Wawasee’s Elisha Tipping (64) celebrates a sack of Goshen Friday night during a 20-0 win. (Photos by Mike Deak)

GOSHEN – The Wawasee football coaching staff might spend a little time Saturday going through coupons and internet deals. The 20-0 shutout win Friday night at Goshen was met with a just excitement from the Wawasee bench, partly for playing a rather solid football game in a pivotal week of the season, but largely for a bigger, and more substantial reason.

“Um, dad, you know what this means?,” said sophomore Evan Eschbach to his dad, head coach Mike Eshbach, after Wawasee received the traveling WarHawk trophy, the new hardware replacing the mammoth and retired Wooden Indian. “We shut them out. We get pizza!”

The traveling WarHawk trophy will reside in Syracuse until next fall.

The ensuing roar from the seniors posing with the trophy was almost as deafening as any during the game.

For a Wawasee team that is going to have to likely beat three state-ranked teams one way or another just to win the sectional, a little celebration could go a long way. That started on its first play from scrimmage at Foreman Field.

After Wawasee forced Goshen to punt its first possession, it took Alec Rosbrugh one play to find the endzone. Rosbrugh, a running back by trade but lined up in the wildcat formation, handed the ball off to tight end Dalton Pearish, who turned around and tossed it back to Rosbrugh. Lost in the moment was Dylan Hepler, who found a seam behind Goshen’s defense on Rosbrugh’s pass and raced the remainder of the 51-yard play to make it 7-0 just 1:44 into the game.

That score stood up through the half, but in a way only a Friday the 13th could explain, the second play Wawasee ran coming out the half, Rosbrugh struck again. Bouncing through Goshen’s pursuit and outside the contain, Rosbrugh sped 57 yards to the pylon and got the ball onto the orange rubber to get Wawasee on the board once again. A missed extra point left the game 13-0, but Wawasee now firmly in control.

The running game for Wawasee began to take over in the second half, with a long drive on the ground punctuating a nine-yard Jacob Hand touchdown with 2:00 left in the third.

The Warriors bulldozed its way to 306 yards on the ground in the contest and 73 more in the air, Rosbrugh the star on Friday with 21 carries for 214 yards. Hand contributed 83 yards on 10 carries, Eshbach calling several different, creative plays to get the ball into their hands.

“Sometimes you just shake your head at things,” coach Eshbach said. “You go through a season and a stretch like we had this season where you face that schedule in a row, and lose all of them. Then everyone turns and says you’ve got nothing left, you’re not any good. To get 40 guys and get them to believe that those people don’t know what they are talking about, that’s all that matters to us. These kids never quit and they believed they could do it. What a show tonight.”

But a zero and apparent pizza party doesn’t just happen with an effective offense. The defensive line for the Warriors was as stout as they have been all season, led by Elisha Tipping. The senior black hole in the middle made three stops, helped on four others, had a backbreaking hit on Goshen quarterback Wesley VanHooser that was felt all the way up in the pressbox, and a sack for good measure. Classmates Hunter Hlutke, Kevin Weikart and Pearish combined for seven tackles, Weikart had a sack, and led the wall that held Goshen to a scant 85 yards rushing, 143 total yards and just eight first downs all night.

“This game was won on the line of scrimmage,” Eshbach said. “We got guys in space and didn’t give Goshen (1-8) anything. The lineman did the work and ground it out. All four seniors on the line absolutely controlled the line of scrimmage. Tipping got a couple good hits on the quarterback. I don’t care who you are, if you are taking hits from him, I don’t know what quarterback would want to sit back there and take that trying to throw the ball.”

Wawasee (3-6), which started the year with a huge win over Lakeland only to then drop six in a row, now has allowed just one touchdown in its last eight quarters heading into a very interesting matchup next week in the first round of the Class 4-A sectional at Angola. The Northeast Corner Conference Big Division champions are 9-0 after a 42-13 waxing of Eshbach’s old Eastside squad Friday night. The Hornets are ranked No. 5 in the latest poll and have scored 404 points this season.

“This is all about momentum and playing your best football at the end,” Eshbach said of next week’s matchup. “We’re doing that. Sometimes you think, it’s the NECC and we’re in the NLC, but trust me, Angola is pretty darn good. We have to keep playing like we have been. Keep getting after the quarterback and keep getting first downs.”