By Brady Extin | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — Close games haven’t always gone the way Greenfield-Central would have hoped for this season.
Unforced penalties, turnovers, and injuries have been the main culprits in two of the Cougars’ three losses this season.
“You’ve just got to keep coaching the kids. We’re dealing with high school kids and like I said on Friday, football is an emotional game and sometimes emotions get the best of the kids,” Greenfield-Central coach Travis Nolting said. “You’ve just got to do the best you can as a coach to try to get the kids to see that their actions have consequences. It’s sometimes tough for a high school kid to look ahead. You’ve just got to make sure they learn from those mistakes moving forward.”
In week three of the regular season, the Cougars held a 28-21 fourth-quarter lead over a team that had beaten them twice the year prior — Mt. Vernon.
Cougar penalties helped allow Mt. Vernon to score two late touchdowns to secure a 35-28 Marauder victory.
On the game tying score, a 1-yard run by Mt. Vernon running back Ashton Julian, the drive was kept alive by a Greenfield-Central personal foul penalty. On the go-ahead score, a defensive holding call gave Mt. Vernon the ball on the Cougars 23, eventually leading to the game-winning points.
“Our guys that got those personal foul penalties this year are young players, so we’re working on them,” Nolting said. “In the end, I think that football teaches you life skills, and that’s one of the life skills that you take away from it. You’ve got to be able to control yourself and emotions in high pressure situations.”
Just a few weeks later, it was the same story. Against Yorktown, Greenfield-Central led 21-20 heading into the fourth quarter, but were outscored 20-8 the rest of the way.
This time, turnovers cost the Cougars.
On the opening drive of the second half, a Dallas Freeman fumble stalled the Cougars on the 13-yard line. In the fourth quarter, Will DeJarnett intercepted Yorktown QB Mason Moulton, but fumbled the ensuing return. And then, on the final two Greenfield-Central drives of the game, Freeman was stripped after a big gain, and then threw an interception to close things out.
“When we played Yorktown, it was injuries. We didn’t have (leading rusher) Andrew Zellers and last Friday we had Andrew. I think it’s a testament to how important Andrew is back there for us,” Nolting said.
“We had some guys that had to play positions that they probably weren’t ready to play. When you run an offense such as ours, and you have to play a backup fullback or running back or a different kid at quarterback, you haven’t had the reps and that makes it easier to fumble. We worked on that, and luckily we’ve got some of our guys back.”
But Greenfield-Central may have just put the whole narrative to rest in last Friday’s IHSAA Class 4A Sectional 22 quarterfinals victory over Pendleton Heights.
Instead of penalties and turnovers, Nolting’s squad overcame a second-half deficit to earn a 34-28 win.
“We’ve coached our guys for the four years that we’ve been here to be resilient and compete and fight to the end,” Nolting said. “That’s something that we tried to instill in them in year one, and now our senior class has been here for all four years.”
Down 21-14 after Pendleton Heights returned a Freeman fumble for a touchdown, it was the Cougars turn to get breaks to go their way.
On a fourth-and-long, a bad snap led to punter Aaron Lee scooping up the loose ball and scrambling for the first down, eventually leading to the game-tying score by Zellers.
Later in the fourth, with Pendleton Heights trailing and driving to tie the game, it was a snap over quarterback Isaac Wilson’s head that set up an Arabians 4th-and-33 and gave Greenfield-Central the ball back and the chance to close out the game.
“They’re not going to quit fighting, and I think that speaks volumes to their character and their work ethic and what they’ve accomplished,” Nolting said. “Coming back last week to win was indicative of that.”
