NEW PALESTINE — Five years ago, Kyle King transferred to the New Palestine school system from Greenfield and met a fellow seventh-grader.
His name? Maxen Hook.
They didn’t know it then, but great things were in their not-far-off futures.
The two quickly became friends. They’re basically inseparable now. They hang out on weekends, after spending all week together on the football field and in the weight room.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
After spending the entire season together, working hard toward the same goal, the Dragons juniors were able to live the dream of lifting a state championship trophy with their best friends.
On a team full of playmakers, King and Hook stood out. Now, along with being state champions and earning all-state honors, they share another accolade — Hancock County Defensive Player of the Year.
“The whole season, we’ve been looking at each other like, ‘Dude, we’re doing this,’” Hook said. “Center Grove, we were like, we’re putting ourselves on the map right now. As we kept winning those big games, in the playoffs, we’re like, bro, we’re going to go win state. Finally when we won state, we looked at each other and we’re like, bro, we just did it. We did that. Holy cow.”
They got to watch one another have huge individual seasons while the team around them rolled to a 14-0 record and a Class 5A state championship.
Hook led the Dragons in tackles, flying all over the field and making big plays on a consistent basis.
He had 126 tackles this year, with 14.5 tackles for a loss from his defensive back position. He had four sacks, three interceptions, three forced fumbles and he blocked four kicks.
If a big play needed to be made, Hook was usually there.
“It’s awesome seeing one of your good buddies do great,” King said. “When you see him making multiple plays in a row, that makes you feel good. I’m that guy’s friend, and he’s out there dominating. That’s a great feeling, seeing your buddy accomplish all that.”
If Hook wasn’t making a play, there’s a good chance it was because King was already doing so.
One of the Dragons’ defensive linemen, King led the state in sacks and had a county-best 26 tackles for loss out of his 71 tackles.
“It’s funny how a guy with 18 sacks can somehow get over-shined in the big picture on defense,” New Palestine coach Kyle Ralph said. “A lot of people don’t notice those guys with their hands on the ground very often. It always seemed like when there was a tackle for a loss or a sack, 54 (King’s number) is getting out of the pile, or 54 is getting off the top of the quarterback, or here comes a pressure that makes an interception. It’s Kyle who was chasing the guy down.”
If King didn’t get to the quarterback, he was usually creating pressure or tipping passes, which directly benefited Hook and the rest of the New Palestine defense.
“It’s awesome in my position, because he’s right in front of me,” Hook said. “I’m giving calls, and we’re both talking to each other. Knowing that he’s in front of me, I know he’s going to do his job every time. It makes my job so much easier. When I have the dude leading in sacks right front of me, I know that if I can guard my guy for a few seconds, Kyle is probably getting to the quarterback.”
The two played off one another perfectly, forming a dominant duo on the Dragons defense that overpowered and shut down opponents on a weekly basis.
“Having them on defense, they’re so good. It just helps prepare me for games,” said Charlie Spegal, the Offensive Player of the Year. “Maxen hits hard. He got some pretty good shots on me in the summer. Kyle, he’s really good on the line, too. He had an incredible season. The whole defense really just knows how to tackle, how to read the offense, how to cover people. It’s really awesome to have that defense. It’s something special that was on the field."
Finding football
The two took fairly similar paths onto the football field.
They both started football by the first grade. The common denominator was their fathers.
King’s dad talked to him about possibly trying out for football. His cousins always played, and his dad had played football growing up, which influenced him to follow in those footsteps.
He tried it, he liked it, and he has always gravitated back to it.
Hook’s dad signed him up a little late, so for his first day of practice, his helmet didn’t fit quite right and his shoulder pads were way too big.
The team Hook had joined was coached by another dad, the father New Palestine’s 2018 championship team quarterback, Zach Neligh. The first thing they did was an angle tackling drill, with Neligh, a second-grader, lined up across from Hook.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” Hook said. “They handed me the ball and were like, run that way, and … boom.”
Neligh laid out Hook, prompting Matthew Hook to fly out of the stands to check on his son.
“I fumbled, shoe came off, mouthpiece flew out, and I’m laying on my back because I can’t get up. My pads are too heavy for me to stand up,” Hook said. “(My dad) comes up and lifts me up, and I’ve got a huge smile on my face. He’s like, ‘I think you might be a football player.’ I think honestly that sums a lot of it up.”
“I just sat back down thinking, ‘He’s gonna be OK,’” Matthew Hook said. “Then they go a second round. I think Zach hit him harder the second time. Needless to say, I went and bought him all brand new equipment after practice.”
That team won a championship together that season. Ten years later, Hook and Neligh are champions together again.
Flipping the switch
When they are around one another, things tend to be a lot of fun.
They goof around. They are gamers, competing in video games like Fortnite, Call of Duty and, not surprisingly, Madden.
“We’re a lot alike. We’re into the same stuff,” King said. “He’s really trustworthy. I trust him with a lot of stuff, completely tell him everything.”
No matter what they do, it’s always fun. But when it’s game time, the two go into a different mode.
That’s when things get serious.
“He’s probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, honestly,” Hook said of King. “But I think something we both do really well is when it’s game time, we can both turn that switch immediately.”
They can do that so well because they know that they, along with their Dragons teammates, will do their jobs to the best of their ability, play in and play out.
They have each other’s backs, on and off the field. That’s something that they’ve known for a while now, but it was demonstrated during their freshmen year on the basketball court, when King proved it.
“I got him to play AAU basketball with me freshman year,” Hook said. “We went to a tournament, and these kids were playing so dirty. So dirty. One of them swung at me, and all I saw was Kyle take this kid and probably throw him five feet in the air. I was like, wow, that dude really does have my back. That’s how we play in football, too. We’ve always got each other’s backs.”
Just like he had his friends back on the basketball court, King trusts that Hook will be there on the football field for him.
That’s what friends are for.
“It’s great having someone that can protect me if I don’t contain,” King said. “If I break contain, he’s always there to back me up, flying across the field, making tackles. It’s good to have someone that good on my side.”
Sparking the Dragons
Every so often, a team gets a player that really just has it.
For the past couple of years, that was Josh Glover for the Dragons defense. When Glover graduated, New Palestine’s coaching staff was looking for that next leader.
They saw two players stepping into that role. One was senior linebacker Luke Ely. The other?
Maxen Hook.
“Maxen, he’s very much the spiritual and emotional leader. Some people you’re born with it, and that’s just who you are. I kind of call it the spark,” Ralph said. “Every one of our good defenses here has had a kid who is a spark. It’s not so much that the kids around them are just waiting for that person to do something, but it’s almost an expectation of we have this guy, and we know this guy is going to make a play, and we’re going to rally behind that and we’re all going to push forward.”
That’s a big commodity to have on a team, one that Ralph said helped make this year’s Dragons defense so good, so dominant.
“Knowing that the guy who is kind of your heartbeat on that side of the ball is going to be there is exceptional. You’re lucky to have that,” Ralph added. “He’s one of those lightning rods. That opening kickoff or that opening set of defense, it always seems that you’re calling his name out. That’s what we need. That’s what our team needs.”
While Hook transitioned into a leader this year, King was learning from one of the team’s seniors, Austin Keele. King and Keele each played on the offensive and defensive lines, an incredible task that they each took on for the entire season.
Keele taught King the ropes. He taught him how to practice, how to give maximum effort. King’s willingness to learn, combined with his athletic ability, helped him make a huge leap from his sophomore to junior season, their coach said.
“Kyle is a supremely, supremely talented young man. I think he’s got an incredible future ahead of him,” Ralph said. “But I think what he understands best is that there’s another guy here in the pecking order above me who does things at a ridiculously high level, I’m going to learn as much as I can from this guy. I’m going to take my god-given talent, apply that to what I learn from a guy like Austin Keele, and I’m going to try to get the absolute best out of myself.”
In the state championship game, King, like his mentor, barely left the field. They played both ways, almost every snap, grinding out a title win for their team.
King was feeling it. It was hard to breathe. It wasn’t easy, by any stretch of the imagination.
His friend, lined up behind him, was in awe watching him do it. All season, Hook watched King play entire games yet still have the endurance to lead the state in sacks.
“He was playing both ways, too. That was just the incredible part,” Hook said. “The guys that are up there with him, they have nowhere near the amount of stamina that he has. He’s coming off of blocking and he’s coming on to defense, and he’s just ripping through his guy, going and making a sack. I just look at him like, how is this guy still going?”
They pushed each other and they motivated each other, as they have for years. They’ve reached the pinnacle, a Class 5A championship that they shared.
King and Hook are ready for a new challenge. They step onto the basketball court, now, teammates again.
Then, they’ll become senior leaders on next year’s football team. They are ready for the role, ready to lead the Dragons back to another state championship.
“We’ve got all these young guys coming in; we’ve got young guys that are going to have to start playing, so somebody is going to have to lead them to another state championship if that’s where we’re going to get back to,” Hook said. “If we don’t teach them hard work like the seniors taught us this year, we’ll not even get close.”