By Dylan Wallace
ForThe Republic
SEYMOUR — The energy in the air was palpable at Bulleit Stadium on Friday night.
Columbus East, the top dog in the Hoosiers Hills Conference the past 17 years, was running the clock out like it had been doing all game. But the unthinkable happened. Seymour’s Mikey Wright knocked the ball loose from the Olympians, and Benjamin Marks recovered it and gave Seymour the ball with 2:16 to play, down three points.
On a second-and-15 from the 27, Owls quarterback Bret Perry just underthrew Dylan Fields in the end zone, leaving the crowd on the edge of their seats. The next play, third-and-15, Perry found Jack Pennington for 18 yards, putting the ball at the 9 with 34 seconds left.
An end-around to Fields was the next play choice. Going through Fields’ head was one thing: “Make the play. Just make the play,” he said.
He was looking to pass, but the senior decided to take it himself and dove over the pylon to give Seymour a 28-24 lead with 26 seconds left.
“I never thought twice about it,” said Seymour head coach Tyson Moore, a former player at East. “That’s another play we practice every day, and I knew we were ready for it.”
The Olympians tried a couple of passes in its final plays to make something happen, but the Owls’ prevent defense allowed none of that. The clock struck triple zeros, and Seymour ended East’s 96-game Hoosier Hills Conference winning streak.
East coach Eddie Vogel, now 0-3 in his first year with the Olympians, thought his team did a lot of damage to itself on Friday.
“We have to hang on to the football,” Vogel said. “But there is plenty of blame to go around.”
Right from the start, there were momentum plays between the two teams.
The Owls fumbled the opening kickoff, and East recovered at the Seymour 33.
A holding penalty halted the Olympians’ opening drive, and Nathaniel Hedrick came in to hit a 35-yard field goal to put them on the board first.
Seymour’s offense couldn’t get much going in the first half of the opening quarter, but an East fumble around midfield gave the Owls the spark they needed.
Perry orchestrated a drive down the field, using both his legs and arms, and he topped it off with a 14-yard touchdown pass to Fields to put Seymour in front.
Javier Perez’s kick was blocked, so the Owls led 6-3 with 1:11 to go in the first quarter.
But it didn’t take long for the Olympians to respond. After a short kick, they had solid field position. Quarterback Ethan Duncan rolled out to his right and found Tommy Anderson wide open for a 42-yard touchdown. Hedrick kicked the extra point to put East up 10-6 with 11 seconds to go in the first quarter.
The Olympians barely saw the ball in the second quarter. Seymour had the possession for a majority of the clock, and the Owls got the ball all the way down to the 1-yard line with under one minute to go, but after a false start penalty, it forced them to to throw the ball.
Perry tried to the throw a fade to Pennington in the end zone, but it was intercepted. East took its 10-6 lead into halftime and received the second-half kickoff.
The Olympians established their running game right out of the gates in the second half. They didn’t attempt one pass and got it down to the 1-yard line, where Chase Harrison punched it in to give them a 17-6 lead.
Not to be outdone, Seymour responded immediately. Fields took the ensuing kickoff 85 yards for a touchdown. The Owls went for two, and Perry found Pennington across the middle to cut the deficit to 17-14.
“We can’t give up a kickoff return for a touchdown,” Vogel said.
The running game continued to be effective for East. It set up a play-action pass from Duncan to Blake Borkhardt for a 13-yard TD to push the lead back up 24-14 with 45 seconds left until the fourth.
That’s when Seymour got the job done. At the 2-yard line, Evan Smith lined up in the wildcat and did a jump pass to Jaylan Johnson for a touchdown to bring the Owls back within three.
“Both our trick plays worked tonight,” Moore said.
The Olympians’ attempt to run the clock out was working until the fumble, and it was all momentum to the purple the rest of the way.
East, who will play at Jennings County next week, will be looking to respond to this adversity and pick up its first win of the season.
“We’re gonna really find out what kind of football team we’re made of and what kind of men we have,” Vogel said. “Will they take this loss and learn from it and become a team? I think we’ve got a good group of young men, and I think we’ll respond next week.”
