Harrison savors statement victory and ends East Central’s 22-game win streak: ‘This year is our year’

HARRISON — Call it a glorious moment in time for Harrison High School’s football team.

All the emotions that come with a rivalry victory in front of an electric packed house were evident as the HHS students stormed the field Friday night after the Wildcats toppled Indiana power East Central at Bill Kuntz Field.

The Wildcats had the lead only once all evening, but that was all they needed. Josh Adelsperger hauled in a 27-yard touchdown pass from Dickie Engel with 42 seconds remaining to give Harrison a 35-28 triumph and its first win in the series since 2017.

“These circumstances are very unexpected by some, but I know us as a team, we expected it,” said Adelsperger, a junior wideout. “I’m not going to lie. I knew it was our game from the start. We just had to believe it.”

Harrison had one last Trojan possession to survive, and it didn’t last very long or go very far. East Central started with the ball at its own 16 and ran four plays, with Grant Dallio dropping quarterback Nolan Maple on fourth-and-6 with 0:03 on the clock.

“I was staring him down as I was chasing him and I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ All these thoughts were spinning in my head,” said Dallio, a junior end. “I was just so excited to make the play and make it for Harrison. We were playing for the house tonight. This is our home. We were playing not only for the team, but for the whole town. So it really meant a lot.”

There’s still a long road ahead for the Wildcats this season, but there’s no question they’re in the right frame of mind after improving to 2-0 and ending East Central’s 22-game winning streak.

“I feel like we’re on the road to 10-0 and going deep in the (Division II) playoffs,” said Engel, a senior quarterback. “This is an amazing feeling. Every day since last year’s game against East Central, it’s the game we’ve been looking for.”

Harrison leads the series 24-22-1, but the Trojans outscored the Wildcats 184-38 in their five meetings from 2018-23 (they didn’t play in 2020).

The Battle of I-74 series features two schools that are located about 15 minutes apart.

“The only difference between us and them is the state line of Indiana and Ohio,” Harrison coach Derek Rehage said. “We’re pretty much the same schools. One’s here. One’s there.

“This day has been awesome. This is high school football. This is what our town has been driving, and our kids have worked their butts off for our school and our community. The atmosphere in our school today was off the charts. The kids were just amped up. They were ready to rock and roll. This is kind of the monkey off our back.”

East Central (1-1) is coming off back-to-back Class 4A state championships and got moved up to Class 5A this year because of the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s success factor.

The Trojans are a ground-and-pound team that completed just 1-of-6 for 8 yards through the air against the Wildcats. Carson Pieczonka, Ryan Minges and Alex Kuhn combined for most of East Central’s 221 rushing yards and three touchdowns, two by Minges and one by Kuhn.

Engel scored on a 4-yard run and David Baldock added the extra point to pull Harrison into a 28-28 deadlock with 7:22 remaining. From there, it still looked like the Trojans might extend their winning streak.

East Central picked up two first downs and drove into HHS territory before fumbling the ball away. Ben Markarian fell on the ball at the 37-yard line with 4:32 left.

The Wildcats pushed the ball down the field and faced fourth-and-2 at the ECHS 32 when the Trojans jumped offsides. The decisive touchdown came on the next play, with Adelsperger getting behind his man and Engel throwing off his back foot under a heavy rush.

“We saved that play,” Rehage said. “We hit it last week against Loveland and then I saved it and saved it and saved it and saved it for that point right then when Josh and Dickie connected.”

It’s a homecoming season for Adelsperger. He’s a Harrison kid, but attended Moeller the last two years before returning to play for the Wildcats this season.

Adelsperger only had one catch in the game, a 6-yard hitch, before the touchdown connection.

“That’s OK. I’m not playing selfish ball,” he said. “I’m just here to win. That’s what we’re all here to do.”

Asked to describe the TD, Adelsperger said, “I can’t tell you the play, but I had a post and I ran the post and my wonderful quarterback Dickie Engel threw me a back-shoulder fade. I ran past my guy and had to adjust to the ball, and I went up and got it. That’s all I remember. I came off the field and everybody was cheering, but I kept telling everybody the game’s not over until that clock hits zero.”

Engel said he was confident Adelsperger would come down with the ball.

“They were in Cover 3, so I knew if I looked that safety off, Josh would be 1-on-1 backside,” Engel said. “It feels great watching the ball go up and then drop down in his hands and he’s in the end zone. It’s a great feeling watching that score go up our way.”

It was all difficult for East Central to digest. The Trojans’ tradition has created an expectation of success, and ECHS coach Jake Meiners said pressure is part of a lengthy winning streak.

“It does play a factor,” Meiners said. “Every win you have becomes tougher and tougher. People know that streak. Harrison knew they had some experience coming back. They’ve had this game circled for a long time to try to knock us off. We’ve gotten the better of them the last few years in this rivalry, and we expected this dogfight tonight.

“This is what this rivalry game is about. Although we came out on the wrong end of the scoreboard, I was proud of the way our guys stayed in the fight. When things got bad, we kept rallying. We kept taking punches, we kept giving punches. We stayed in the game and fought until the very end. I think we’re going to get better from it.”

East Central used a double-wing offense that isn’t its everyday mode of attack. Meiners said the Trojans generally use more spread formations, but he felt like the double wing gave his squad the best chance of winning in this matchup.

“Honestly, we didn’t think we were going to sit in it all night, but as the game played out, we were executing and we felt good about our situations,” Meiners said. “It’s an offense that these guys have run since they were in pee-wee. In big-time moments, we like to kind of go back to what we know.”

Rehage said he wasn’t surprised to see the double wing and Harrison worked against it during the week, but the hosts didn’t react to it all that well with their four-man front in the first half. So the decision was made to go with five defensive linemen after the break.

“We made some really good adjustments at halftime,” said Rehage, praising the D-line efforts of Dallio, Logan White, Scott Blair, Jacob Dearwester and Brody Mumfrey. “Honestly, I think we were in better shape than them tonight.”

The Wildcats trailed 21-13 at halftime. East Central took advantage of a botched HHS punt snap on its first possession and went up 7-0 on Maple’s 1-yard touchdown. But it quickly became a tie game when Engel hit Preston Flick for a 71-yard touchdown on the next play from scrimmage.

Engel threw a 12-yard TD pass to Hank Rotert in the second stanza and also connected with Rotert for a 2-point conversion after Cole Koops crossed the goal line midway through the third quarter, making it a 21-21 affair.

Engel converted 5-of-13 passes for 150 yards and got intercepted once by Pieczonka. Koops turned in a workhorse effort carrying the ball, totaling 134 yards on 25 rushes.

“It was really us just playing within our system,” Rehage said. “Our kids know we’re pretty good, and in the first half we couldn’t have played any worse than we did. We made some adjustments and then just hit some critical RPOs. Dickie’s really good at the RPO game. He presses it. He rides the fakes. He does everything needs to do.

“We’re very senior-laden and all of our starters started at some point last year, but some of our guys got baptized tonight. It was big-boy football out there.”

Dallio recovered a fumble and paced Harrison with 12 tackles. Jayden Little had 10 tackles, two for loss.

“We were a little sketchy on defense in the first half because we didn’t know exactly how they were playing, but we came out hot in the second half,” Dallio said. “I think we just knew we were a better team than them and that we could handle anything that they sent at us. They got us pretty good last year, but this year is our year.”

“Coming into this game, we might have underestimated them a little bit,” Adelsperger said. “But after halftime, our senior captains stepped up like we needed them to and everybody just played their brand of ball and that was it. I don’t think there is a bar with this team. The sky’s the limit.”

The Wildcats will host Indian Hill next Friday, while the Trojans will be on the road to face Moeller.

“As a coaching staff, we’ve got to figure out a little bit about this football team,” Meiners said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to put the boys in better situations. Football is a simple game. When they create more turnovers than what you do, it’s tough to walk away with a victory.”

East Central 14-7-0-7 — 28

Harrison 7-6-8-14 — 35

EC: Nolan Maple 1 run (Leland Kahny kick)

H: Preston Flick 71 pass from Dickie Engel (David Baldock kick)

EC: Ryan Minges 4 run (Kahny kick)

H: Hank Rotert 12 pass from Engel (Kick blocked)

EC: Minges 6 run (Kahny kick)

H: Cole Koops 5 run (Rotert pass from Engel)

EC: Alex Kuhn 4 run (Kahny kick)

H: Engel 4 run (Baldock kick)

H: Josh Adelsperger 27 pass from Engel (Baldock kick)

Records: EC 1-1, H 2-0