By Dylan Wallace | The Tribune
The energy in the air was palpable at Bulleit Stadium on Friday night.
Columbus East, the top dog in the Hoosiers Hills Conference, was running the clock out like they had been doing all game. But the unthinkable happened. Mikey Wright knocked the ball loose from East, and Benjamin Marks recovered it and gave Seymour the ball with 2:16 to play, down three points.
On a 2nd 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, 3rd and 15, Perry found Jack Pennington for 18 yards, putting the ball down at the 9 with 34 seconds left.
An end-around to Fields was the Owls 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 the Owls a 28-24 lead with 26 seconds left.
“I never thought twice about it,” Seymour head coach Tyson Moore said. “That’s another play we practice every day, and I knew we were ready for it.”
East tried a couple of passes in its final plays to make something happen, but Seymour’s prevent defense allowed none of that. The clock struck triple zeros, and Seymour ended a 15-year winning streak by Columbus East in the Hoosiers Hills Conference of 96-straight games.
“We won this game,” Moore said. “I can’t be happier for this community and this program because this is huge.”
East head 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 night.
“We had to 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 Seymour and Columbus East.
The Owls fumbled the opening kickoff and the Olympians recovered at the Seymour 33-yard line.
A holding penalty halted East’s opening drive, and Nathaniel Hedrick came in to hit a 35-yard field goal to put the Olympians 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 the Owls in front.
Javier Perez’s kick was blocked, so Seymour led 6-3 with 1:11 to go in the first quarter.
“The coaches tried to get me out of the pocket because they knew I can do well with my legs,” Perry said. “I just went out and tried to make plays.”
But it didn’t take long for East to respond. After a short kick, the Olympians had solid field position. Quarterback Ethan Duncan rolled out to his right and found Thomas Anderson wide open for a 42-yard touchdown pass. Hedrick completed the PAT 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 the Owls to try to throw the ball.
Perry tried to the throw a fade to Pennington in the end zone, but it was intercepted. The Olympians took their 10-6 lead into halftime and received the second-half kickoff.
East established its 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 the Olympians a 17-6 lead.
Not to be outdone, Seymour responded immediately. Fields took the ensuing kickoff 85 yards for a touchdown. Seymour 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 to 10, 24-14, with 45 seconds left until the fourth.
That’s when the Owls got the job done. At the two-yard line with 6:74 left, 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.
East’s attempt to run the clock out was working until the fumble, and it was all momentum to the purple the rest of the way.
“It felt great, man, I couldn’t thank my team enough,” said Marks, who recovered the East fumble. “I love my team.”
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 got a good group of young men, and I think we’ll respond next week.”
As for Seymour (1-2), it will play at Floyd Central next week and look to continue to build off this monumental win.
But for one night, the Owls didn’t have to look to next week. The scene at Bulleit Stadium was one of joy and belief. Moore told his team before the game that there’s a difference between wanting to win the game and believing in winning the game.
On Friday night, the Owls believed.
Students stormed the field, fans stayed an hour after the game to take pictures, and everyone honked as they drove off, celebrating the historic win for the Owls.
“You want to cry, you want to cheer, you want to yell, you want to hug everybody, it’s just so many emotions going on,” Moore said. “I was just thankful. I was just thankful that we had this opportunity. It would’ve been easy to just fold, but we didn’t do that. The emotions were sincere. The emotions were genuine.”