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 11No easy decision

Coty Bragdon had exhausted his playing eligibility at Franklin College after the 2008 season, but he was a few credits short of earning his degree in recreation at the end of the 2009 spring semester. So he returned to campus for the fall semester to satisfy degree requirements. 

He accepted a request to handle the football team’s video chores that season, and he and Kyle Ray continued to room together on campus at Johnson-Dietz Hall.

Even before the start of the 2009 season, the first after Chad Rupp had left campus, Ray felt that Nick Purichia might have a leg up on him to be the next starting quarterback. The reason he felt that way, he said, was because Ray initially committed to attend the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne in 2007, while Nick had no such “side trip” before landing at Franklin College.

Ray felt that Purichia’s direct route to Franklin might be enough to sway coach Leonard in his decision, although Leonard had never indicated that such a thing would be a factor. Through the 2009 preseason camp, Ray and Purichia went through all the drills and routines in hopes of getting the head coach’s blessing.

In August 2009, assistant coach Josiah Sears, who had arrived at Franklin the previous season to coach running backs and wide receivers, learned from Leonard that Sears would be in charge of quarterbacks in 2009. Leonard also wanted Sears (shown at right in a photo provided by Leslie Ray) to call a lot of the offensive plays, effectively also making him the offensive coordinator.¹

Ray and Purichia were competitive during 2009 summer camp in different ways, Sears said. For one, he said Ray was good at running the quick offense that the team had been practicing. “He owned it. Nick knew it (the quick offense), but Kyle owned it.” Purichia was a little better running the base offense – the traditional offense in which play calls are conveyed to the offense in the huddle, Sears said.

Second-year quarterback Nathan Ellis agreed. He said Franklin had nicknames for its various offensive formations. The fastest, he said, was called NASCAR, as in the stock car racing organization. “You just call the play and go” when running the NASCAR, he said. Then there was a hurry-up offense, which wasn’t as quick as NASCAR, but it also required rapid execution. Ray ran those two offenses very well, he said.

Ellis (shown at right in a photo he provided) said Purichia was a go-to quarterback to run offenses when plays were called in the huddle. He also was the quarterback more likely to run with the ball. “He was tough. He was banged up a lot.”

Indeed, Purichia would be sidelined temporarily at least twice that season because of injuries – one to a cut finger on the throwing hand, the other, a bit more serious, to a recurring shoulder issue.

Sears and Ellis said neither Ray nor Purichia said anything negative about the other throughout the season. Both always were model teammates, always supporting each other. Jokingly, Sears added that this didn’t necessarily mean the players didn’t find some fault with Sears or any of the other coaches.

But importantly, Sears emphasized, coaches made a point to talk to their players.

“We were way more communicative with them that they would have gotten anywhere else,” Sears said, “although they wouldn’t have had a frame of reference for that because they didn’t play anywhere but Franklin College.”

Ellis mentioned that coach Sears had the quarterbacks over to his house for dinner once a week in an effort to keep open the lines of communication. “I thought that was pretty cool … the guys just hanging out.”

Sears credited coach Leonard with persuading all players to buy into the concept that the team – not egos, personal agendas or individual goals – came first, and Sears said Ray, Purichia and Ellis embraced that.

Asked whether they felt one or the other junior quarterback had the advantage over the other, most teammates interviewed struggled to answer. Most said they felt both athletes were talented enough to lead the offense and that it was simply a matter of whether either one could exhibit the most consistency to win the job permanently. And what unfolded during the season seemed to support that notion – and suggest that neither did enough to make the decision easy.

One teammate who answered a bit differently was Luke Floyd, a sophomore at Franklin College in 2009 and a teammate of Purichia’s at Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis. 

Floyd said that if Purichia had been 3 to 4 inches taller, which would have put him level with Kyle Ray, “it would be an easy decision.” It would have been Purichia. “I think the coaching staff always wanted Kyle to be the guy. If you look at Kyle Ray, he’s the archetypical quarterback: He’s tall, and he has the arm strength.

“Nick wasn’t that tall, but he can make very good reads and throws. I think a lack of height caught up with him anytime we played teams with big defensive linemen. I will say that I loved him being our quarterback in high school. I wish I would have been in his grade.”

Franklin College football rosters for the 2009 and 2010 seasons are not available online to verify Purichia and Ray’s heights those years. But there are prep/high school football websites such as MaxPreps ( maxpreps.com ) that track that kind of data for high school players. MaxPreps lists Purichia’s height as 5-feet-10 and Ray’s as 6-feet-2 in their senior years of high school.

Luke Floyd had come to Franklin College because he liked how it was relatively close to his parents’ home in Avon, a growing suburb west of Indianapolis.

Also, he liked the fact that the college had a very good football program, and he liked that Purichia was there, someone he knew and respected from high school. In addition, a cousin of Floyd’s was enrolling at Franklin at the same time, and it helped that Luke’s girlfriend (and future wife) was going there, too.

Floyd had given thought to attending and playing football at Wabash College, but he said the head coach there who had recruited him was leaving for a Division II job that fall. As it turned out, Floyd said, he did not pick a football program that matched his primary interest – which was running pass routes and catching passes, something he had done a lot of and had enjoyed at Ritter. Although Franklin College would use him at tight end, coaches wanted him to primarily block in that position.

“I enjoyed it,” he said of his time at Franklin, “but it just didn’t work out the way I had hoped. If I had to do it all over, I might not even go to college.”

Purichia surmised that Floyd might have come a couple years too late to Franklin if his hope was to be involved more in running pass routes. He said the Grizzlies’ “base personnel” on offense was four receivers and one running back.

“Our freshman year (2007), we had a very good offensive line that was predominantly seniors,” Purichia said, “so we got a lot into those running back and tight-end sets. But after that, we didn’t utilize the tight end (on pass plays) nearly as much.”   

Even though Franklin’s offense did not avail Floyd to the volume of pass routes he had hoped to run, he said he never contemplated leaving or transferring.

“I wasn’t going to quit,” he said, noting that Franklin’s football program was a top-notch organization with excellent coaches and training regimens. 

 

A sculpture of Ben Franklin (left) is available for strollers in Franklin College's Dame Mall to sit on the bench and pose for pictures with Ben. (Photo by Joe Konz)

While Franklin coaches went back and forth in training camp on the question of who would start as quarterback in 2009, the Grizzlies’ defense was getting a new look. The 2008 defensive “anchors” of Dan McManus, Levi Smythe and Nick Ruban were gone through graduation. Stepping in to replace them were Josh Bales, Rex Olds and David O’Rourke.

Interior linebacker Nick Cochran credited McManus, Smythe and Ruban, as well as the rest of the Class of 2009 seniors, with “strong leadership” the previous two years.

“I felt lucky to have been close to all of those older guys,” said Cochran, who was entering his junior year in 2009. “It was left to us – me, (offensive lineman) Seth Qualls and (linebacker) Teddy Henkle as (new) captains to continue that leadership. It was asking a lot; we returned only two (starters) on offense, and both were linemen. And when you lose somebody as good as Chad Rupp (at quarterback),” challenges had to be expected, he said. “We were concerned as captains to carry on that leadership.”

The Grizzlies’ 2009 opening game at Baldwin-Wallace kept getting closer and closer, and Ray and Purichia still were awaiting word on which of them would be named the starter. Coach Leonard confirmed that in its many discussions over time about who to name as offensive leader, the coaching staff reached no consensus right up to the final days before the trip to Barea, Ohio.

Sears noted that one of the struggles throughout 2009 was that the Grizzlies lacked the identity that an established starter – like Chad Rupp the previous seasons – gave a team.

“The (2009) team was playing behind a strong senior-led (2008) team that was now gone,” Sears said, echoing Nick Cochran’s observation. “So we had a lot of young, inexperienced kids. We had to figure things out. We had growing pains. We grew up that year.”

“We had no ‘one’ quarterback,” he added. Indeed, they had three – Ray, Purichia and Nathan Ellis. And even though Ellis was a year behind Ray and Purichia and didn’t pose a threat to supplant the two others, he would show during the season that he was a talent not to be forgotten or overlooked.

Just days before the opening game, Leonard made the decision about the quarterback position, but it was not what Ray or Purichia had expected. Leonard told them he was going to use both quarterbacks, and that they would take turns, alternating every two offensive possessions.

“It was one of the few years that we did that,” Leonard said. “I was never sure who was our leader, our quarterback leader. It’s like a president – that’s the face of the program. We just didn’t have a face of the program.

“When a team believes in that face, it just makes everybody more confident. And we just didn’t have that confidence level, even as coaches. We knew we liked both of these guys, but boy, unless they got super-hot and competed consistently … ” His words drifted off, rendering his thought to an incompletion. 

Leonard suspected correctly that Ray and Purichia also were uneasy those last days before the opener, although both kept it to themselves. “But what they showed to their teammates,” the coach said, “at least from what I saw, was nothing but being supportive of the other guy, and that’s why I always respected both of those guys.”

What the coach said next falls into line with what pretty much everybody knows about Mike Leonard, which is that you rarely find him being negative or harshly critical about anything or anyone. He prefers to approach everything – including problems – by accentuating the positive.

He extolled the virtues of what Purichia and Ray have become today, the 2020s – Purichia as athletic director and, later, assistant principal at Monrovia High School in Morgan County, Ind., and a former coach and teacher at Beech Grove and Plainfield, both high schools in metro Indianapolis, and Ray as head football coach at Heritage Christian High School in Indianapolis, a fourth-grade teacher at Heritage Christian Academy and, as of the 2023-24 academic year, assistant principal of the academy’s elementary school.

“They’re leading youngsters as well as parents,” Leonard said. “They’re leading a lot of people. And so that’s the beauty of intercollegiate and high school athletics with adolescents. They’re going to think back on their playing days and how they were treated. I hope they look back and think that I treated them well, even when they weren’t playing, and therefore, they’ll do the same for the those under them now.”

Purichia’s recollection of those final days before the season opener parallels that of his head coach.

“I think Kyle and I had a great relationship, especially in our junior year when we were both playing,” Purichia said. “We’d ask each other if coach had said anything (about their situation). We had an open communication between Kyle and me. We were both splitting reps in practice at training camp. It was not until the night before (the Baldwin-Wallace game) did we know” what coach Leonard had decided.

(A Ray family photo shows Ray and Purichia chatting on the bench during the 2009 season opener at Baldwin-Wallace.)

Rotation quarterbacking is exactly how the Grizzlies began the 2009 opener at Baldwin-Wallace University. The game marked an important milestone in the Ray family: It was the first time Kyle would play football for a school without his father present on the field with him or watching in the stands. And because of that “first,” his mother, brother and sister – the latter now living out of state – made a point to attend.

It was a day when the Grizzlies wore their maize tops – not a frequent “look.” Today they call these “alternate” jerseys, used instead of their traditional white traveling jerseys. It would turn out to be a game that would give Kyle Ray optimism that he could ride the wave of fatherly inspiration and become the team’s offensive leader.

“I thought I could have a great year in honor of him,” Kyle said.

Ray called the signals on the first two offensive series at Baldwin-Wallace, and he got the Grizzlies touchdowns on both of those drives, seemingly snagging a huge advantage right out of the gate. (A Ray family photo at right shows him preparing to throw while a Baldwin-Wallace defender bears down on him.)

Purichia took his turn behind center with Franklin ahead 14-7. His first series of plays ended with a punt, but the Grizzlies scored in the second series to go up 21-7. Baldwin-Wallace scored quickly on a 56-yard pass play on its very next possession to narrow the deficit to 21-14.

The Yellow Jackets kicked off, and Franklin’s Isaac Davis caught the ball at Franklin’s 36 yard-line and returned it to the Baldwin-Wallace 44-yard line, ideal field possession for Ray to begin his next two offensive possessions.

But on a first-down pass play, the Yellow Jackets’ Corey Hildreth intercepted Ray’s throw and returned it to the Franklin 24 yard-line. Seven plays later, the Yellow Jackets crossed the goal line, and the score was tied at 21.

Ray came out onto the field for his second shift and led the Grizzlies 64 yards on eight plays, the final one a 13-yard TD strike to Mitch Downs, putting them ahead 28-21, which is the way the score stood at halftime.

The Yellow Jackets took the second-half kickoff and moved 73 yards on 14 plays – mostly on the ground, although a 29-yard pass completion was a huge gainer – before reaching the end zone, tying the score at 28. The drive chewed up more than 6 minutes of clock.

Ray got the nod to start the first shift of the second half for the Grizzlies. The first possession ended on a punt, but the second, which started at 4:29 in the third quarter, encompassed 12 plays and 45 yards before stalling at the Baldwin-Wallace 25-yard line as time expired in the quarter. Machy Magdalinos kicked a 43-yard field goal to open the fourth quarter, giving Franklin a 31-28 lead.

The Grizzlies got the ball back on only the second play of the Yellow Jackets’ next offensive possession when David O’Rourke intercepted an Anthony Gardner pass at the home team’s 49-yard line and returned it 4 yards to the 45-yard line.

Purichia came out for his turn behind center. In seven plays, he had the Grizzlies in the end zone on a 1-yard quarterback run. The Grizzlies led 38-28. That’s when the Franklin defense came up big, stopping the Yellow Jackets on fourth-down plays on consecutive offensive possessions in between a Franklin punt on Purichia’s second shift at QB.

Ray had no luck when he came out again, and the Grizzlies punted. The Yellow Jackets returned the kick 25 yards to the 50-yard line. Baldwin-Wallace quarterback Anthony Gardner got lucky immediately with a first-down pass for 41 yards to Terence Davis, putting the ball on the Grizzlies’ 9 yard-line. But after two short runs sandwiched around an incompletion, and the clock at just over 1:30, the Yellow Jackets decided to try for a field goal, hoping afterward to also try an onside kick to get the ball back in hopes of scoring a quick, tying touchdown.

The Yellow Jackets succeeded on the first part of the plan; Brad Pollock’s kick from 23 yards out was good, and the Yellow Jackets now trailed 38-31. But on the onside kick, the Grizzlies recovered the ball, and the offense ran out the clock to secure the opening-game victory, 38-31.

At the end of the game, head coach Mike Leonard gathered his team along the sideline and pointed to the sky – a gesture Kyle and his mother and siblings immediately recognized as a nod to Rob Ray. Leonard then announced that the game ball would go to Kyle. He said he knew Kyle had made his father proud and that Rob was smiling up in heaven.

“That was an awesome moment,” Kyle remembered, “and such an amazing start to my career. I got a plaque for that game for offensive player of the game.”

Ray said Leonard put his arm around the quarterback (see first Ray family photo below), and pointed to the grandstands where Kyle’s family was located. “My mother and brother were in tears. Just a great memory.” So was the congratulatory embrace from his mother, brother and siblings (see additional family photos below).

In Week 2, the Grizzlies had the home field in a rematch with Butler University. The Grizzlies had beaten the Bulldogs 31-28 in 2008 at Butler, a Football Championship Subdivision program, which is a Division I team but a notch below the Football Bowl Subdivision schools (like Clemson, Alabama and Ohio State). Butler was a 6-5 team in 2008, Chad Rupp’s senior season at quarterback for the Grizzlies.

2009 would prove to be a rare banner year for Bulldogs football, even without junior quarterback Matt Kobli who had given Butler Nation some hope in 2008 by leading the Pioneer Football League in total offense and the Bulldogs to their first winning season since 1997, although they lost their last four games.

Kobli – whose Whiting High School team had crossed paths with Eric Watt’s South Newton High School team in 2004 – was suspended from the Bulldogs for all of 2009 for breaking a team rule. He would return in 2010.

Stepping in to take Kobli’s place was sophomore Andrew Huck, and he had a stellar day on the Faught Stadium gridiron. Huck completed 33 of 48 passes for 316 yards and four touchdowns. He also ran the ball eight times for 45 yards, second-most on the team that day.

“Most of us on the team would say that the (2009) Butler game was the worst game in our high school and college careers,” Nick Cochran said.

Cochran also said he thinks that the 49 points Butler scored was the most by any opponent in the years he played at Franklin … until his final college game, the Grizzlies’ opening-round contest in the postseason tournament the following season. He was correct.

In the Sept. 12, 2009, game against Butler, Franklin head coach Leonard used Purichia on the first two possessions and then had Ray take over for two possessions. The “two on, two off” switch continued through the first half. Butler led at that point, 23-7, and the Bulldogs got the ball to open the second half and went 78 yards on 10 plays in scoring to take a 30-7 lead.

It would be pointless to look at the rest of the game in similar detail. Butler never allowed the Grizzlies to get close and won going away, 49-19. The Bulldogs finished 2009 with a record of 11-1 (7-1 in the Pioneer Football League) and won the postseason Gridiron Classic by beating Central Connecticut State, 28-23.

The defeat was a stunning reality check for Franklin College. The only saving grace was the fact that the Grizzlies had the next weekend off. They’d have plenty of time to both recover from the demoralizing loss and to prepare for their next foe.

On Sept. 26, newly renamed Trine University, led by a phenomenal junior quarterback, Eric Watt, who this season abandoned jersey No. 7 in lieu of his favored No. 13, would come to town for the sixth and final game of the two teams’ non-conference series.

Trine came into the 2009 season with high hopes of repeating as Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association champion. The Thunder won their first two games, both non-conference tilts, but the opener at Manchester University was an inexplicable struggle against a mediocre team that would finish the season 5-5. 

Trine fell behind early in that game, 14-0, and needed almost every minute the rest of the way to pull out a 16-14 win. The margin of victory came on a Jeremy Howard field goal in the final quarter.

In their second game, two weeks later, the Thunder rolled over another non-conference foe, HCAC member Defiance (Ohio) College, at home, 40-9. That rout gave pollsters enough confidence to reward Trine with a national ranking of 22 among NCAA Division III teams on the Monday before the school’s next game at Franklin.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Foototes: 

1 - Sears said that the play-calling assignment lasted only a few weeks into the season before head coach Leonard retook that task.

Tomorrow in Chapter 12:  Sept. 26, 2009

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 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 10Waiting their turns

A few games into his freshman season in 2007, quarterback Eric Watt had already taken over the job of directing the Tri-State football team’s offense in Angola, Ind.

That same year, Nick Purichia and Kyle Ray arrived at Franklin College, where the Grizzlies played their home games at Stewart “Red” Faught Stadium (shown below in a 2009 Joe Konz photo) under the guidance of head coach Mike Leonard.

Leonard had played quarterback at Hanover College in southern Indiana, where he graduated in 1984 with a double major in business administration and physical education. He served two coaching stints as offensive coordinator at Hanover in the years thereafter. In fact, he came to Franklin College to be head coach in 2003 after his second stint (1999-’02) at Hanover, and in four seasons at Franklin, he’d compiled a record of 21-19, including an impressive 9-1 mark the previous year, 2006.

Leonard started his coaching career in 1984, right out of Hanover, as a graduate assistant at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind. In 1986, he served as a graduate assistant at the University of Alabama.

Then came the first stint as offensive coordinator at Hanover, then a year coaching wide receivers at Holy Cross College, and a year coaching quarterbacks at Butler University in Indianapolis before taking the first of two stints in the 1990s as offensive coordinator for the highly successful Seagulls¹, an American football team in the X-League, the top-level of gridiron football competition in Japan. After two years as offensive coordinator for Wittenberg University, Leonard returned to the Seagulls for a year in 1998. Then came his second stint at Hanover.

One thing about Mike Leonard has been constant: He has been beloved by players and coaches alike throughout his coaching career, which lasted through the 2019 season, when he stepped down from the Franklin job. In a July 2014 interview with the Johnson County Daily Journal, he said coaching isn’t about him.

“It’s about team,” he said. “Some people have egos that can’t fit through that door frame. I sure hope people don’t think I have one. We host football camps here in the summer, and as I watch some of these assistant high school coaches teach their players, there are guys out there that are 24 years old that know more football than I do right now.

“I think my strength is trying to rally everyone together for a common cause and get them going in the same direction.” 

Nick Purichia and Kyle Ray had been among the top Indianapolis area high school quarterbacks in 2006. Both had been among that area’s top five in total passing yardage – for all classes of competition – at the end of the 2006 regular season. Ray and Eric Watt also had been among the top quarterbacks – at least in total passing yards per game – in the whole state of Indiana.

And Nick’s high school team, Indianapolis Cardinal Ritter, had made it to the 2006 state high school championship game before losing to Sheridan in overtime.

The problem for Purichia and Ray at Franklin College, though, was that the Grizzlies had a top-notch quarterback, Chad Rupp, who was in his junior year – and second season as starter. (2008 photo of Rupp above is by Ralph Greenslade.)

In the second game of Rupp’s sophomore season, 2006, he had entered the game against intrastate rival and No. 22-ranked Wabash College in the second quarter, relieving Ty Fritz.

Rupp stayed in the game the rest of the way and led the Grizzlies to a stunning 45-38 overtime upset of the Little Giants. He completed 20 of 24 passes for 238 yards and four touchdowns, including the decisive one in the extra session. That performance earned him the job as starting quarterback the rest of the season. And, as it turned out, for the rest of his college career.

Only a year before that dramatic debut, things at Franklin were not as peachy for Rupp. He had starred at Evansville (Ind.) Memorial High School, and like many athletes confident about their skills when moving up to the next level, Rupp expected to do the same after he arrived at Franklin College in 2005.

But Rupp struggled in freshman-year practices and barely got into any games that first year. In a September 2008 interview for an article by Johnson County Daily Journal Sports Editor Rick Morwick, Rupp disclosed that he had contemplated leaving Franklin after his freshman season to enroll in a larger school, give up football altogether and focus on getting an academic degree. It was a refrain that would ring familiar at the campus in just two years.

Franklin College head coach Mike Leonard (shown at left in a 2010 Ralph Greenslade photo) said it wasn’t that the coaching staff did not feel Rupp had sufficient talent that 2005 season. Quite the opposite: “He really was good as a freshman,” Leonard told the Daily Journal’s Morwick, “but he just was behind some upperclassmen, and he was frustrated.”

Rupp did remain at Franklin, and coach Leonard credited the player’s father, Pete, with encouraging his son to stay with the Grizzlies.

Rupp led the Grizzlies to a 9-1 record in 2006 and followed that with consecutive Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference championships his junior and senior years, and each of those seasons was followed by trips to the NCAA Division III postseason tournament. The Grizzlies made it to the quarterfinals in 2008, the program’s historical apex in postseason play, beating teams ranked higher than them in the first two rounds. In the third round, the Grizzlies bowed out, losing to Wheaton College, a lower seed.

Rupp finished his Franklin College career holding or equaling several Franklin career, single-season and single-game passing records. His 576 yards of total offense, 527 passing yards and 41 pass completions – all against Otterbein in 2008 in the first round of the NCAA Division III postseason tournament – stand as school records today. There are quite a few others.

Purichia and Ray recognized Rupp’s greatness immediately and accepted that they would have to spend two years as backups, setting their sights on a fair shot to take over the starter’s job in their junior years, 2009, when Rupp would be gone.

Three games into the 2007 season, head coach Leonard gathered the team’s top four quarterbacks – junior Rupp, sophomore Coty Bragdon and freshmen Ray and Purichia – to talk about how he could get each of them more playing opportunities.

“We were all pretty similar,” Bragdon said. “Chad had the upper hand (having started the bulk of the 2006 season) and had more playing time. But everyone in the group knew the playbook well. We all got along and helped each other. We were a jovial bunch.”

Bragdon, who had quarterbacked his team at Eastern Hancock High School east of Indianapolis, recognized the situation that Leonard had discussed with the quarterbacks, so he went to coach Leonard and offered to join the team’s receiving corps, thinking that doing so might also get him more playing time.

“I knew the plays and the pass routes, so I thought it was a good way” to help solve the quarterback logjam, Bragdon said. Leonard accepted the offer and assigned Bragdon to practice with the team’s receivers, and that’s the position Bragdon would play – along with assignments on some special teams – most of the rest of his time at Franklin College.

An interesting exception came in the Grizzlies’ win over Rose-Hulman on Nov. 1, 2008, when on the Grizzlies’ second play of their first possession, Bragdon threw and completed a 36-yard pass – to none other than the team’s starting quarterback, Chad Rupp.

Bragdon said the unusual play had been devised and practiced the week leading up to the game. On second-and-3 from the Grizzlies’ own 22-yard line, Bragdon lined up as a receiver and got the ball on a pitch from Rupp on a jet sweep. Just as Bragdon reached the tackle spot on his run, he stopped, saw Rupp open and threw to the quarterback, who caught the pass.

“It almost worked to perfection,” Bragdon said with a chuckle. “I thought he was going to break it, but (he) ended up being tripped up” by a Rose-Hulman defender. Nevertheless, the play did pick up a lot of yardage, taking Franklin to the Rose-Human 42-yard line. Alas, the drive would end fruitless several plays later when the Grizzlies gambled and kept the offense on the field for a fourth-and-10 play, and Rupp’s pass was intercepted. But that proved to be just a momentary setback; the Grizzlies won the game, 42-7.

Ray said that throughout 2008, coach Leonard would try to assess whether Ray or Purichia might stand out as the preferred No. 2 quarterback (or the primary backup).

In practices, he said, “Coach Leonard would say, ‘OK, let’s see who’s going to be the backup’.” Leonard would then challenge Ray and Purichia to lead five plays each to see how each would fare.

“I completed five passes,” Ray said, “and when it was Nick’s turn, he had one pass knocked down, and threw another one incomplete. So I won that. Nick was quicker than me, and he could change direction better than me. But I think I was more accurate and made better decisions.”

2008 was also the year Ray and Bragdon decided to room together in Johnson-Dietz Hall (shown at right in a 2009 Joe Konz photo), the suite-style dormitory on campus that was built to replace 76-year-old Bryan Hall, which was destroyed in a fire in March 1985. They would remain roommates until Bragdon graduated in January 2010.

Bragdon noted that even though he and Kyle didn’t really know each other before meeting at Franklin, they had crossed paths. For years, Eastern Hancock and Indian Creek had each other on their annual high school football schedules as non-conference opponents. That included 2004, when Bragdon was a senior and Kyle Ray a sophomore, the only season both played on their varsity teams at the same time.

If that one game in 2004 (which Indian Creek won, 21-7) wasn’t enough for Bragdon to remember the Ray surname at Franklin College, two other things should have helped.

Kyle’s older brother, Justin, was in the same high school graduating class year (2005) as Bragdon, so Justin and Coty would have been on the field opposite each other in the annual Eastern Hancock-Indian Creek meetings as much as three times in their high school careers.

More likely, however, was that after he had graduated Eastern Hancock and began attending Franklin College, Coty would attend some of his younger brother Brett’s high school games. And in the Royals’ 2005 game at Trafalgar, Bragdon said, he distinctly remembers the Indian Creek public address announcer on several occasions touting “another big play by Kyle Ray,” who then was playing on defense for the Braves.

Bragdon said that announcer’s phrase returned to mind a few years later at Franklin College, when he eventually went to add Kyle’s phone number to his list of cell phone contacts. He used the moniker “Big Play Kyle Ray” for his teammate’s ID on his phone.  

Despite the “backup quarterback competitions” in Franklin College practices in 2008, Purichia and Ray saw limited action on the field that season, and even less the year before, although a look at final Franklin College statistics for those 2007 and 2008 seasons indicates that Purichia got slightly more opportunity on the field.

Purichia or Ray got into games when the Grizzlies had sizable leads and coach Leonard elected to bring Rupp to the sidelines. But it wasn’t enough to give either player any sustained experience.

It also didn’t give any of the coaches enough information to feel confident about one or the other as a starter after Rupp graduated and left campus. Purichia is No. 13 in Ralph Greenslade’s 2008 photo, celebrating with Bragdon (14) after the final score on a two-yard run in the aforementioned Rose-Hulman game.

So in 2009, the question of who would fill Rupp’s shoes loomed large when the football team assembled for preseason training camp. Sportswriters today might hype the situation as a “quarterback controversy” to generate interest and attention, but neither Ray nor Purichia – and certainly not coach Leonard – used such a term when discussing the situation.

But 2009 summer camp might have come too soon for Ray, who with his mother and siblings had suffered a huge personal loss at home just two months earlier: the death of Kyle’s father, Rob Ray. College roommate Bragdon felt that Kyle’s grief was partly responsible for what he said he observed of his friend’s play, not just at summer camp but through most of the 2009 season.

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

In late 2004, according to Karen Ray, her husband, Rob, started experiencing some discomfort. Early the following year, he caught and struggled with a cold, and soon after that, he came down with what appeared to be a case of bronchitis, which she said he had caught from oldest son Justin. Soon after that, Rob battled other health issues such as shoulder discomfort and inexplicable weight loss.

Rob finally visited his doctor in February 2005, and in March he consulted a gastroenterologist. Tests were done, including a colonoscopy, and initial results showed nothing of significance, Karen said. So doctors did a CAT scan and ultrasound, and the latter detected a mass on Rob’s liver.

The Ray family and some friends – including Kolby Harrell – went to Destin, Fla., to enjoy some R&R that same month. In the few days that Rob and Karen stayed in Florida on that trip, Kolby recalled, Rob mentioned more than once that he was experiencing some unusual pain.

The Ray family photo above was used in a Christmas card and bore the greeting, “From our team to yours. Merry Christmas!” From left, Karen, Justin, Leslie, Kyle and Rob.

Rob and Karen flew back to Indiana early so Rob could undergo a biopsy, a procedure that was supposed to be handled on an outpatient basis. But complications required that he be admitted, a stay that lasted several days, Karen said.

The results of the biopsy were not available when Rob finally was released, but he hadn’t been home very long when, while driving to have breakfast at a restaurant one morning, he got a call with the biopsy results. It turned out that the mass was verified as a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer, Karen said.

“Rob was very active. He didn’t drink alcohol,” Karen said. “There was a tiny spot on his pancreas that had moved to the liver.” It was a type of cancer that was “so random.”

The Rays consulted an oncologist, who had Rob try chemotherapy and different treatments, including a drug therapy trial.

After a difficult first few months of 2005, Rob had lost a noticeable amount of weight, but he was feeling better by the time son Justin graduated high school that spring. He was able to work the next couple of tax seasons, Karen said. Their oncologist told them that he’d had a patient with a situation similar to Rob’s, “and he got six (more) years,” she said. “We got four.”

During those four years, Rob never quibbled or complained, Karen said. He continued to work and join Karen in attending Justin and Kyle’s games at Indian Creek High School the rest of 2005 and ’06, and then Kyle’s games at Franklin College in 2007 and ’08.

Leslie Ray said her parents would consult her periodically during that difficult period because Leslie had obtained a doctorate in pharmacy from Purdue University in 2007, after which she went through additional pharmacist training and medical residencies in Florida and Chicago. Her knowledge of pharmaceuticals gave the Rays a resource for information and topics to raise in conversations with Rob’s doctors and specialists.

In early 2009, the cancer took firm control, and treatments were no longer working. Rob battled it to the end, which came the morning of June 8, 2009 – 2½ months before Kyle’s junior year began at Franklin College. Rob died at Community Hospital South in Indianapolis.

The death affected the whole Ray family, of course, but Kyle took it particularly hard; Rob had been Kyle’s idol and emotional rock.

“Rob had always been there for Kyle,” Karen said. “Kyle loved the quarterback position, and wanted to be like his dad.”

“My dad was a man of faith,” Kyle said, and in his father’s last days, “he had every reason to play victim, and never did. He died taking everything in spirit. He never was defeated. The day before he died, we were all in his (hospital) room praying for a miracle. But he was ready to accept what was ahead of him.”

Claire Freeman, whom Kyle was dating at this time, remembers Rob Ray like so many others did – a kind, loving and caring family man who had a hardy, infectious laugh.

“I absolutely loved him,” she said. “He and I had a wonderful relationship. I often joked that he loved me more than he loved Kyle. He was full of life, a man of God and a family guy. He loved his nieces and nephews so much. I often wonder how he would have been so in love with his grandkids. He was just an awesome, awesome guy.”  

In the weeks after Rob’s death, Kyle told himself he’d use his father’s inspirational journey to help carry him past any troubles and challenges that lie ahead.

Unfortunately, Kyle’s ride for the next nine months or so would be bumpy, dispiriting and weighted with adversity. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes: 

1 - As of 2022, the Seagulls have won at least 17 championships since the team was founded in 1983. Today, the Seagulls are based in the city of Narashino, just across Tokyo Bay from the city of Tokyo. The X-League was founded in 1971 as the Japan American Football League and changed its name to the X-League in 1997, the year before Leonard’s last stint (for one season) with the Seagulls.

Tomorrow in Chapter 11:  No Easy Decision

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 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 9Farewell, Levi ... and welcome, Pup!

In the 2000s, Levi Knach played quarterback for Columbia City (Ind.) High School and, after that, played the same position for another season and a half at Tri-State University in Angola, Ind.

But Knach (pronounced kuh-NAHK) might be better known – perhaps even best known – as the Indiana Department of Natural Resources conservation officer whose adoring picture of him with his K-9 dog, Kenobi, went viral on social media in 2017. (One of the photos, courtesy of the Indiana DNR and used here with the agency's perrmission, appears at right.)

Those photos of Knach and Kenobi, a black Labrador, can warm the hearts of most animal lovers.

A good decade before he and Kenobi endeared themselves to the world, Knach was the primary signal-caller for the Tri-State University football team in 2006, his freshman year of college.

His career at Columbia City High School had been admirable. In his senior year, 2005, his passing yardage per game (218.4) ranked ninth in the state among the top 10 quarterbacks in all school classifications and was third-best among Class 4A schools.

Also on that list were senior Matt Rogers of Indian Creek High School (sixth at all class levels with 229.8, which was tops in 2A) and junior Eric Watt of South Newton (second in the state at all class levels with 251.2, which was tops in Class A), according to statistics compiled by the Indiana High School Athletic Association. But Knach also was among the highest on the top ten list in interceptions yielded with 15; Rogers had six and Watt nine. The only QBs with more interceptions than Knach on the list were Knox’s Dusty Manns (2A) with 19 and Spud Dick of Lawrence Central (5A) with 16.

Knach recalls working hard to get himself into top physical shape before that first year of college in 2006 because he aspired to be the starting quarterback for the Thunder. Knach was joining the team at the same time as newly hired head coach Matt Land. Land came to Tri-State after four seasons as head football coach at Fort Wayne South Side High School (2002-05) and a season coaching the Fort Wayne Freedom of the United Indoor Football League (2005).

Knach’s physical training efforts in advance of his debut at Tri-State didn’t hurt; he indeed got the job as starting quarterback in 2006. Unfortunately, Tri-State won only two games that year – a 21-7 decision over Olivet College and a 38-37 squeaker over Wisconsin Lutheran. The Thunder finished with a win-loss record of 2-8. The most optimistic of Thunder fans would suggest that 2-8 was a marked improvement over the 2005 season, when Tri-State had gone 0-10.

As for Knach’s stats for 2006 ... he completed 48.6% of his passes (85 of 175 for 1,084 yards, or an average of 108.4 per game), his passing efficiency rating was 109.92 – which ranks about in the middle of all Tri-State/Trine quarterbacks from 2001 through 2021 – and he had 11 touchdown passes, a number almost fully offset by the 10 interceptions he gave up.

Still, he felt that because he had started at quarterback the entire 2006 season, he had a lock on the job in 2007. He said he was so confident about returning as starter that he did not prepare and train during the offseason nearly as much or as hard as he had the previous offseason.

At the 2007 preseason camp, Knach got a dose of reality when he saw the considerable skill and talent of freshman Eric Watt – the same Eric Watt who had appeared on the statewide Indiana high school passing yardage stats sheet with Knach near the end of the 2005 season.

Unlike Knach, Eric Watt worked extremely hard in 2007 to stay in optimum physical shape before arriving at Tri-State for camp, just as he had for the past several summers when he was at South Newton High School. Year-round training had become part of Eric’s regimen. Watt made an immediate impression on the team’s quarterbacks coach, then 64-year-old Dan Simrell, affectionately referred to as “The Godfather” by Thunder players and coaches because of his considerable experience in the profession.

Simrell, shown at left in a Trine University photo used here with the school's permission, had played quarterback at Toledo University in the 1960s and returned to his college alma mater as head coach from 1982-89.

He also served as head coach at Division II University of Findlay (Ohio) and had worked as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at the University of West Virginia.

In 2007, after spending several seasons as head coach of the Bologna Warriors in the Italian Football League, he returned to the United States. 

Simrell and his wife lived in a home along Lake James not far from the Tri-State campus. He still had an itch to coach, so he met with Tri-State football staff to discuss coaching the team’s quarterbacks. He said he would do it as long as he was not required to be involved in recruiting. They agreed.

Simrell recognized Watt’s potential immediately in that 2007 preseason camp. “My first impression was that he was a tall, skinny lad with excellent ability. He was good – really good.”

An important bonding moment for Simrell and Watt came early on when Eric told Simrell that he had made an official recruiting visit to Toledo, Simrell’s alma mater and a school where Simrell also had coached for several years.

In Tri-State’s opening game at Manchester University that season, Knach threw for one touchdown, but he also had three passes intercepted as the Thunder struggled to a 14-9 victory. 

The game marked the debut of freshman wide receiver Paul Curtis, and one of the scores in the win was his first collegiate touchdown reception. Curtis remembers the play well:

“It was a curl route. I was one on one with the corner, and I broke his tackle and ran the distance.”

That same 27-yard reception also would be notable as the last touchdown pass Levi Knach threw in his college career.

The Thunder struggled yet again the following week at home against Defiance College and were trailing 13-3 with 5:40 left in the fourth quarter.

That’s when Simrell said he turned to head coach Matt Land and asked, “Why don’t you put the pup in (the game)?” 

Up to that point, in conversations with Tri-State coaches, Simrell had frequently referred to freshman Eric Watt as “the pup.” Land agreed with the suggestion and sent “the pup” into the game. “We knew we had to do something quick, and he (Eric) was the better passer” between him and Knach, Land said.

What happened next gave Knach reason to fear for his job security.

On their first offensive possession with Watt behind center, the Thunder started from their own 38-yard line. Watt threw two incomplete passes, the second the result of a dropped ball by Sam Hartman. 

On third down, he threw again to Hartman, who caught the ball this time, but gained only 7 yards, presenting a fourth-and-3 situation. Tri-State called time out to devise a play to ensure it would get a first down; at 10 points down this late in the game, the Thunder were not going to punt.

On the fourth-down play, Watt ran for 15 yards, earning what would have been a first down, but the Thunder were penalized 5 yards for a motion violation. With the ball now at the Tri-State 40-yard line and the Thunder needing 8 yards to earn a new set of downs, Watt threw incomplete, but this time, Defiance was called for pass interference, which gave the offense an automatic first down, and the ball was placed at the Defiance 45 yard-line.

On a second-and-12 play from the Defiance 47, the Thunder gained 5 yards on a Watt pass to Curtis, and on third-and-7, Watt threw 8 yards to Hartman, giving the Thunder another first down and the ball at the 19-yard line.

A first-down pass to Curtis for 18 yards put the ball on the 1-yard line with another first down, and after a 5-yard delay of game penalty, Watt threw again to Curtis, this time in the end zone for a touchdown, concluding an eight-play 62-yard drive in just 3 minutes and 10 seconds. After the extra-point kick, Tri-State had reduced the deficit to 13-10.

The Thunder successfully executed an onside kick on the ensuing kick-off, regaining possession at their own 40-yard line, and their offense returned to the field with Watt again at quarterback.

Thunder football teams regularly practice two-minute drill plays – including onside kicks – during the season, said coach Land, shown at left in a Trine University photo used here with the school's permission. “We work on that exact situation twice a week,” he added.

Tri-State went backward 7 yards on a first-down sack, and two Watt incompletions followed. On fourth-and-17, a cool and composed Watt connected with Hartman for 26 yards, moving the ball to the Defiance 14-yard line. After a 4-yard pickup on a pass to Luke Hickok, Watt threw high toward Adam Kurtz, who was running a fade pattern into the corner of the end zone.

Watt had used the fade pattern often at South Newton High School, most notably on the oft-used “Welsh Special,” so he had the mechanics down pat. The pass was on target, and Kurtz hauled it in for the score. After the extra-point kick, Tri-State led 17-13.

Coach Land’s recap of that last few minutes of the game captured the essence of the stunning turn of events:

After entering the game, Land said, Watt “went bang, bang touchdown, we got an onside kick, and bang, bang, bang touchdown. We had a minute left on the clock, and we had to defend them (from scoring again, and did). Pretty poetic beginning to an unbelievable career.”

Thunder interior linebacker Courtney Pearson intercepted a pass that ended Defiance’s next possession, after which Tri-State ran out the clock when its offense took over possession. The Thunder were now 2-0 to start a season for the first time since 1998.

Eric’s performance rallying the Thunder to victory is the game that first popped to mind when Ron Watt was asked if there were any game in his son’s career that stood out for him. 

Levi Knach had seen Watt’s potential during the preseason, and he had watched “the pup” demonstrate to everybody – teammates, coaches and fans in the stands – what he could do when a game was on the line.

“After that game, I went through a mental thing,” Knach said. “I’d been a starter all my years in high school and my freshman year in college. But then I got complacent. Eric Watt was better than me, for sure.”

Knach’s concerns were confirmed during the next week of practice, when coaches had Watt handle quarterback duties with the first team during drills.

The change resulted in Knach going through a new pre-game “routine” beginning the following weekend when the team traveled south to play Franklin College in another non-conference game. Throughout his high school years and the 2006 season with Tri-State, Knach said, he would get butterflies just before kickoff. But not on Sept. 22, 2007, at Faught Stadium in Franklin, where the Thunder would play the 1-1 Grizzlies, who had lost a close one at Wabash College, 35-33, the previous weekend.

In the Franklin motel room the night before the game, Knach remembers eating dinner with Watt and fullback Mikael Glidden. “I had zero nerves,” Knach said. “Eric had a credit card (to pay for meals); I had no money, and I stuffed myself on pizza and everything.”

When Knach’s account of the Franklin game eve was shared with Watt, Eric chuckled lightly. After a pause, his only response was that he thinks the credit card was his mother’s, not his.

Everyone else on the team, Watt included, always made a point to eat moderately the night before and the morning of a game so they aren’t bloated or sluggish – or experience digestive discomfort – when they had to exert themselves on the field of play. Clearly, Knach’s actions that night – and the following morning – fit the definition of self-destruction.

The next morning, while his teammates ate modest breakfasts, Knach filled up on biscuits and gravy.

Weather conditions on game day, Knach said, were the hottest and most humid he had ever experienced. Knach’s memory isn’t too far off; a check of historical weather records for Franklin, Ind., shows the high temperature there that day was 82 degrees. Knach said that at kickoff time, he felt glad that he was not going to have to play in those conditions.

Watt did start at quarterback at Franklin, but Knach’s plan to take the day off along the sideline backfired late in the second quarter. On a broken pass play, Watt scrambled out of the pocket and started running down the sideline. As a Franklin defender made the tackle, he spun Watt awkwardly, and Tri-State's freshman quarterback felt something wrong in his left knee.

“It hurt enough that I had to leave the field in a limp,” Watt recalled. “I was scared; I didn’t know what was going on” with the injury, he said. He went into the locker room, where he stayed the rest of the contest. Tests later showed that he had sprained the knee’s medial collateral ligament.

Head coach Land sent Knach into the game for Watt, although it made little difference in the outcome. 

Grizzlies’ quarterback Chad Rupp (pictured at left in a Ralph Greenslade photo) threw four touchdown passes in the game – including three in the first quarter – and ran for another TD, leading Franklin to a 38-14 victory. In fact, the home team scored all of its points in six of its first seven possessions, so Franklin had the game well in hand by the time Knach entered the contest.

Watt was unable to play the following week, so Knach started and played the whole game at Alma in the Thunder’s first Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association game on the 2007 schedule. The Thunder led 10-7 at halftime, but they turned the ball over four times in the second half, and Alma capitalized on enough of them to win easily, 28-10.

It was after the frustration against Alma that Knach decided he’d had enough of football. He knew he didn’t put in the effort to get into proper shape for the season, and given what had happened in the past few games, he felt – to use his expression – “burned out.” And, he knew that Eric Watt was the Tri-State quarterback, not just of the future, but of right now, and that as soon as Watt were healthy, Knach would be a sideline regular.

Knach didn’t want to be a backup, not even for Eric Watt.

In a meeting with the head coach and other coaches that week, Knach told them he was burned out and wanted to leave the team. Knach said head coach Land told him in no uncertain terms that Knach was not going to quit, no doubt at least in part because of the uncertainty of Watt’s immediate return. So Knach left the office and went off to stew a bit longer.

As it turned out, Watt was healthy for the next game, a home contest against Kalamazoo, and he led the Thunder to victory, 17-14. In the days after that win, Knach went back to talk to the coaches. This time, he didn’t say he wanted to leave. He told them he was going to leave.

“I told them I was still burned out, and I was ready to check out,” Knach said. “They said ‘Yeah, we can tell.’ It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I love football. The coaches were awesome about it.”

Matt Land had no quarrel with Knach’s version of what happened in the player’s sophomore season. “Levi was a great leader, person and player. I liked Levi,” Land said, adding that Knach’s story is an example of “how people win or lose in sports.” 

Knach did leave the team right then and there. He finished his classes that semester at Tri-State, then took night classes at the school’s campus in Fort Wayne for the second semester before dropping out of college altogether. In the not-too-distant future, he applied for and got the conservation officer job with the state of Indiana's Department of Natural Resources, a job he still holds today, serving out of the Angola office. In 10 years, he would enjoy adoring social media notoriety from his relationship with Kenobi, the black Labrador.

After another home win over Adrian the following week, the Thunder’s record was 4-2. Then they went on the road and dropped games to Olivet and Hope, but they were competitive in each contest. They concluded their schedule with home wins over Wisconsin Lutheran and Albion, which ranked second-last and third-last, respectively, in the conference standings.

Tri-State finished 2007 with a 6-4 record, a dramatic improvement over the Thunder’s final records in each of the previous four seasons – 2-8 in 2006, 0-10 in 2005, 2-8 in 2004, and 0-9-1 in 2003. The most recent winning season, 6-3 in 2002, now seemed like eons ago. And 2007 was the first time Trine had won all of its home games since 2001.

Junior linebacker Courtney Pearson set a school record with his 148 total tackles during the season. His 80 solo tackles were second in the nation in NCAA Division III. He also had seven pass breakups, four sacks, three interceptions (including the key one against Defiance) and two fumble recoveries. Coaches in the MIAA voted him a share (with Olivet defensive back Marc Miller) of the MIAA’s Most Valuable Defensive Player award, and he was named to the MIAA’s defensive first team.

Interestingly, Eric Watt made no direct reference to Levi Knach, his fellow quarterback, when reviewing his freshman year at Tri-State in interviews for this story. He simply said he got into the second game of the season in the fourth quarter when the team was behind 14-0 (it actually was 14-3), “and we came back to win.”

Eric was a man of so little words … “a leader by what he did,” said quarterbacks coach Dan Simrell. “He didn’t say two words.”

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

The 2008 season – Eric’s sophomore year – was notable for several things. For one, it was the first academic year that the institution long known as Tri-State University would operate under a new name, Trine University, whose nicely landscaped north entrance is shown below in a Joe Konz photo from 2015.

For more than 120 years, the school had been Tri-State – first Tri-State Normal College, then Tri-State College and, finally, Tri-State University. The “Tri-State” moniker recognized how the institution drew the vast majority of its students from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan because of its location in northeast Indiana, near the Hoosier state’s borders with the two other states.

Hoping to market itself to students from beyond just the tri-state area, school officials chose the surname of a Tri-State alumnus, Ralph Trine, and his wife, Sheri, both university benefactors and trustees, philanthropists and owners of Vestil Manufacturing Inc. in Angola.

In addition to the new name, Trine also was changing its school colors, which long had been royal blue, red and white. Beginning with the 2008 season, they were navy blue and gold.

Thirdly, in 2008 the football field’s new artificial turf was ready to see its first game action. Thunder defensive back Andrew Pickford said that in the one year he had played on Tri-State’s grass field, the turf had been the best he’d ever played on. But he said he’d always preferred artificial turf, so he had no objection to the change.

Teammate Eric Watt said he’d never played on a high school football field that had anything but grass turf. The South Newton High School Rebels’ 2004 game against Tri-County was played on artificial turf, but that was at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, not at a school. Watt agreed that the Trine grass playing field in 2007 was very good.

And finally, 2008 was the start of a memorable three-year run of success in Trine football history, one in which the Thunder would go undefeated in two regular seasons, and almost – by a single point – make it through a third regular season unbeaten. They would go undefeated while winning three consecutive MIAA championships, too, and they would qualify to play in the NCAA Division III postseason tournament in each of those three seasons.

Eric Watt had established himself as the starting quarterback after his impressive freshman year behind center. The Thunder started the 2008 season, however, without receiver Paul Curtis for the first four games, the minimum time doctors told him he would need to heal a broken right hand.

Watt was asked whether Trine used any kind of gestures or hand signals akin to “the look” that Ben Welsh said was used at South Newton High School.

“The hand signals Trine used were a bit more structured,” Watt said. “We had a handful of audibles/checks depending on how the defense lined up. My favorite play call was with Paul, and he was basically one on one on an island. We could change to three different routes: hairpin out, fade, or a post. It was our bread and butter.

“A lot of the other checks were with our quick three-step passing game, and I could change the route combo on either side of the field. We did have a similar play to ‘black,’ but it was only out of one formation and one play to either JaVontae (Hence) or Mario (Brown), which hit big (for large gains) a couple times.”

Trine got past its first two 2008 opponents, both non-conference foes, with relative ease. Manchester fell, 41-13, and so did Defiance, 42-14. Two more non-conference games remained on the schedule, and one of them was up next. It was part of the annual home-and-home series with Franklin College. It would be played at Shive Field in Angola, and it coincided with the host school’s annual homecoming observance.

Franklin came into the game ranked 14^th in small-college polls and had won the first four games in the schools’ annual series that had started in 2004.

In the 2008 contest, even though the Grizzlies kept turning the ball over and giving Trine short fields to work with – Trine scored five times on drives of 39 yards or less – Franklin was still in the game in the fourth quarter.

Trine took an early 10-0 lead on an 8-yard Watt pass to tight end Troy Hirschy and a 23-yard field goal by Jeremy Howard, both coming after the home team recovered fumbles by the Grizzlies. Franklin rallied with 20 unanswered points, getting two of three touchdowns after cashing in on a fumble recovery and an interception of its own. Trine squeezed in another score just before halftime on a 2-yard touchdown run by Mikael Glidden. The extra-point kick failed, so Franklin led at the midway point, 20-16.

Franklin grabbed a 27-23 lead early in the fourth quarter on a 6-yard pass from senior quarterback Chad Rupp to Logan Deffner. The Trine offense stalled on its next possession, but it didn’t take long for the Thunder to get the ball back. 

Still deep in his team’s own territory on Franklin’s next offensive possession, Rupp threw to Tony Gregory on the right side, but Thunder defensive back Aaron Shoemaker wrestled the ball from Gregory for an interception. The Trine offense took possession with yet another short field; the ball was on the Franklin 35-yard line with 8 minutes and 40 seconds left in the game.

On the first offensive play of the possession, Watt connected with Scott Hartman on a 34-yard pass play, putting the Thunder within one yard of another score.

On the next play, freshman receiver Mario Brown lined up split left then went into motion to his right as Watt called out the signals. On the center snap, Watt pitched the ball to Brown, now on Watt’s right, and Brown hurdled players from both teams and landed in the front right corner of the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.

There was plenty of time left for Franklin to respond, but Trine’s defense stiffened on both of their opponent’s final two possession. And when Trine’s offense got the ball after the second of those possessions, Watt put his feet in motion to ensure the Thunder offense would hold onto the ball – and to shave time off the clock. Key to accomplishing both objectives was a Watt run for 15 yards to the Franklin 49-yard line on a third-and-13 play with just over 2 minutes remaining.

Trine prevailed, 30-27, notching its first victory in the Trine-Franklin series. It also was the school’s first win over a ranked opponent as an NCAA Division III member, which it had become in 2004.

Watt and running back Jeff Langley led their team in rushing with 59 and 50 yards, respectively; Watt got his on 17 carries, Langley on 15.

Coach Land said the Thunder regarded the win over Franklin as huge.

“That was a big game for us. We had it circled. Coach Leonard and I are really good friends. He’s a great coach, a great man. We have a great relationship and always have. But they were one of the teams in the Midwest that had it going, right? So that would have been a big signature win, and it said, ‘We belong.’ And we celebrated every win. Wins in football – you only get 10 (games) a year, you know, that you’re guaranteed, so you celebrate every win as much as you can because they’re hard to get. It’s hard to win a game, and when you do, you should enjoy it.”

The Grizzlies’ Nick Cochran said he felt that Franklin’s 2008 team was better than Trine’s, even though the Thunder prevailed.

“We had five turnovers in that game, and we lost two starters to injury early in the first half,” Cochran said, referring to linebacker Teddy Henkle and wide receiver Austin Garrell. “Everything that could go wrong for us that day, did go wrong.”

A week later, the 3-0 Thunder survived a scare at winless Hope in a see-saw scoring affair that saw a rarity – an opposing quarterback who outperformed Eric Watt in the passing game. Hope’s Jake Manning completed 32 out of 49 passes for 497 yards and four touchdowns. Hope wide receiver Kyle Dietrich had 14 receptions for 285 yards, and teammate Scott Snyder had 11 receptions for 164 yards.

Watt’s numbers weren’t too shabby, though. He threw 34 times and completed 19 for 321 yards and a touchdown. What the Thunder did better than Hope was run the ball. Their ball carriers had 135 net yards on 42 carries, although top rusher Jeff Langley gained only 59 yards on 16 carries. Watt himself gained 39 yards on 11 carries.

The outcome came down to a key Trine special teams play: a blocked extra-point kick attempt by defensive lineman Christian Verley after Hope’s second-quarter touchdown. It certainly made the difference in the final score, 31-30. Teammate Andrew Pickford said Verley was skilled at blocking kicks and credited him for blocking a good number of them in his years at Trine. Indeed, Verley holds the Trine career record for most blocked kicks with 11. The closest to him is Me’Leick Miles (2014-17) with seven.

The Thunder came home for consecutive conference wins, 45-20 over Alma and 21-10 over Olivet, improving their season record to 6-0 (3-0). Paul Curtis attempted to return to play in the Alma game, wearing a splint that he said he found to be too restrictive. He didn’t play much, and he would sit out the game against Olivet, a game in which Watt’s 79-yard touchdown pass to Lemar Qualls set a record for the longest pass completion in program history (a record equaled or bettered five times since.) 

After beating Olivet, Trine got another scare at 2-5 Kalamazoo, returning to Angola with a 36-35 win.

Like Hope three weeks earlier, Kalamazoo attacked Trine with a heavy passing game, amassing 432 yards in the air. But quarterback Brandon Luczek, who threw 57 times and completed 32 and had four touchdown passes, also gave up five interceptions. Luczek turned out to be the Hornets’ leading rusher as well – 53 net yards on 13 carries. Receivers Jimmy Semelsberger and Cory McCain each had 151 total reception yards.

Watt threw three touchdown passes and his total passing yardage of 278 was pretty decent, but the Thunder had a balanced offensive attack again. They gained 197 net yards rushing, led by Jeff Langley’s 51 net yards on 13 carries followed by Watt’s 49 yards on nine carries. In his return to action, Curtis caught four passes for 80 yards.

This time, the victory came down to the last touchdown of the game, a 6-yard pass from Watt to tight end Troy Hirschy, bringing the Thunder to within one at 35-34. Instead of settling for a 35-35 tie by going for the single-point conversion kick, the Thunder gambled on a two-point conversion. Watt connected with Thomas Wyman for the score, and it made the difference – with just 1:23 left on the clock.

Up next was a trip to Adrian (Mich.) College in a game that would pit undefeated teams against each other as well as determine the MIAA championship. It was a defensive battle in which cold temperatures and a driving wind – gusts of over 25 miles an hour – wreaked havoc on the kicking and passing games. Adrian’s rushing offense was ranked 12^th best in NCAA D3 football coming into the game, but the Trine defense held the Bulldogs to 35 rushing yards – on 35 carries – and had six sacks of Adrian quarterback Troy Niblock.

The Adrian defense was pretty good, too, the highlight of which came when the Bulldogs stopped the Thunder offense from getting into the end zone from inside the 5-yard line on each of four downs.

On a second-and-four play at the Adrian 35-yard line with 11:18 left in the second quarter, Watt took off on a bootleg right and ran it to the 11-yard line before being forced out of bounds on the right side of the field. A few plays later, on a fourth-and-goal play-action pass from the 2-yard line, Watt hit Troy Hirschy in the left corner of the end zone. Hirschy caught the ball with both arms extended while falling to the turf, but when the arms-extended ball hit the turf during Hirschy’s fall, game officials ruled it a no-catch, and the Thunder turned over the ball.

Later in the second quarter, Trine scored on a safety when linebacker Tab McNally snared Adrian quarterback Niblock in the end zone, stood him up and drove the quarterback backward before officials blew the whistle to end the play. Jeremy Howard attempted a 35-yard field goal with 2 seconds left in the first half, but the ball sailed wide right.

The score remained 2-0 until the fourth quarter, when McNally nearly notched a second safety. This time he hit Niblock square and upright at the Adrian 1-yard line and dropped the quarterback backward and to the ground inside the end zone. But game officials ruled that Niblock’s forward progress was at the point of initial contact, the 1-yard line.

Not long afterward, the Thunder executed a 39-yard drive in six plays. On the final play of the drive, from the 25-yard line, Watt shuffled to his right after a play-fake before throwing to Paul Curtis in the end zone, who caught the ball on the run, moving left to right before falling to the turf.

Curtis said he had run a deep drag route, and a video of the play on YouTube looks as though Watt’s pass was pretty much on target. Curtis said that he fell afterward because he needed some effort to make the grab, suggesting the pass wasn’t as accurate as it appeared in the video. He did say that, however, with a huge chuckle.

“I bailed out Eric again,” he added, quickly following it with another hardy chuckle … and then: “I had to make another great catch so he could look good.”

His effort on the play wasn’t the only reason why Curtis remembers the touchdown. After getting up on his feet after the catch, he gave Adrian fans and the school’s band members seated behind the end zone a brief “shush” motion with his hand in front of his mouth.

“The student section had been ugly the whole game” toward Trine players, including Curtis, the receiver said, so he decided to issue a quick motion silencer without saying a word.

He says that even though he didn’t say anything to the fans, game officials probably could have penalized him for his action, ostensibly on the premise that his gesture fit the definition of a taunt. But he said he’s certain game officials were aware of the verbal abuse the home crowd was giving Trine players that day, and they refrained from throwing a flag, a no-call that Curtis felt was appropriate.

Curtis says he rarely talked trash during games. “I usually let my game do the talking. I’m all about the character. I’m more likely to just laugh at you” than trade trash talk, he said. Even though Curtis was not penalized, coach Land said his player’s gesture “was discussed” after the game.

Adrian threatened late in the game. On a drive that started on the Adrian 20-yard line, the Bulldogs reached the Trine 48-yard line when Niblock completed a 41-yard pass to Patrick Reagan, giving the home team the ball at the Trine 7-yard line.

The Bulldogs’ Myke Johnson carried the ball to the 3-yard line on the first-down play, but the second-down play ended in a 3-yard loss, and on third down, Niblock was sacked for an 18-yard loss, putting the ball at the Trine 24. The stiff winds blew Justin Warner’s field-goal attempt wide left. Trine’s 9-0 lead help up for the win and sealed the MIAA championship.

Land described the victory as hugely important. “It always is when it’s a rivalry game and it’s for the conference championship. Adrian was always our biggest rival, and we really didn’t like them. Actually, at that point, we really didn’t like anybody. We always played with a chip on our shoulder.”

The Thunder had an easy win (34-12) over non-conference foe Kentucky Christian to end the regular season the following week, a game in which Curtis suffered a hip-pointer, forcing him to miss half of the game. He would see limited action the following week in Trine’s first appearance in an NCAA Division III tournament game.

Second-ranked Trine hosted 25^th-ranked Wheaton College, whose offense amassed 404 total yards but also turned the ball over four times. Nevertheless, Wheaton did score twice – and that was enough because its defense held Trine out of the end zone in the 14-0 victory.

“Our offense was moving the ball the whole game,” Andrew Pickford said. “I think we got into the red zone five times! But we just stalled there. It was one of the coldest games I ever played in. I think it also was the only game the guys in our class (of 2011) ever lost on our home field.”

Watt completed 20 of 48 passes for 278 yards, threw one interception and led Thunder rushers with 42 yards on 15 carries. The loss ended Trine’s season at 10-1.

At the end of the season, the MIAA named Courtney Pearson its defensive MPV again. And Watt, Glidden, freshman receiver Lemar Qualls (in his only season at Trine), tight end Troy Hirschy and offensive lineman James Greenlee were named to the offensive first team. Named to the MIAA defensive first team were linebackers Pearson and Joe Curtis, lineman Erik Walker and defensive back Corrie Lotta, who had made the first team as a kick-return specialist in 2007. Jeremy Howard was named to the first team as a kick specialist in 2008.

Although Eric Watt was named MIAA offensive player of the week on two occasions during the year, Adrian senior quarterback Troy Niblock – who won that same honor just once (and shared it with another player) – was named MIAA Most Valuable Player. Curiously, Niblock also made the offensive first team – but as a running back, not a quarterback.

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

Trine entered the 2009 season with high hopes of repeating as Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association champion. The Thunder won their first two games of 2009, although their 16-14 win in the opener at Manchester University – which would finish the year at 5-5 – certainly gave some pause to those expectations.

In the Manchester game, “our offense was just not clicking,” defensive back Andrew Pickford said. “I don’t know why. Maybe it was because the game was on a Thursday night. We eventually figured it out.” 

The Thunder fell behind 14-0 then crawled back into the game, eventually pulling ahead on a fourth-quarter Jeremy Howard field goal. “But we should have won by a lot,” Pickford said.

Two weeks later, the Thunder rolled over Defiance (Ohio) College at home, 40-9. The rout apparently gave pollsters enough confidence in Trine to reward the school with a national ranking of 22 among Division III teams on the Monday before the next game, another non-conference tilt. 

That third game would be at Franklin College, the final meeting in the two schools’ six-years-long series. 

Tomorrow in Chapter 10:  Waiting Their Turns

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 6: A Moonlight Graham Moment

Chapter 7: 'Clearly the Best' Small-School Teams in Indiana

Chapter 8: New Teammates