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Home > Blogs > Springfield, Ohio High School Sports > Archives > 2009 > October > 19
Monday, October 19, 2009
Extra thoughts on Wittenberg-Wabash
I’ve witnessed 85-90 Wittenberg football games over the last nine seasons, including 10 Wittenberg-Wabash games.
College football doesn’t get much better than when the Little Giants and Tigers are on the field at the same time. It gets bigger, sure. Just up the road from Crawfordsville on Saturday, Ohio State and Purdue played in front of a crowd 10 times as big as the one that watched Wittenberg and Wabash.
But few college rivalries can match the drama of the recent Witt-Wabash games. Four times since 2002, the Wittenberg-Wabash game has been decided by a field goal.
In 2002, Wabash’s Mark Server kicked a 27-yard field goal in overtime to beat Wittenberg 46-43 in Springfield.
In 2006, Wabash’s Chad Finley missed a 28-yard field goal as time expired in the fourth quarter, and Wittenberg won 19-17 in Springfield.
In 2008, Wabash’s Spencer Whitehead kicked a 41-yard field goal with 4 seconds left in the game to beat Wittenberg 13-10 in Springfield.
In 2009, a Wittenberg kicker finally got a chance, and Zack Harris took advantage, booting a 31-yard field goal to beat the Little Giants 10-7 in Crawfordsville.
After Saturday’s games, Harris cradled the ball he booted through the uprights and a pizza as he hugged his parents outside the stadium. In 12 years of kicking, he had made kicks late in the fourth quarter, but never in the final seconds as he did Saturday.
Harris celebrated the kick with a couple of fist pumps as his teammates jumped around like little kids until they realized one second still remained on the clock.
Amid the chaos, the offensive line showed just how tight-knit they are, something Dillon Hollin talked about in this story. Senior Tony Eich was hobbling off the field when junior Jeremy Block ran out to meet him. Block picked up Eich and threw him over his shoulder (all 260 pounds of him) and had just enough energy to get him to the sideline before dumping Eich on the training staff. If you watch closely, you can see the scene in the video below.
What you won’t see in any of the game footage is Wabash senior quarterback Matt Hudson. He missed the game because of an injury suffered in the previous week’s game. All week, everyone wondered if he would play, but as Hudson wrote in his excellent and insightful blog on Wabash’s Web site, he knew all week he wouldn’t play. I suspected as much all week, also knowing that Wabash (or Wittenberg if the situation was reversed) had no reason to confirm it. It’s interesting to read the background of the story, which Hudson gives in the blog entry.
Hudson: “Basically, in a span of 2 hours, I go from believing that I’m just being a sissy and have bruised ribs, to knowing that my lung is partially collapsed and that I need a chest tube put in, in INDY no less. Quite a ride, to say the least. The next thing I know, I’m riding in an ambulance to Indy at 10:30 Saturday night, quite well aware that I’m going to miss our second biggest game of the year next week (and to all of those who read the local newspaper, I apologize. There was absolutely no chance I was playing this weekend, and we all knew this 7 days in advance. All that “Hudson’s status in question” stuff was simply to keep Wittenberg guessing. Sorry). So I get to Indy, they put the tube in, and within minutes, it’s drained about a liter and a half of blood from my chest cavity (I guess one would consider this internal bleeding). The morphine makes me itchy, and I get about 3 hours of sleep on Saturday night.”
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Wittenberg rises to 16th in football poll
After its 10-7 victory over Wabash on Saturday, Wittenberg (6-0) jumped from 22nd to 16th in the American Football Coaches Association NCAA Division III poll.
Wabash (5-1) fell from 10th to 21st.
Wittenberg is one of 16 undefeated teams in the top 25.
There are four other Ohio teams in the top 20: No. 1 Mount Union; No. 9 Case Western Reserve; No. 11 Otterbein; and No. 17 Capital.
In the D3Football.com poll, Wittenberg is ranked this week for the first time. It is No. 21. Wabash is 18th, falling from 10th after losing to the Tigers.
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