Semi-State Championship
Fishers 30, Valparaiso 12
Class 5A Semi-State Championship Date: Friday November 19, 2010 Location: Fishers
NWI Times - Steve Hanlon FISHERS | There was 1:13 left in the third quarter of Friday night's Class 5A northern semistate. The Valparaiso fans, as they had all year, were loud and going crazy. Fishers, up 16-6, was punting inside its own 20. Tiger R.C. Hauser awaited the snap as the noise got louder. It came. It hit his hands and bounded behind him. All of Northwest Indiana cheered the door opening in this fretful 5A tournament. A Viking poured in on Hauser and most expected to find Valpo with the ball inside the 10. But the 6-foot-2, 180-pounder took off down the sideline and picked up the first down. After Fishers' 30-12 win that one play was symbolic of what transpired on Friday night and much of the last decade: Speed kills. Indianapolis teams have it. Region teams don't have enough. "He put on the after-burners," said Fishers coach Rick Wimmer, who coached at Merrillville for nine years before heading to Indiana's 5A football mecca in central Indiana. Vikings coach Mark Hoffman summed up the play that cost Valpo a chance and has kept our biggest schools out of Indy since 2001. "Against the teams we play, we get the ball inside their 20," Hoffman said of the botched punt that turned into a first down that turned into a semistate championship,"and they go 30 yards on it." Wimmer left the Duneland Athletic Conference in 1996. He praised the way the Vikings played his high-octane team. When asked about the biggest difference between Indy and us in 5A, it was simple. "We had a little bit more speed," Wimmer said. "They are the only region team we've played. They have a very good, physical football team. We had a lot of things go our way or it could've been a different ball game." Valpo linebacker Jacob Grossnickle had a monster game. He easily had 10 tackles and most of the hits he had would've blown smoke out of a steel mill pipe. They were hard. They made noise. You could see the pain on the Tigers' players when they got up. Valpo's blue-collar defense played like this all year, which is why they were the best team in the area. But two fumbles gave up 10 points early and the inability to stop the big plays gave Fishers the ability to wear the Vikings down. Despite what the scoreboard said, take four or five plays and do a switcharoo and we're talking about how Valpo got back to Indy in its seventh semistate game in school history. "It was a combination of luck and skill," Grossnickle said. "I don't think they were any faster than any other team we've played. Speed was not a factor except for the long balls and the breakaways. We played really well in the first three quarters." True, it was 7-0 inside a minute to play in the second quarter when Fishers QB Koby Orris hit Hauser on a 92-yard scoring pass. Valpo's defense was phenomenal all year. It was for 95 percent of the plays on Friday night. It was that other five percent that shifted the scoreboard. Speed kills. The Indianapolis teams have it. We don't have enough. "We made some mistakes and against their speed and athletes it's hard to come back," Hoffman said. "I thought Merrillville's team last year was every bit as good as this team." Yes, we are getting closer. We've never won a 5A state title. It will come. "Next year," Grossnickle said. Maybe. But we've got to get the lead out of our cleats. |
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