3A No. 1 Chatard Takes It To 4A, No. 5 NorthWood
NAPPANEE — Indianapolis Bishop Chatard entered Friday night’s game at NorthWood with the top ranking in the Indiana Football Coaches Association Class 3A poll. With their 48-21 pasting of the Class 4A, fifth-rated Panthers, the Trojans made a pretty good case that they’d be one of the better teams in the state’s 4A field, too.
Not one to shy away from a fight, NorthWood head coach Nate Andrews scheduled Bishop Chatard via a one-year contract give his team an early test. And the Trojans certainly tested the Panthers on Friday.
“Is that what you call it?” said Andrews with a good-natured chuckled. “Yeah, they did, but I wish we would’ve come out a little tougher. We were on our heels. Some of that was them, and some of it was us. I guess that’s why we scheduled it — so this doesn’t happen when it counts. Great team. Great, great team. A lot of class. I have tons of respect for that program, and that’s another reason that we said it was OK to play them.”
Chatard took it to its hosts early, holding the Panthers to exactly 1 rushing yard over the entire first period — NorthWood was in negative net rushing yardage until its final possession of the stanza — and flat out dominated the line of scrimmage on the way to a 20-0 lead at the first quarter break.
After holding Wood to a three-and-out in the game’s opening possession, the Trojans marched the ball back 45 yards in five plays punctuated by Daylen Taylor’s 3-yard TD run and George Forsee’s point-after kick at the 8:54 stop of the clock. The Panthers went backwards on their next offensive series, again going three-and-out, and Andrew Sowinski ran the punt back 44 yards for a second score less than halfway through the quarter. It was more of the same for the home team, which was forced to punt from its own 24 on the next possession, and Chatard went on a nine-play, 46-yard drive capped off by Kyle Cheek’s 8-yard pass to Sowinski in the end zone to balloon the guests’ lead out to 20-0 with Forsee’s second successful PAT with just 34 seconds remaining in the frame.
Wood finally began moving the ball on the final possession of the first quarter but shot itself in the foot with a pair of penalties, and just two plays after a touchback on Jaden Miller’s punt early in the second, Taylor broker free up the middle, bouncing to the outside and then back inside for a 79-yard TD ramble that widened the margin to 27-0 at the 10:13 stop of the period.
The Panthers finally found pay dirt with a long, 14-play, 67-yard drive — one that included a key fourth down conversion on fourth and 3 at Wood’s own 39 — and Nate Newcomer carried it into the end zone from 2 yards out to put his team on the scoreboard. Seemingly overpowered up front, it was a direct snap approach that saw the Panthers rotate three players — Newcomer, Miller and Ben Mestach — into the quarterback position that finally got the chains moving. The home team found success with some shovel pass plays in the second half, scoring two TDs in the fourth quarter — a 1-yard plunge by Newcomer and a 78-yard Kyle Sellers carry off a Newcomer underhand that brought the score to its final margin with 4:25 to go.
“It felt like it could’ve been a little more effective,” said Andrews of the shovel pass. “We weren’t executing when we were on our heels. That was unfortunate because we had both things in a negative manner for us, but when it worked it was pretty successful.”
With the Trojans already leading by a commanding, 41-6 cushion at halftime, the second half featured a running game clock courtesy of a newly-adopted IHSAA mercy rule, approved in April. Under the new rule, once a point differential reaches 35 in the second half, the game clock converts to a running clock for the remainder of the game with the exceptions of timeouts, scores and injuries and cannot revert to standard timing.
Andrews expressed mixed feelings about the running clock.
“The competitor in me hated it. But — I don’t know — I probably liked it better than I thought I would. I don’t know how to say it any different,” he explained.
Even up against a running clock, the Panthers finally seemed to find a groove in the second half.
They put up a scant 103 offensive yards over the first two periods but managed to finish the night with a 252 yards in comparison to Bishop Chatard’s 395. Sellers led the NorthWood rushing corps with 78 yards on his single touchdown run, while Miller finished with 49 rushing yards on 13 carries, and Newcomer tallied 36 yards on 17 runs. He also completed 3-of-5 passes for 41 yards, while Sellers completed a single pass for 27 yards, a 27-yarder to Miller at the close of the first period. Miller finished with 50 receiving yards on three catches.
Taylor piled up 169 yards and three scores on just seven carries, while Derion Gilbert notched 67 rushing yards on 15 touches. Cheek completed 10-of-15 passes for 122 yards and two touchdowns, and Sowinski hauled in three of those for 42 receiving yards and two scores for Chatard, which has put up 97 points over a 2-0 start.
Wood slides to an even 1-1 with Northern Lakes Conference play beginning at Concord next week. Andrews is hoping his players can carry some of the second half’s positives over to Elkhart next Friday.
“I hope so. We’re so banged up, I hope we have enough players next wee,” he said. “That was a credit to the young guys. Well, we had some young guys play in the first half, but even more young guys played in the second half. It is what it is, and we’ll lick our wounds and we’ll figure out who can suit up and go see the Minutemen.”