The story behind the story

Several of the people I contacted and interviewed through the course of my work on this series asked me up front or at the conclusion of our conversations what the project entailed and/or how or why I decided to pursue it. 

For those of you who inquired early in the process, it was hard to explain, because I wasn’t absolutely certain of the end game myself. I simply sensed I had something significant to explore, and explore is what I did.

I attribute the seed for the project to my attendance at the Sept. 26, 2009, football game between Trine University and Franklin College, the game covered intently in Chapter 12 of the series. Four months before that game, I had purchased my first Canon L series (top-of-the-line) camera lens – an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS – and I was eager to put it to the test at an action sports competition.

I was living in Indianapolis at the time, so in early autumn, I hunted around to find a nearby small-college football game for which I would have a good chance of getting permission to shoot pictures from the sidelines. 

Franklin College was a modest drive from Indianapolis, so I contacted the school’s sports information director, Kevin Elixman, and asked if I needed a sideline credential to photograph the Sept. 26 game. I told him I was employed by The Indianapolis Star and would submit some of my photos to the newspaper to use in its suburban news section circulated in Franklin and the Johnson County area. Both statements were true, by the way. He welcomed me to the game, and the newspaper did use a few of my pictures the following week in the targeted zoned news section for Franklin, Johnson County and vicinity.

A year and a half later, in February 2011, when The Star’s corporate owner, Gannett Corp., required employees to take a mandatory week’s furlough, I decided to spend some of my week off perusing the campus of Hanover College in southern Indiana, where my then-new son-in-law, David, had done his undergraduate work. Knowing that I was a photography enthusiast, David mentioned to me how picturesque the campus was, and how it had a scenic bluff overlooking the Ohio River. 

While there, I figured I’d try to photograph another sporting event, this time basketball. I contacted Carter Cloyd, then-sports information director at Hanover, ahead of time to see if I could be on the arena floor and take pictures of a men’s basketball game. He said sure. I got there a couple hours before the game, took some campus photos, including several along the bluff that David had told me about, then shot the men’s basketball team victory over Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

I enjoyed that experience so much, that on the drive home I decided to try and go back to the campus to photograph it in its fall-colors splendor. Then an idea hit me to see if I could shoot a football game there in October 2011, too. Months later, when I asked Carter Cloyd about doing that, he again said yes, and I shot Hanover’s football victory over Manchester University on Oct. 22. 

On the drive home, another idea occurred to me — embarking on a personal project to visit every Indiana small college or university that fielded a football team, shoot a game there and take landscape shots of the campus. I’d use my photos as posts at this photography blog, which I’d been maintaining for about three years at the time.

Howard Hewitt, a former IndyStar newsroom colleague, was working at Wabash College at the time, so not long after I got back from Hanover, I asked Howard if it would be possible to get a sideline credential to shoot the next home football game at Wabash, which was Nov. 5. He said no problem, and he invited me to the campus for the Little Giants’ game against Wittenberg. The contest was a key one — it would decide that season’s champion of the North Coast Athletic Conference (Wabash won). 

I knew that the following week, Nov. 12, Wabash would travel to DePauw for the annual renewal of the Monon Bell Classic, a pretty important annual football game in all of Indiana, if not in the whole country. So I called DePauw to see if I could shoot that game, and they said yes.

I enjoyed both shoots, so I checked the schedules of other small colleges in the state, hoping at least one other one had made it to the postseason before the curtain fell on the 2011 football campaign. Indeed, Marian University in Indianapolis was to have an NAIA postseason tournament game at its home stadium in two weeks, on Nov. 26. I ran the usual traps, got into the game versus the University of St. Francis (Joliet, Ill.) and took photos (Marian won). By the end of 2011, I already had checked Franklin, Hanover, Wabash, DePauw and Marian off my list.

At the time, there were 14 Indiana colleges and universities that fell within my target pool of small Indiana schools of higher education that had football programs, so I had just nine more to go. I completed the project in 2016, adding Taylor University, the University of Indianapolis and the University of St. Francis (Fort Wayne) the following year (2012); St. Joseph’s College and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in ’13; Manchester University in ’14; Trine in ’15; and Earlham College and Anderson University in ’16. 

You can find galleries of each of the football games I shot during my “tour” by following the link in this sentence. 

Photos from my campus landscapes are in galleries accessible with the link in this sentence, although there also are galleries there of several other Indiana college campuses that were not part of the tour project.

Right around 2013, two years into the football/campus project, which I had branded (thanks Kyle Ray!) “Game Day,” I started asking myself if I should consider doing something with the photos beyond just using them in posts at Photo Potpourri.

The first idea I came up with to market the photos was to find the best “game day” project pictures and meld them with the respective blog post texts into a dual-focus picture compilation – a type of coffee-table size book about football at Indiana small colleges and those schools’ corresponding campuses – and somehow make it saleable. But I dragged my feet and didn’t get started on that until 2019. At that point, I began to work on the idea in earnest. 

But while putting it together, I wasn’t happy with the text portions of the original blog posts that I had planned to carry over into the manuscript. Many of the narratives were thin and needed substantial elaboration. So I began doing more research on all the games and campuses to address that shortcoming. In the process, I found that the stuff I’d been learning about the very first stop on the project “tour” – the 2009 Franklin vs. Trine game – was getting more and more interesting.

I had learned that Trine quarterback Eric Watt, with whom I had been impressed after shooting the game in 2009, had won the Gagliardi Trophy in 2010, the year after I attended the school’s game at Franklin. Then I found out that Kyle Ray, the opposing starting quarterback from that game, had been a top-four finalist for the same year’s Gagliardi. I thought to myself, “Two Indiana players among the top four Gagliardi finalists in the same year? How rare is that?”

It turns out ... that specific situation IS unique. It had never happened before, nor has it happened since. I explored that aspect some more and learned that it was pretty rare for Gagliardi finalists (or future finalists) from Indiana schools to compete on the gridiron against other Indiana finalists. It’s happened in only four seasons, although in two of those seasons it happened more than once.  

Then the more I looked at the statistics for all of Franklin College’s games in 2009, and saw how quarterbacks Kyle Ray and Nick Purichia went back and forth as the starter in those games, the more I scratched my head, figuring there had to be a story here. And there was a story there, as it turned out, but it was more involved – at least to me – than what I had imagined.

Then I learned that Eric Watt had played a season of pro ball in the Italian Football League in 2012. After that, I learned a few fascinating back stories. For example, I learned that Kyle Ray’s father, Rob, had been a quarterback at Indian Creek High School a generation before Kyle went there. And that Rob Ray also had played at Franklin College and that he did so under legendary coach Stewart “Red” Faught. And that Rob was a highly respected athlete and individual in high school and college. I also learned that he was a member of the Franklin College Athletics Hall of Fame, that he had been diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and that he died halfway through Kyle’s time at Franklin.

And I learned that Nick Purichia’s father had played in an Indiana high school state high school championship game as a quarterback for Ritter High School, the same Catholic school in Indianapolis that Nick had attended. I already knew that Nick’s younger brother, Jake, had played quarterback in a couple state championship games for Ritter as well, so I thought that delineating the family’s incredible football legacy, not to mention spotlighting Nick’s growing up years, would be a great back story in the project. But that was just scratching the surface; there had been many other quarterback-playing Purichias in the Indianapolis metropolitan area dating to the 1940s. 

And as for Eric Watt, well, the story about how he grew and developed into the athlete he became in high school and college is a story the South Newton and Trine communities like to talk about. It is one that all Hoosiers can admire, appreciate and salute, too. Plus, he played with some teammates who I learned, as I was conducting my interviews, had the ability to share and articulate a fascinating anecdote or two, or three. 

Their insights picked up the slack I experienced initially when talking to Eric, a reticent sort, something his coaches and teammates had warned me about. After doing two telephone interviews with Eric that produced less than ideal material to work with, I turned to emails to ask him follow-up questions. To my surprise and delight, I found him to be pretty articulate — and thoughtful — in his responses. I concluded that that he felt more comfortable and able to compose his thoughts better when he had time to consider questions carefully. Or perhaps he and I had reached a more comfortable place in this still new writer-athlete relationship. Or both.

Kyle Ray was just the opposite. He enthusiastically welcomed my interest in his story. I had some great interviews with Kyle, who treated his life story as an open book, a trait I admired. The sections of the series when he was struggling at Franklin College, contemplating not returning to the school his senior season and all but oblivious to how his relationship with the girl of his dreams was deteriorating — well, it took a lot for him to put all that out there publicly, but he never flinched at any of my questions. To her credit, neither did Claire Freeman, who is now his wife. Interestingly, contrary to Eric, Kyle was not an email person, and I handled that by appreciating his busy school schedule and the fact that he and Claire had three very young ones at home to parent. But fortunately, he gave it his all in our interviews, and for that I was very grateful. His mother, brother and sister were wonderful interviews as well.

And so was Kolby Harrell, the longtime friend of Kyle Ray. He and I talked for a good hour and a half on Friday, July 22, 2022, on his drive from his current home in the Raleigh area of North Carolina to the National Guard Armory in Wilmington, where he had an upcoming National Guard service stint scheduled. It was evident that he appreciated the trip down memory lane with his experiences and anecdotes about growing up with Kyle and Caleb Raley, none better than the one told in Chapter 6’s “A Moonlight Graham Moment.” That story was so compelling that I asked Kyle for another interview to go over his recollections of Kolby in that final high school game (and to review a few other things), and Kyle delivered wonderfully. 

At this point, I decided to put the coffee table book idea on the back burner and flesh out a story putting a spotlight on Indiana small-high school and small-college football by using the early-life stories of Watt and Ray – played out along a parallel timeline – as my primary vehicle. It would present a narrative that showed the two quarterbacks’ divergent football paths on the way to going opposite each other in the Sept. 26, 2009, game at Franklin College. And the story would end with triumphant senior seasons for both men, including appearances together at the Gagliardi Trophy award presentation in Salem, Va. 

Nick Purichia’s story was a key secondary plot in the series, although in the beginning, I had hoped to make him an equal third primary storyline. In fact, he was my first interview, on Jan. 25, 2022, when I was still looking at this as a three-pronged storyline venture. He did his best to answer my questions, but I wasn’t convinced he was comfortable with the idea, plus his memory of the Sept. 26 game and a lot of the 2009 season at Franklin College was sketchy. So I didn’t bother trying to explore his Ritter High School years in detail at that time. The next day or so, I sent him a follow-up email containing a link to a web page containing the play-by-play of the 2009 Franklin-Trine game and suggested that reviewing that could help jog his memory for a future interview. 

Then, in the next few weeks, I encountered obstacles with other aspects of the Purichia portion of the project. The obstacles were serious and formidable enough to give me pause about whether to proceed with the whole project altogether. 

After taking a week to ponder the dilemma, I regrouped and continued to pursue the Watt and Ray storylines. From late February to July 2022, I conducted a lot of research and interviews about those two (plus, I talked to Matt Hollowell and Luke Floyd to buttress the Purichia storyline), so I decided not to abandon the project or the Purichia storyline. 

Instead, I devised a plan to reduce the Purichia portion to a secondary plot and make the main focus the Watt and Ray stories laid out along a parallel timeline. In fact, I didn't get back to Purichia until late October, when I called him again to try one more time. He seemed more interested in participating at that point, perhaps because after 10 months he knew the project had not been shelved, and that it indicated to him I was serious all along. 

We set up a time for a second interview, and it went splendidly. Better than I had expected, in fact. I wondered if visiting the play-by-play account of the 2009 Trine-Franklin game with the link I’d sent him had been helpful. Or perhaps, like Eric Watt, he had gotten access to game tapes to review. 

Whichever or whatever, in that October interview he shared extraordinary detail of his role in the Sept. 26, 2009, game and offered some great insights, both while with Franklin College and at Ritter. It revived my hope that his storyline would remain the important element that I had envisioned. I crunched Nick’s early years story into one post, Chapter 7, but used the results of the October interview with him extensively in Chapter 12, the story of the Sept. 26, 2009, Franklin vs. Trine game.

There were quite a few people I reached out to — players, family and coaches — who did not respond to my invitations to participate or declined to do so. And there was one player, South Newton High School place-kicker Nelson Orellana, who I tried every which way to find … just short of buying a classified ad in hopes that my plea for help finding him in the media would reach someone who knew where he was or how to get in touch with him. I really did come close to buying that ad, and went as far as getting a price quote before pulling back at the last minute. 

As pleased as I was with the way the series turned out, I believe that having all of those additional voices and perspectives — or at least a majority of them — would have made it even better. 

I hope you enjoyed this story behind the story … and even more importantly, enjoyed the fun, memories and good times that all “the stars” of On Hoosier Gridirons had to share.

Previously in the series: 

Introduction

Chapter 1: 'We Stood Out'

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 8: New Teammates

Chapter 9: Farewell, Levi ... and Welcome, Pup!

Chapter 10: Waiting Their Turns

Chapter 11: No Easy Decision

Chapter 12: Sept. 26, 2009

Chapter 13: The Rest of 2009 

Chapter 14: A Quarterback's Prayer 

Chapter 15: Back to Cruise Control 

Chapter 16: The Highest Honor

Epilogue and Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 6A Moonlight Graham moment

In a 2006 preseason interview with the Daily Journal newspaper in Johnson County, Ind., Indian Creek High School head football coach Mike Gillin said that he didn't think the Braves' offense would be as pass-oriented that season as it had been in the years with his son Casey and Matt Rogers behind center.

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.”

Seniors on the 2006 Indian Creek High School football team were (bottom row, left to right): Drew Hogue, Kyle Kuntz, Kyle Baird, Caleb Raley, Kyle Ray, Kyle Horton, Evan Lattimore, Chuck Phipps and Devin Smith. Back row, same order: Mike Elmore, Preston Pameijer, Zac Poindexter, Jeff Smeltzer, Jared Waltz, Cory Baxter, Michael Jordan and Kolby Harrell. 

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.

In the third quarter, as an Indian Creek ball carrier attempted to find yardage outside on a play deep in its own territory, Daymond Reynolds and a Brownstown teammate hit the Indian Creek ball carrier for a tackle, and Reynolds saw the ball come free and drop to the ground. Reynolds said he immediately released his tackle, scooped up the ball and ran it 15 yards for a touchdown, his first and only touchdown as a high school player. It gave Brownstown a 19-0 lead. (Reynolds provided his contemporary photo at right.)

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": 

Introduction

Chapter 1: 'We Stood Out'

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 5Where legends played

In Johnson County, Ind., the accomplishments of Mike Gillin and son Casey at Indian Creek High School are legendary. 

Mike Gillin (shown at right in a photo he provided) introduced the spread offense to his Class 2A Indian Creek High School football team when he hired on as head coach in 2001. Local residents affectionately referred to the offense as “pass happy.” (In just a few short years, the spread – or “pass happy” offense – also would be introduced at South Newton High School, 135 miles north of Trafalgar.)

Spread offenses at the time were few and far between in high school football. College coach Urban Meyer had been using them at his stops at Bowling Green, Utah and Florida and would do so again at Ohio State in 2012, and it was at the turn of the millennium that high school coaches who liked what Meyer was doing decided to try and implement that approach in their high school playbooks.

And the true progenitor of the spread might well be Stewart “Red” Faught, Franklin (Ind.) College’s longtime head coach (1957-1988). His offensive playbooks tilted heavily in favor of the passing game for years.

The “spread” got its name because of its use of three, four and sometimes even five pass receivers who spread out from core offensive blockers on the line of scrimmage. By using that scheme, “spread” also is what the offense wants to do to the defense; the spread forces defenses to pull people (usually linebackers) away from the area of the offense's center and quarterback to cover the extra receivers. And if defenses don’t do that, they risk leaving a receiver open, something quarterbacks seek to exploit, hopefully for long-yardage gains.

Some sons might have difficulty playing a sport coached by their father, but not Casey Gillin, who today still holds or ranks high among Indian Creek’s career, single-season and single-game passing records. Casey’s astounding 60 touchdown passes in 2002 remain a single-season record for Indiana high schools, and his 8,806 career passing yards rank 14^th all-time among state high school players.

Mike and Casey Gillin brought immediate success to the Indian Creek football program. In 16 seasons as head coach at the school, Mike had a win-loss record of 140-45. Those 140 wins are just 22 short of the aggregate total (162) of all 10 coaches who preceded him at Indian Creek.

And after never having enjoyed a season with double-digit victories in the preceding three decades, the Indian Creek High School Braves went 10-1 and 12-1 with Casey at quarterback in 2001 and ’02.

After graduating from Indian Creek, Casey enjoyed three outstanding seasons quarterbacking teams at the University of Indianapolis, better known today as UIndy, a NCAA Division II school in adjacent Marion County, directly north of Johnson County. 

In December 2021, several years after Mike and Casey had departed Trafalgar to pursue other interests, Casey sparked hope for a new wave of success at Indian Creek when he returned to his high school alma mater to take over as head coach. 

In 2022, his first season at the helm, the Braves finished 7-4; the team’s record in 2023 was 8-4. But in January 2024, Casey announced he planned to leave Indian Creek to join his father, head coach at Mooresville (Ind.) High School, for the 2024 season to serve as offensive coordinator. 

Then in January 2025, Casey accepted the job of offensive coordinator for Wabash College’s football Little Giants but spent only one season there. In December 2025, he was named head coach at Mooresville, succeeding his father, who had stepped down at the conclusion of that season.

Good friends Kyle Ray, Caleb Raley and Kolby Harrell went out for the Indian Creek High School football team in 2003, their freshman year. All three played primarily on the junior varsity that first year.

Caleb played defensive end and wide receiver on the varsity squad from sophomore year thereafter. He said the defensive end position fell into place because he was tall (6-foot-3) and because, by the time he was a senior, he weighed 225 pounds.

Kolby, still slight of stature, made the varsity his sophomore year, but saw no live-action playing time that year or the year after. But he was not deterred; he enjoyed the team camaraderie and practiced diligently with special teams and defensive cornerbacks.

Meanwhile, Kyle played full time in the defensive backfield sophomore and junior years. He had wanted to start at quarterback and lead the offense, but at the time, another stellar quarterback, southpaw Matt Rogers, who succeeded Casey Gillin, was starting ahead of him.

Kyle spent his sophomore and junior years as Rogers’ backup on the offensive depth chart. Kyle (#10) and older brother Justin (#5) are shown above in a family photo from the 2004 high school football season at Indian Creek.

Mike and Casey Gillin and Matt Rogers weren’t the only legends Kyle and Justin Ray were following at Indian Creek. The brothers also were legacies of Rob Ray, their father.

When Rob played at Indian Creek, the Braves compiled 6-4 seasons his sophomore and junior years. The Trafalgar community got really excited during his senior year, 1975, when Rob – then known as Robbie – directed head coach Tom Scott’s run-dominant wishbone offense to near-perfection. The Braves went undefeated through the regular season and came one game short of playing for a state championship.

The Braves finished 9-1 that season, their only loss coming at Lawrenceburg, 26-7, in their first game of the postseason.

In 1975, the Indiana High School Athletic Association was in only its third year of class-division postseason football, and only four teams qualified for the postseason in each of three classes. (As yet, there were no sectionals or regionals.)

Hence, there was a maximum of just two games a team could possibly play in the postseason, so the “playoffs” for a championship entailed what amounted to a semifinal and a final.

A Ray family photo at left shows team co-captains Rob Ray (10) and Pat Haugh (55) just before the start of the postseason game vs. Lawrenceburg.

Had Indian Creek beaten Lawrenceburg in what constituted the Class A tournament’s semifinal game, the Braves not only would have played for the championship the following week against Wes-Del, but they also would have hosted that game. Instead, Lawrenceburg hosted the final, beating Wes-Del, 28-14.

Robbie Ray ranked third in Johnson County in total rushing yardage in 1975. He had 789 yards on 96 carries, and his average of 8 yards per carry was best among the top 11 rushers in the county. He ranked third in the county in passing yardage (640) and was tied for first in touchdown passes (12), according to statistics published that year in the Johnson County Daily Journal.

When the then-United Press International wire service announced its all-state team at the end of the 1975 season, Robbie Ray was included as an honorable mention.

After graduating third in his high school class in 1976, Robbie went on to play wide receiver for Red Faught at Franklin College, which is a short drive northeast of Trafalgar.

In 1976, Faught was in his 20^th season as the school’s head coach, and he would go on to coach for 12 more seasons, compiling a record of 160-139-6¹ at Franklin when he stepped down following the 1988 season, making him the winningest football coach in Franklin College history. Faught was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame on June 27, 1981, seven years before he stepped down.

In 1979, Robbie’s senior year at Franklin College, the Grizzlies finished 6-4 and in second place in the Heartland Collegiate Conference. Robbie was named second team NAIA All-America and was voted the Grizzlies’ and HCC’s Most Valuable Player.

Rob graduated Franklin College cum laude, earning a bachelor’s degree in business and accounting. At graduation, he was honored as the president of the Delta Mu Delta business honorary, was named to the Alpha Scholastic Honorary and was presented the Wall Street Journal Award for his outstanding performance in the classroom.

Kolby Harrell’s recollection of Rob Ray’s good personality agrees with the recollection of at least one person at Woodbury & Co. in Franklin, which today goes by the name Woodbury Group. The accounting firm is where Rob spent the majority of his working career.

“I know a lot of accountants, and Rob was not like a lot of accountants,” said Max Woodbury III, a teammate of Kyle Ray at both Indian Creek High School and Franklin College.

Rob and Max III’s years at the accounting firm didn’t overlap much, but Max was familiar enough with Rob to say that Rob “had a good personality and didn't mind speaking to clients. People liked him, and to this day, some of my old clients bring him up somehow in our conversations.

“Most accountants just want to sit behind the computer and prepare tax returns, but Rob was willing to explain and answer questions … a lot like my dad, who is the same way. I try to be the same while I am running the business currently.”

As for teammate Kyle Ray, Max said: “I remember Kyle as a humble and athletic quarterback. Seemed to me he was always happy and smiling, which helped me be a better person.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

Justin Ray, Rob’s older son, got his 15 minutes of fame early in 2004 in his junior year on Indian Creek’s basketball team, although, as it turned out, it entailed more than just 15 minutes.

Late in the regular season, some parents in the Indian Creek High School community – including those who had boys on the basketball team – were at the apex of a protracted disenchantment with the way they felt Indian Creek boys basketball coach Larry Angle favored his son, senior J.R. Angle, over and beyond what other players and the parents felt was normal.

They had complained about this as far back as when Larry Angle first started coaching at the school three years previously.

The parents heard players say the coach repeatedly instructed them to pass the ball to J.R., a prolific scorer who eventually obtained a scholarship to play the sport collegiately at the University of Iowa.²

Two years into Larry Angle’s term as coach, according to Kyle Ray, the athletic director was hearing the complaints, too, and investigated. He found the complaints to be valid and recommended to the School Board that coach Angle be removed, Kyle said. But the School Board declined to do so.

So here it was, two years later, in February 2004, and the issue was still hanging over the boys basketball program. Even though J.R.'s high school career was winding down, a few parents decided that unusual – and unorthodox – action was required, action that would eventually make news headlines throughout Indiana and beyond.

According to news reports at the time, a group of parents approached Justin Ray one day and offered him money to execute what could best be described as a “purpose prank” during the last home game of the season, which coincided with the team’s annual Senior Night.

The purpose of the prank – or stunt  – was to expose the coach’s longtime favoritism in a public way, in front of witnesses, i.e., the crowd at a home game. The parents asked Justin to pass the ball to J.R., exactly per the coach’s oft-repeated instruction, but not while the two players were on the court together. They wanted Justin to be on the court during live play and J.R. to be sitting on the bench after having been removed for a substitute.

For a period before the Senior Night game, Justin had talked to Kyle about the ongoing issue and said he was contemplating doing something publicly to stand up for himself and the other players on the team, Kyle said.

It was unclear whether the angry parents had approached Justin about doing the stunt before or after Justin first confided in Kyle. But Kyle said he knew before Senior Night that his brother was considering doing something demonstrative – and unusual – that evening.

On Senior Night – J.R. was the only senior on the team that season – the Braves were playing Johnson County foe Greenwood. Late in the fourth quarter, Justin and Kyle were sitting on the bench together when coach Angle told Justin to go into the game for J.R. When that happened, Kyle said, he thought to himself: “Oh man, it’s going to happen. Is it going to happen now?”

He didn’t have to wait long to get an answer. It did, indeed, happen. Kyle said he saw his brother make the pass to J.R., now sitting on the bench, and Kyle said he saw J.R. catch the ball. But Kyle said his eyes didn’t linger on J.R.; he was immediately drawn to look at the crowd because of how fans were reacting.

“The student section went nuts. Some of the parents cheered,” Kyle said.

Parents came up to Justin after the game and gave him $45 for his trouble. Justin no doubt had an inkling he’d get an earful from school officials about the stunt (and he did), but what he probably didn’t realize immediately was how his acceptance of $45 would make matters considerably worse for him.

At the time, an amateur athlete at any level of competition was not allowed to accept monetary compensation for anything that was part of or could be tied to amateur sport competitions such as high school basketball. This was well before the name, influence and likeness (NIL) compensation rule was adopted in college athletics.

In short order, Justin returned the money and apologized to coach Angle, to J.R. and to the school, according to Justin's mother, Karen Ray. But apologies would not make trouble associated with the acceptance of cash vanish immediately.

Kyle Ray fiercely defended Justin and his action, but he also defended J.R. Angle.

Justin didn’t pull the prank to shame J.R., Kyle emphasized. He did it to send a message to the school “that this was what we were trained to do – to pass the ball to J.R.”

And as for J.R., Kyle said: “J.R. was a victim just like everyone else. J.R. was a good guy. I imagine it was tough on him.”

Justin remained on the hot seat for several months afterward. Very soon after the game, he was suspended from the team. At first, the suspension was just for the rest of the season, which involved only a few games. But later, the Indiana High School Athletic Association – the regulatory authority of all high school sports in Indiana – announced that Justin would be suspended from participating in any interscholastic sports for his entire senior season, 2004-05.

Meanwhile, the School Board finally parted ways with coach Angle following that school year. It also decided not to renew the contracts of its athletics director and superintendent of schools.

Karen Ray said that at some point before the next school year, when the fury over the incident had long subsided, she and Justin sat down with IHSAA commissioner Blake Ress and negotiated a much less severe punishment for her son: Justin would be suspended for just his first four athletic games/meets in his senior year. Those all turned out to be golf meets, so Justin was able to play a full football and basketball schedule in his final year of high school.

Karen said she and husband Rob were aware of the community unrest with coach Angle’s alleged favoritism on the team at the time. “Justin had friends on the team who were not happy,” she said.

But she said she and Rob were not aware that parents had approached Justin to do the “purpose prank” or to offer their son cash compensation to do it. “If we had been (aware), we would have stopped it,” she said. The months from February 2004 until the fall “were one of the worst times of my life,” she said.

In the weeks after the incident, Rob and Karen tried to help the community heal from the incident by writing an impassioned letter, via the Letters to the Editor forum in the Johnson County Daily Journal. Published in the newspaper’s editions of March 10, 2004, the letter urged the community to move on.

“Justin has been miserable, along with other students, teammates and, yes, even adults,” they wrote. It was unfortunate, they continued, that Karen and Rob did not know about the plans ahead of time so they could stop the prank and meet with the adults who thought it was a good idea to give Justin money for doing what he did.

“Yes, it was in poor judgment, and for that they are remorseful and have expressed their sorrow to our family. But in our own son’s words, ‘Parents did not influence me.’ He has been truthful and forthright from the beginning. Yes, kids do make mistakes, and we should be there to help them learn from them.”

“Now to the important issue. This community needs to come together to heal and forgive. There has been too much hurt on both sides of this issue. We want to be part of the solution, not the problem.”

In his interview for this story in 2022 – 18 years after the incident – Justin Ray declined to discuss details of the prank other than to say, “When you’re young, you make decisions, and you have to live with them.”

An interesting twist of fate occurred a decade or so later: The Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson United School Corp. hired Justin Ray as athletics director, serving first at Indian Creek Middle School and later at the high school.

And while Justin declined to discuss the prank at length, he did say that a man who officiated that 2004 basketball game between Indian Creek and Greenwood was assigned to work a game at Indian Creek High School in 2014, when Justin was athletics director. Justin said he and the referee crossed paths that evening, neither recognizing the other at first.

The two began talking, and the referee told Justin that the last time he had worked a game at the school was the night an Indian Creek player threw a pass to a teammate sitting on the bench near the end of the game. Justin said he turned to the referee and said, “Would you believe that the guy who threw that pass is standing in front of you?”

After serving in those director of athletics jobs for several years, Justin left the school district in April 2017 to be a supervisor of grounds at Whiteland High School in the Clark-Pleasant Community School Corp., which is in northeastern Johnson County, Ind. Justin has since left that job, too, to sell insurance for Aflac Inc., also in Johnson County.

When not working, Justin today serves as associate online campus director for Emmanuel Church in Johnson County.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

With Matt Rogers at quarterback in 2003, ’04 and ’05, Indian Creek’s football teams finished with records of 9-3, 10-1 and 7-4. Rogers led Indian Creek to undefeated Mid-Indiana Football Conference championships in 2004 and ’05, but the Braves lost in the postseason sectionals both years to Brownstown Central (as well as in 2003, when South Decatur won the league title). After graduating high school, Rogers had a successful career quarterbacking at Marian University, an NAIA member school in Indianapolis. 

Coach Mike Gillin said Rogers rarely needed to be taken out of games at Indian Creek. Usually, the only times the starting quarterback came out were when the Braves held a significant lead and/or victory was assured, so backup QB Kyle Ray didn’t see a lot of action on offense. Ray did start on defense both years and had ambitions in his senior year to step into Rogers’ shoes.

There were two games in 2004 when Ray saw more than mop-up action as quarterback. On a scramble shortly before halftime in the Braves’ Sept. 3 game against Eastern Hancock, a Royals defender hit Rogers on the right, non-throwing forearm, which according to the Daily Journal game story, numbed the limb from wrist to shoulder.

Gillin pulled Rogers out of the 7-7 game at the start of the third quarter, and Kyle Ray entered in his place. The Braves rode the back of running back Curtis Pfaehler, who gained 40 yards on his first four carries of the first drive with Ray behind center. The drive ended when Ray tossed an 8-yard scoring pass to Jeremiah Tworek.

Three weeks later, Rogers sat out the whole game against Milan while recovering from minor arthroscopic knee surgery, and Kyle took over. Again, the Braves turned to Pfaehler to carry the offense, and he responded, gaining 172 yards on 14 carries and scoring five of Indian Creek’s eight total rushing touchdowns.

Ray scored one of those rushing TDs himself – a 46-yarder in the second quarter. He also completed 10 of 22 passes for 182 yards. One of those completions was a 23-yarder to his brother, Justin, who normally played defensive exclusively. Coach Gillin had sent Justin into the game on offense to run a corner route from the left wideout position.

Justin pointed to that Ray-to-Ray pass completion as one of his favorite memories of high school football. He said coach Gillin put Kyle and Justin in on offense occasionally in other games and that his brother threw three or four other passes to him during Justin’s senior year. In a family photo at right, Kyle (#10) and Justin (#5) posed on one of Indian Creek’s jersey day Fridays.

Coach Mike Gillin says he remembers Kyle “as one of the finest individuals I’ve been around” and quickly attributed that characterization to the athlete’s wholesomeness and strong family upbringing, alluding to Rob and Karen Ray.

“He was easy to coach all the way through. … We’ve kept in touch over the years, and I see him every once in a while. He brings back a lot of memories …”

Asked about his play as a strong safety on defense as a sophomore and junior, Kyle joked self-deprecatingly that he wasn’t fast enough to be a defensive cornerback, whose job usually is to stick close to wide receivers. Doing that requires a good amount of speed.

Safeties are usually responsible for either doubling coverage on a particularly good receiver, roaming the deep portion of the field when pass plays are expected on long-yardage downs or responding to wherever defensive support is needed on routine plays, which occasionally can involve safety blitzes.

Gillin credited Kyle for being analytical in attacking defenses when he did play quarterback. The coach had no doubt that Ray’s two years on defense – and knowing how to “read,” or understand, those defenses – helped Ray succeed in leading the Braves’ offense when he indeed became the starting quarterback in 2006.

Gillin remembers Ray’s physique as “wiry” when he first came out for the team as a freshman. But he said Kyle had matured physically and was over 6-feet tall (he was 6-2 when he started college) by the time he played his last two years. Justin Ray said his younger brother was always a solid tackler.

“He was very physical even as a sophomore,” Justin said, adding that his brother's good tackling ability was why coach Gillin had Kyle start as a sophomore in the Braves’ sectional game against Union County in 2004, a game the Braves won, 42-8.

Justin then chuckled and said, “He (Kyle) probably didn’t tell you this, but he did give up the (opponents’) only touchdown of the game!” He alluded to how Union County wide receiver Jordan Hunter got behind the Indian Creek secondary and hauled in a pass from Caleb Hackney for a 55-yard touchdown on Union County’s opening possession of the third quarter.

Justin neglected to mention that Kyle came into the Union County game briefly on offense later in the third quarter to spell starting quarterback Matt Rogers, who had come out with muscle spasms following a hard hit. Kyle promptly threw a 9-yard touchdown pass to Jake Scott, whose interception moments earlier had given the Braves the ball and a short field.

In fairness, Justin also didn’t mention that in the first half, Justin himself intercepted a Hackney pass, one of four Indian Creek interceptions on the night.

By the end of the 2005 season, their junior years of football, Kyle’s friend and teammate, Kolby Harrell, had yet to appear in a game for the Braves. At a team cookout at Coach Gillin’s home in summer 2006 before the start of Kyle, Caleb and Kolby's senior year, the coach gathered players together to discuss goals for the upcoming season.

Gillin asked each player to share their personal goals.

Kyle said Kolby told everyone that regardless of whether he ever played in a game, his goal was to be a good teammate and to do anything the team needed to win, a remark that fetched high praise from the coach. 

Kyle wasn't the only player on the team aware that his good friend hadn’t gotten into a game to see live action yet.

“Coach Gillin had a lot of respect for Kolby,” Kyle said, offering the possible theory that Gillin didn’t put Harrell on the field when the Braves had huge leads in the last quarter because Gillin felt he needed to protect Kolby, who was still physically slight at the time.

“Swimming was Kolby’s sport,” Kyle said (more on Kolby's swimming exploits in the Epilogue, which will follow the final chapter). “He played football for the sport and for the fun of it. He got the best enjoyment from just hanging out with all the guys.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

During Kyle's high school years, his parents and those of girlfriend Claire Freeman were supporting their children’s interest in dating each other, even though the two families lived some 50 miles apart. The Rays’ home along Lamb Lake in southern Johnson County, was 32 miles south of Indianapolis. Claire’s home was in Fishers, a Hamilton County suburb about 20 miles northeast of Indianapolis.

Claire remembers that she, Kyle and their parents would occasionally meet on the Southside of Indianapolis for dinner. Their favorite places there were Cracker Barrel, Texas Roadhouse and the former Jonathan Byrd Cafeteria, which was just south of Indianapolis in the northern Johnson County suburb of Greenwood. “Our families were great together. Very supportive,” she said.

Claire played basketball for a highly successful program at Heritage Christian High School, in northeast Indianapolis.

The Eagles won Class 2A championships in the Indiana High School Athletic Association postseason tournament in each of her four years there – 2006, ’07, ’08 and ’09. (The Eagles also had been state runner-up in 2005, the year before Claire entered high school.) In the state tournament championship game her senior year, she sank a field goal with 3 seconds left in overtime to seal the victory over Oak Hill, 60-58. She also was named that year’s tournament Most Valuable Player.

Claire was good enough on those teams to fetch college scholarship offers from such schools as Butler University in Indianapolis, Evansville (Ind.) University, Southern Illinois and Miami of Ohio. She ultimately chose Butler, largely because it was close to Kyle and both of their families, and she wanted them to be able to see her play without having to make a long, difficult commute.

And by Kyle’s senior year of high school, Claire was attending many of Kyle’s football and basketball games, and Kyle was going to many of Claire’s basketball games.

________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

1 - In 2018, there was much publicity about how Mike Leonard, then Franklin College's head football coach, was approaching, equaled and then passed Faught's supposed career wins record of 120 at Franklin. (Leonard would finish with 129 wins when he stepped down after the 2019 season.) Franklin College officials have since discovered that 120 was not Faught's wins total at Franklin and have acknowledged that the 2018 publicity was unwarranted because Faught's wins total was, and has always been, nearly 40 more than what media reports cited in 2018. At the time, the only known resource claiming that Faught's career wins total at Franklin College was 120 is the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in its online member biography for Faught. While 120 was Faught's wins total at the time Faught was inducted into the IFHOF in 1981, Faught coached seven more seasons after his induction, winning 40 more games, but the Hall did not update his biographical information to reflect the post-induction wins, losses and ties when it carried over Faught's biographical data to his IFHOF online profile page (until summer 2025). The author knows of at least two other IFHOF members, Bud Wright of Sheridan and Mike Gillin, now of Mooresville, whose coaching wins records in their respective IFHOF biographies were in error when this series first published because they also were not current. Wright was inducted in 2002 and Gillin in 2014, also before they had finished coaching. In August 2025, the correct record for Faught finally was displayed in his IFHOF biography. But Mike Gillin’s member bio still contained outdated information and data.

2 - In four seasons at Iowa, 2004-09, J.R. Angle played in 62 games, starting four, and averaged 1.9 points, 1.1 rebounds and 0.4 assists per game. He was red-shirted in 2005-06. In his senior season at Indian Creek, he had averaged 27.3 points per game, ranking fourth in the state of Indiana. In the metro Indianapolis area, he was second only to the 36.2 ppg of Broad Ripple High School’s George Hill, who would go on to play college ball at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis followed by a 15-year pro career with NBA teams in San Antonio, Indiana, Utah, Sacramento, Cleveland, Oklahoma City and Milwaukee. Today, J.R. is an assistant basketball coach at Greenfield (Ind.) Central High School.

Tomorrow in Chapter 6: A Moonlight Graham Moment

Previously in "On Hoosier Gridirons": 

Introduction

Chapter 1: 'We Stood Out'

Chapter 2: Mastering the Spread

Chapter 3: The Kicker With the Ever-Present Smile

Chapter 4: Like Father, Like Son