New Palestine’s Kyler Kropp scores a touchdown during their game against Westfield.
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
NEW PALESTINE — They both will be wearing red and white, but that may be the end of similarities in the football programs at Class 4A No. 1 New Palestine and Connersville high schools.
The two play tonight at Kelso Stadium for the Class 4A Sectional 22 championship. The winner will play next week against the Sectional 21 victor, either No. 2 Roncalli or No. 10 Brebeuf Jesuit, in one of four regional games.
The Dragons come in looking for their 13th sectional championship and are playing in their 22nd sectional championship game. They’ve won six sectional titles in the last nine years, including four in Class 5A, when they moved up a division due to the IHSAA’s Tournament Success Factor Rule.
Connersville is playing for a sectional title for the second straight year, but the Spartans haven’t had much success on Friday’s in the fall.
Since 1994, the football program has had just 60 victories. This year’s 7-4 team is only the second winning team during that time span. The 2012 Spartans finished 7-4. They’ve won only eight postseason games since 1985 and are looking for the program’s first sectional championship.
They are also an unknown to the Dragons football program. The two schools have met regularly in girls and boys basketball and in some other sports — the girls basketball programs were scheduled to play at the Spartan Bowl Thursday night — but this will be the first time the two will play football.
It’s a completely different situation from the Dragons first two tournament games, Hancock County and Hoosier Heritage Conference rivals Mt. Vernon and Greenfield-Central.
“It’s a different feel. We’ve played common opponents for the most part,” New Palestine head coach Kyle Ralph said. “It is interesting to go up against someone you have absolutely no history with, or have any common opponents with either, other than New Castle last week.
“It makes it difficult. We don’t have any history with their coaching staff, or them. As far as what their plan of attack might be, you’re going off tape and you just go out and play the game.”
Connersville played against only two 4A schools prior to the sectional tournament. The Spartans defeated Richmond and lost to No. 4 East Central. They beat Richmond, again, to open sectional play, then edged New Castle 27-20 in last week’s semifinal.
The Spartans won their first three games of the regular season and are currently on a three-game winning streak.
“They’re big and kind of remind us a little bit, offensively, of what Delta likes to do,” added Ralph on tonight’s opponent. “They’ll be in pro-set a lot, have a big fullback and a pretty good size offensive line. They’re going to run the ball downhill at you and occasionally stretch the field, and do some play-action.”
The Dragons come in winners of 11 in a row. They lead Class 4A in average margin of victory at 34.64 points and in scoring at 45.55 points per game. They rank sixth in defensive scoring average at 10.91.
They will be without one of their biggest offensive weapons, junior running back Grayson Thomas, who was injured in last week’s sectional semifinal game against Greenfield-Central.
Thomas has 26 touchdowns and 1,509 rushing yards.
“We’ve got a lot of good players and we’ve got guys that can step up, but we have a lot of things to figure out in a very short period of time before (tonight’s game) of who can do what and who can do that at a championship level,” Ralph said earlier this week. “That’s the hard part.”
