followed by a holding penalty against Trine on a short second-down pass play, which put the ball back to Trine’s 30 yard-line. That didn’t deter Watt, who got 15 yards on a pass to Paul Curtis, then Watt kept the ball for a 1-yard gain on third-and-1 to earn a first down.
Devin Leas then gave the Thunder offense a huge boost when, on first down, he galloped 30 yards along the right sideline, putting the ball at the Franklin 24.
Riding the momentum, Watt made fast work of the drive by scoring on a run himself on the next play. He started with a play fake, rolled left as if in another boot, saw that he “had space” in front of him, and sprinted down the sideline and into the end zone for the touchdown. After a pass failed on a two-point conversion attempt, the Thunder led again, 29-24.
As noted above, the relatively quick drive drained only 2 minutes and 25 seconds off the clock. Franklin had more than 7 minutes to respond.
Trine kicked off, and the Grizzlies’ offense started at their 31-yard line. After a first-down loss of 3 yards on a rushing play, Purichia threw 17 yards to Deffner, then he ran for 9 yards on first down to the Trine 46. For Purichia, who gained 32 yards on 10 carries in the game, it was his longest run of the day and harkened to what Matt Hollowell had said (in Chapter 7) about Purichia’s dual threat as a passer and a runner in the years Purichia quarterbacked the Ritter Raiders in high school.
After a second-down incompletion, the Grizzlies faced a third-and-1. Purichia ran for 2 yards to the 44 to give Franklin a new set of downs. A Mitch Downs run for 8 yards, followed by a 6-yard Purichia pass to Luke Floyd, got the Grizzlies another first down at the Trine 30-yard line.
The Grizzlies’ offense stayed on the field and approached the line of scrimmage to run a play, but before they could snap the ball, the Thunder were called for encroachment and penalized five yards, giving Franklin a first down by penalty at the Trine 17-yard line.
Mitch Downs rushed for 4 yards on first down, and Purichia threw an incompletion on second down. On third-and-6, Purichia went back to pass and scrambled briefly before spotting Mellencamp in the middle of the end zone. He whipped the ball to his teammate, and Mellencamp hauled it in for a 13-yard score.
“It was to my left,” Purichia said of Mellencamp’s pass route. “He was running like a curl where he was gonna release inside and sit. Then there was a defender there,” so Mellencamp drifted to the back of the end zone where Purichia spotted him and threw.
“He kind of caught it on the run toward the goal post. … It wasn’t quite a broken play, but it was a little bit of an adjustment on his part for the catch.”
Franklin
took back the lead, 30-29, and decided to try for a two-point conversion to
hopefully create a three-point spread. But Purichia’s pass went incomplete.
Franklin now clung to a one-point lead with 2:25 left. That was plenty of
time for Trine, given its head coach Matt Land’s statement earlier that his team practices
these two-minute drills regularly during the week and throughout the season.
Thunder hopes lifted significantly when Paul Curtis caught the ensuing kickoff and ran it back 34 yards to the Trine 42-yard-line, certainly better field position than they would have gotten on the average kick-off. Devin Leas rushed for 3 yards on first down, but then Watt threw two incomplete passes.
Now it was Trine that faced a critical fourth-down play, and the Thunder needed a minimum of 7 yards to keep the drive going.
The hitch was not one of Watt’s favorite routes. He said he would have preferred that Curtis run a speed out, which is when a receiver runs hard and fast straight ahead and inside a defender before turning in a 90-degree angle toward the sideline, with the quarterback’s pass hitting the receiver on the turn.
Watt
said he should have changed the play via audible at the line of scrimmage, “but
I knew (Paul) best and felt that was the way to go.” Going to their best or
most familiar receiver is a very common approach by quarterbacks in key
situations.
Watt did throw to Curtis, but the defense was on top of the play. The pass fell incomplete.
The pass “was defended correctly,” Curtis remembered of the critical fourth-down play. “They defended it very well, so it would have been hard to be perfect” with a thrown ball on the play.
Franklin’s offense took possession at the Trine 45-yard line with 2:18 left to play. Trine called its final two timeouts to stop the clock after first- and second-down Franklin running plays, but on third-and-6, the Thunder were penalized for encroachment – again – and that meant the Grizzlies needed to gain only 1 yard on third down to earn another first down.
On third-and-1, Purichia gained 2 yards on a keeper, sealing the victory. And indeed, the Grizzlies ran out the clock to end the game and defeat the 22nd-ranked Thunder. The win improved Franklin’s record in the series with Trine to 5-1. It also improved its season record to 2-1 while Trine fell to 2-1.
Both teams created a lot of offense in the game. Trine relied heavily on Watt, who led the Thunder in rushing, gaining 120 yards on 17 carries, including the 24-yard fourth-quarter touchdown scamper. It was one of his biggest rushing days as a college player; in high school, he’d run for 183 yards for South Newton in a 2006 game against Tri-County.
He also completed 27 of 39 passes for 233 yards and three touchdowns. The 27 completions rank second-most in a game by a Trine passer; his 56 total offensive plays (17 rushing, 39 passing) also rank second all-time for a Trine player in a game; and his 353 yards of total offense (120 rushing, 233 passing) rank fifth all time for a single Trine game.
In this last meeting of the two rising Indiana small-school teams for at least another 13 years, Watt had given the Grizzlies’ defense fits. And yet, the home team prevailed.
Franklin’s quarterback tandem of Kyle Ray and Nick Purichia completed a combined 33 passes out of 56 attempts for 335 yards and two touchdowns, both by Purichia. Four Grizzlies rushers had a combined total of 96 yards – 24 yards less than Watt gained by himself. Mitch Downs led the way for Franklin with 44 yards on 10 carries, with the majority of the yardage coming early in the game.
No one on the Grizzlies who was interviewed for this project remembered there being any special celebration, hoopla or vocal expression of accomplishment on the field or in the locker room after the dramatic comeback victory over a strong, ranked team. It seemed especially “odd” given that just one game previously, Franklin had hit an early-season low point in the Butler debacle.
As Nick Cochran explained, when asked about the lack of post-game celebration: “We’re Franklin. We expect to win.”
Jesse Mercer (#33 in photo above) led the Grizzlies with 10 tackles (nine solo) and was named Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Week.
Although the game marked the end of the Trine-Franklin non-conference annual series at that time, the two schools were put opposite each other in 2022 as part of the first year of what was announced as an annual interconference battle between schools in the HCAC and Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Association.
The 2022 game was played on Sept. 17, 2022, at Franklin, and Trine won, 55-21. In a rematch at Trine on Sept. 16, 2023, Trine again prevailed, 58-43, as Thunder quarterback Alex Price set program records for passing yardage in a game with 439 and for passing touchdowns in a game with seven. Wide receiver Brandon Kline tied the school record for TD receptions in a game with four.
The two schools played once more, on Sept. 20, 2025, at Trine, with the Thunder victorious 35-27. Trine junior quarterback RJ West II flirted with Price’s single-game passing yardage with 435 and had four touchdowns through the air. The win improved the Thunder’s all-time record vs. Franklin to 4-5. The schools are not scheduled to meet in 2026.
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Footnotes:
1 - On Nov. 11, 2009, less than two months after the Sept. 26 game, Franklin College officials gathered at the stadium to hold a ceremony officially beginning the turf conversion project. Edwin Faught, son of the late head football coach, removed a section of sod from one of the end zones and later lay it on the grave of his father in Greenlawn Cemetery in Franklin. The new artificial surface was installed and ready for the first home football game of 2010.
2 - To view a full gallery of the author’s photos from this game, follow the link in this sentence.
Tomorrow in Chapter 13: The Rest of 2009
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!
