Lowell advances to 4A State Finals with 24-21 Semistate win over Ft. Wayne Dwenger

LOWELL (11-21-2009) You don't want to close your eyes.  You don't want to fall asleep.  Because you'd miss some of this.  And with Lowell, you don't want to miss a thing.  Right now it's the 'Greatest Show on Turf'.  People come from far and wide to a place that few may know.  They stand in the rain and the wind and the cold.  To watch the magic show.

Saturday night in front of 4,000 fans packed into Lowell's football stadium the Devils wrote another act to Northwest Indiana's longest running hit football show.  Facing undefeated state superpower Bishop Dwenger, one of the original gangsters of the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) state tournament, underdog Lowell traded punches in the cold, still November night as fans of both schools alternated roller coasters of roaring support.

Seemingly overmatched at times against the state's second-ranked team and its three (at least) Division I prospects, Lowell lifted their game to a place that only they have been able to go in this decade.  Falling behind on two long range Dwenger TDs, Lowell rallied to tie both times before getting a late field goal from senior rookie Boge Pejoski with 4:33 to play to advance to the Class 4A state finals for the third time in five years with a 24-21 upset win.

It's not so much a shock that Lowell can pull off a big upset anymore.  This is the team that overcame 10-point deficits three weeks in a row to win the 2005 state title.  This is also the school that won three consecutive road playoff games and upset then-top-ranked and undefeated Dwenger 10-7 in November of 2007 to reach the state title game.  This time they were asked to defeat four Top-10 teams in five weeks to reach the title game.  And the final one was Dwenger, a squad that had outscored 13 foes 593-89 on the way to 13 consecutive wins.

"We knew we were up against it," said Lowell coach Kirk Kennedy who will lead his school in its third appearance in the state finals next weekend.

"I don't know if I saw number 20, Remound Wright, tackled on film at all.  We knew we were going to have to play strong as a unit and maybe beyond our capabilities.  And tonight, we did that.  We had to have faith, believe, and have the courage to turn it loose and go out and get after it."

Bishop Dwenger superstar junior HB Remound Wright (20 carries, 230 yards) appeared unstoppable at times, but Lowell didn't let three long quick-strike TDs break their spirit and Mike Sekulowski's interception of a tipped pass and 50-yard return set up Boge Pejoski's go-ahead field goal with 4:33 to play.

Many of us thought we'd see an outstanding game at that point.  We had no idea what was coming next.  The game got totally out of hand in the final minute.  The Saints began driving from their own 15 with 1:19 to play.  Dwenger quarterback Wade Markley completed four passes in a row to move his team into Lowell territory.  With the three-point lead Lowell appeared to stop Bishop Dwenger on a 4th-and-2 in front of the Dwenger bench at the Lowell 38 with 29 seconds remaining.  Lowell boys watched measurement, began jumping up and down and celebrated wildly.  But seconds later, game referees apparently reconsidered and re-measured, giving BD a first down at the 38, setting off a roar from the visitors' stands and the standing room only fans behind the perimeter fence on the east side of the field.

In the midst of howls of complaints from the jam-packed home grandstand, play continued.  Two plays later, Markley completed a third down pass to Wright, who had scored his 36th touchdown of the season in the third quarter.  But the Devils tackled the 180-pound halfback for a one-yard loss before he could get to the sidelines and, as the Saints hurried to line up, the clock at the north end of the field ran down to zero.  But, as many contended the game was over, the referees ruled that BD got a final play attempt off with one second left.

Markley, Dwenger's 6-foot-4 quarterback fired a long fourth down pass down the field trying to win it all.  Lowell's Brandon Grubbe was called for pass interference in front of the Red Devil bench for knocking down Dwenger's Joel Gerardot even though the ball was nowhere near the receiver.  With the clock at zero, Dwenger was awarded one final un-timed play.  With everyone in the stadium standing, BD senior Emerson Ueber's 37-yard potential game-tying field goal sailed wide left (just barely) to end the three-hour game and dozens of Red Devil rooters rushed the field.

"Talk about an emotional roller-coaster," said Kennedy.  "That was it right there.  The referee said the ball (on the measurement at the 38) barely nicked the post.  I don't know what our kids saw.  And (on the next to last play) I don't know why they weren't called for illegal procedure.  They came back to the line and they snapped the ball.  They weren't set."

"But maybe that's why the field goal was wide left.  There was some justice."

The fourth down measurement at the 38 was apparently open to interpretation.  Dwenger head coach Chris Svarczkopf, standing right over the ball, convinced the referees that his team did indeed get that final first down.

"When they stretched the chain out," said linebacker Anthony DeMario, "we thought they were short.  But they said it was good.  You've just got to play the next play."

"They were short, I swear," said Lowell senior Nate Cleveland, gesturing to explain the scene.  "The ball was here.  The chain was here."

"The center wasn't set but they snapped the ball," said Mike Sekuloski.  "I was watching the clock.  They're a great team.  We're pretty good.  This is just awesome."

"I don't know what to say," said Lowell quarterback Ray Skamay, who ran on the field only in spirit in the final minute. "I was jumping up and down on the sidelines.  I must've looked like an idiot."

The frantic final minute left the entire stadium in an uproar and no one could immediately recall anything like it.

"Not with so much on the line," Kennedy said.  "Especially when you consider what this game meant."

The Devils, as they sometimes do, seemed overmatched early in the game.  Dwenger drove 83 yards with the opening kickoff only to have Ueber miss a 27-yard field goal.  Lowell then went 80 yards to score on a one-yard fourth down second quarter run by Brandon Grubbe, who gained an unofficial 161 yards on 37 carries and moved into second place (375 carries, 2,238 yards) behind Scott Gray (323 carries, 2,336 yards in 2005) on the all-time single season Lowell rushing list.

Dwenger's Wright took a pitchout 37 yards to tie the game with 2:30 left in the half and on the first play of the second half, Wright broke loose off right tackle and raced 76 yards to give the Saints a 14-7 lead.

Lowell drove 7 yards in 10 plays to tie the game with 3:57 remaining in the third quarter on a 21-yard run by Cole Midgett.  But senior Landon Feitcher took the ensuing kickoff back 86 yards to put the Saints ahead 21-14 just 12 seconds later.

Then a key play.  Dwenger had been booting high-arching popup kicks to keep the ball away from Midgett and Grubbe, Lowell's main kick returners.  But this time, Jordan Juarez, who called for a fair catch on two previous kickoffs, caught Dwenger's final kickoff at the 25 yard line and raced through the Saints' defense all the way to the Dwenger 7-yard-line.  Grubbe scored one play later, the third TD in 30 seconds, creating a 21-21 tie going into the fourth quarter.

That Lowell, with just four returning starters from last year's 13-1 team, is going to the state championship game, is amazing enough.  There are so many stories about this years' Lowell squad.  Nate Cleveland did not play football in 2007 so he missed the last state title game.  Twin brothers Mike and Chris Sekuloski, who were freshman in 2007, now both start in the final game.  Cole Midgett, whose brother Cody reached the state finals in 2007, now starts for the 2009 team.

But none are more ironic than Brandon Grubbe, who started the 2007 state title game, a 33-14 loss to Evansville Reitz, but broke his arm on a running play midway through the first quarter and had to be carried off the field.  There is no way he thought he'd be coming back.

"Especially after that pass interference penalty tonight," he joked in the post-game picture taking.  "I thought they started to get a little tired after we scored our first touchdown.  They made those big plays so we just had to keep making plays."

The boys didn't want to leave the field as the Lowell athletic department left the lights on the scoreboard on for at least 45 minutes after the game.  So, if anybody needed confirmation, they could look up at the 24-21 final score displayed in red lights.  The Devils' seniors didn't want to miss a thing in their final home game.

This win spoke to home field advantage.  This was a better Bishop Dwenger team than the one Lowell lost to 38-22 in Fort Wayne last November.  Lowell has won six regional titles and they are 3-3 in semistate competition.  The Devils are 0-3 in semistate games on the road and 3-0 at home.

"Maybe you reach down deeper at home when you're defending your home turf," Kennedy suggested.  "It's a big advantage.  You try to down play it in a coach.  One team has to travel across the state of Indiana while the other team just has to eat breakfast and go to school.  Obviously we're more comfortable at home."

For the third time in five years, the Devils can call Indianapolis their Thanksgiving home away from home.

LOWELL:  Lowell (13-1) faces undefeated Reitz Memorial (14-0) of Evansville Saturday, Nov. 28 at 2:30 p.m. (CST) in the state championship game in the Devils first game ever in the two-year old 67,000-seat Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.  Among Northwest Indiana teams, only Hobart and Andrean have also reached three state title games in a five-year span in the 37-year history of the state football tournament.

Junior Dwenger halfback Remound Wright (5-9, 190) who, along with junior defensive end Tony Springman (6-7, 240) is said to be undergoing a recruiting evaluation by Notre Dame, finished the 2009 season with 1,862 yards and 36 touchdowns on 201 carries.  The Saints, the undefeated champions of Fort Wayne's Summit Athletic Conference (SAC), brought a slightly larger crowd to Lowell than they did when they lost the 2007 semistate game 10-7 to Lowell on Nov. 16, 2007.  This time, Dwenger fans were standing behind the fence at the northeast and southeast ends if the field.  The 2007 game was played on a Friday night, and apparently, the Saturday 6:00 p.m. kickoff allowed more fans to attend.

Lowell has set a NW Indiana record as they have defeated 4A No. 6 Plymouth, 4A No. 9 Washington, 4A No. 10 Morton and 4A No. 2 Dwenger in the post-season.  No NW Indiana team in the 37 years of the state tournament has ever defeated four Top-10 teams to reach the finals.  It's hard to determine whether anyone in the entire state has ever defeated five Top-10 teams on the way to the state title.

Coach Kirk Kennedy is always asked about his halftime adjustments and he usually says there really aren't many.

"Our halftime adjustments?" said Kennedy Saturday.  "That's coach (Brad) Stewart and coach (Jim) Carlson.  I just go in there and holler at them and make myself field better.  The real adjustments are coach Carlson and coach Stewart and the line coaches."

What usually rallies Lowell is conditioning.  Some Lowell alums come back later and say the Lowell practices are tougher than what you go through on some college football teams.

"I thought they looked tired after we scored the first time," Cleveland said.  "It was obvious that number 20 (Remound Wright) was their go-to guy.  But we just had to make plays."

Cleveland was the first to warn about not celebrating too much five games into a six-game playoff.

"It's pretty cool," he said of reaching the finals.  "Its great.  But we've got to treat it like another game.  We can't make too big a deal out of it.  We've got to play the game."

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Revised: November 22, 2009 .