Dragons dominate: New Palestine runs over Cougars

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NEW PALESTINE — The message for the 5A No. 1 New Palestine football team coming into this week’s game against Greenfield-Central was to continue to stay sharp and focused on the task at hand.

The Dragons did just that. New Palestine needed just two plays to put the ball in the end zone, scored on its first 10 offensive possessions, and saw the defense get into the end zone in a 76-7 victory against their county rivals Friday night in the Dragons’ homecoming game.

The victory — NP’s 51st straight regular-season win — improved the Dragons’ record to 6-0. Greenfield-Central fell to 0-6 with the loss.

“Our biggest challenge right now is our focus level, continuing to stay focused to the task at hand, being 1-0 every week, challenging yourself on a daily basis. That’s the way we’ve always operated,” New Palestine coach Kyle Ralph. “Our practices have to stay sharp, our focus has to stay sharp, our kids’ effort level has got to stay high. I was very, very happy with that tonight. Our kids came out very focused, very energized, very ready to play.”

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The Dragons’ Charlie Spegal ran for 195 yards and six touchdowns, breaking a 43-yard run on the game’s second play. Spegal also scored on touchdown runs of 1, 33, 8, 24 and 14 yards in the opening half. Zach Neligh ran for 141 yards and two scores of 34 and 83 yards. He also threw a 43-yard TD pass to Colby Jenkins.

Spegal, the nation’s leading scorer, tallied his fourth game this season of six or more touchdowns. His 31 rushing TDs for the year are six shy of the Dragons’ school record.

All of those numbers came in the opening half, as the Dragons’ backups and junior varsity players played the entire second half. New Palestine outgained the Cougars 465-27 in the first 24 minutes, building a 69-0 halftime lead.

Greenfield-Central and interim head coach Stephen Speer came out with a new wrinkle in their defense the Dragons had not prepared for, but New Palestine adjusted quickly.

“They picked the one defense we didn’t look at,” Ralph said. “We did a great job. We’ve got a lot of good players. We used our talent to our advantage early in the game to tip their hand as to how long they were going to stay in that defense and it turned out to be the entire game. We made some adjustments on it and tweaked one of our better plays and made it a new play, and started getting some really big runs in the run game. The passing game was solid.”

New Palestine’s defense and special teams were also critical in the victory. The Dragons went ahead 13-0 less than three minutes into the game after Kade Large recovered a fumbled punt snap on the 2-yard line, leading to a short plunge by Spegal. Later in the opening quarter, after Neligh broke a 34-yard run, Kyle King sacked Greenfield-Central quarterback Gehrig Slunaker. Will Olive picked up the loose ball and ran it in from 35 yards out to give New Palestine a 34-0 edge.

“Kyle played great,” Ralph said. “That might have been one of the most unselfish plays we’ve had all year. Kyle makes a great play, gets the sack, makes a beautiful arm club to knock the ball loose. They both sprint for the ball and Kyle realizes he’s not going to get there. He could, but he’d probably knock Will over.

“He let Will pick the ball up, he peels off and blocks two guys and springs Will for a touchdown. That was just such a great example a lot of people wouldn’t recognize of our kids being unselfish, being excited for the team, being a team player and making a great team effort play. I was really proud of him for that.”

The quick turns of the scoreboard turned the game quickly. Greenfield-Central had seven three-and-outs in the opening half, in addition to the lost fumble, giving the Dragons repeated short fields and extra possessions.

“Our offense gets a lot of the headlines because of the yards and points, but you don’t do those things without a great defense because they’re giving you the ball back so frequently and in great field position,” Ralph said. “Our defense and special teams are giving us the ball continuously on the opposite side of the 50 and our offense is able to chunk off huge gains, the scoreboard flips over really fast.”

After going 3-for-15 in the opening half, Slunaker completed 12 of his 16 pass attempts in the second half for 87 yards. He led the Cougars’ scoring drive late, finishing a 10-play march with a 3-yard scamper to find paydirt.

Sophomore Jake Vance was his favorite target, catching six passes for 44 yards. J.P. Fuchs had 86 receiving yards for Greenfield-Central, including a 57-yard catch in the opening half that carried to the Dragons’ 9.

New Palestine travels to Shelbyville next week. Greenfield-Central returns home to face Yorktown.