WHITELAND — New Palestine found itself in unfamiliar territory Friday night.
The Dragons, facing a fired up Whiteland defense, punted on their first four possessions, gaining just 34 yards in the first quarter and falling behind by a touchdown.
It took 16 minutes of game time for New Palestine to get on the board, and they didn’t take the lead until just one minute was left in the first half. The Dragons defense made sure they never gave that lead back.
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New Palestine outlasted the Warriors in a Class 5A sectional semifinal, winning on the road to open their title defense, 35-7.
“That’s a good football team. They’re a lot deeper than we are, they’ve got really good guys up front. We thought that we were probably going to have to weather the storm early,” New Palestine coach Kyle Ralph said. “In the second half, we honestly changed about one thing. It really just came down to the first half, they just played better than us. Flat out, out-executing us, playing tougher, playing more physical than we were up front. Kudos to them. They did a great job, they had a phenomenal plan.”
It was all defense for the first quarter, with teams trading punts for the first five drives.
Whiteland broke open the scoring on the game’s sixth drive with a 57-yard pass. It took some trickery — a handoff turned into a halfback pass — but it worked, as Whiteland’s Dalton Debaun somehow pulled in the pass between three New Palestine defenders and outran them for the score.
That one play accounted for more than half of the Warriors yards in the first half, as New Palestine’s defense kept them in the game and allowed the offense to finally find its rhythm.
For the game, the Dragons held Whiteland to just 2.7 yards per carry, allowing only 101 yards on 37 attempts. That’s more than four yards a carry lower than the Warriors’ season average and almost 200 yards less than their per-game average.
“We kept that pressure off the offense,” New Palestine senior Maxen Hook said. “We knew (as a defense) we were giving them time, they had time to get going. If you give our offense time, we’ll finally figure it out. That’s what we did in the second half.”
The Dragons offense broke through on their fifth drive, but it took a 4th-down conversion to do it. They went for it on 4th and 4 from the Whiteland 41, and Blake Austin took a handoff 41 yards to the end zone, tying the game.
Charlie Spegal gave the Dragons the lead late in the first half and set a new state scoring record with his first touchdown of the game, passing Brett Law’s 30-year old record of 952 career points. Spegal rumbled 16 yards for a touchdown — his first of four — and is now at 976 for his career. He now owns the state’s rushing yardage, touchdown and career scoring records.
It looked like the Warriors were threatening to tie near the end of the third quarter when the New Palestine again came up huge. Hook jumped a 3rd and long pass attempt, intercepting it in the Dragons’ red zone and giving New Palestine the ball back, clinging to a seven-point lead to start the fourth.
“They’d just run that play and thrown that guy, so I just baited it,” Hook said. “I saw him coming across the middle, quarterback looked right at him, I sprinted across the field and he threw it straight to me.”
Spegal scored to extend the lead to 21, and one play after Kyle King gave the Dragons the ball back with a 4th-down sack, Spegal rumbled for 27 more yards for his third TD, effectively putting the Warriors away.
Ryker Large intercepted Whiteland’s next pass attempt, giving the Dragons the ball back again and allowing Spegal to get his fourth touchdown, this one from three yards out with just a minute remaining. He finished with 246 yards on 32 carries.
New Palestine (10-0) extended its winning streak to 24 games and advances to the sectional championship, a game they will host Friday night.
The Dragons will face Franklin (8-2), who running-clocked Seymour on Friday night, 42-0.
“A game like this is what 5A playoffs are,” Ralph said. “We’re not a 5A school. You go against a school that’s deeper than you, bigger than you, you’re going to have some adversity hit. I was really proud of our guys for staying resilient, making adjustments and finishing that second half off the way Dragon football is supposed to be played.”
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Sectional championship
Class 5A
No. 1 New Palestine (10-0) vs. No. 9 Franklin (8-2)
Class 4A
Mt. Vernon (9-2) vs. Pendleton Heights (7-4)
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