Lowell rallies to beat Indpls Roncalli 28-27, captures Class 4A state crown at RCA Dome
	A USA-365.com Special Report By Mark Smith 11-27-2005

Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005,  Class 4A, State Championship at RCA Dome

1st Qtr:  (RONCALLI 7-0) - Chris Merkel, 4-yard run. 42-yard drive, 9 plays. Chad Hert kick.  6:57 left.

2nd Qtr:  (LOWELL 7-7) - Scott Gray, 8-yard run. 68-yard drive, 5 plays. David Lang kick.  6:11 left.
(RONCALLI 14-7) - Andy Barkocy, 64-yard pass from Paul Corsaro. Hert kick.  5:14 left.
(RONCALLI 21-7) - Bill Perry, 7-yard pass from Corsaro, Paul Hert kick.  2:28 left.
3rd Qtr:  (LOWELL 14-21)  - Scott Gray, 1-yard run.  70 yard drive, 15 plays.  Lang kick. 5:04 left.
(RONCALLI 27-14) - Brandon Axum, 24-yard run. Kick blocked by Jimmy Ritter. 71-yard drive, 9 plays. 1:25 left
4th Qtr:  (LOWELL 21-27) - Jeff Clemens, 20-yard pass from Jimmy Ritter. 65 yard drive, 10 plays. Lang kick. 9:12 left.
(LOWELL 28-27) - Scott Gray, 4-yard run.  28-yard drive, 4 plays. Lang kick. 5:51 left.

RUSHING: 

LOWELL (52-267 yards) Scott Gray 19-153; Steffan Peck 8-54; Jeff Clemens 11-46; Jimmy Ritter 11-18
RONCALLI (36-150) Chris Merkel 22-109; Nick Barton 2-23;
Brandon Axum 2-20; Kirk Cahill  2-12; Paul Corsaro (8-minus-14).

PASSING: 

Jimmy Ritter 7-of-13, 67 yards, one TD, 0 INTs.
Paul Corsaro (R) 7-of-10, 120 yards, 2 TDs, one INT.

RECEIVING:

LOWELL - Jeff Clemens (L) 3-41 yards;  Steffan Peck (L) 2-8; Chris Lampa (L) 1-11;
Joe Wojcik  1-7.   

RONCALLI - Andy Barkocy (R) 1-64 yards; Kirk Cahill (R) 1-13 yards; Eric Duncan (R) 1-13; 

Joe Britner (R) 1-11; Chris Merkel (R) 1-7; Bill Perry (R) 1-7; Rory Babb (R) 1-5.

INTERCEPTIONS: 

LOWELL-Josh Kuiper 1-18..

FUMBLES: 

Gray (L) one;  Corsaro (R) one
   
SACKS : 

LOWELL-Chris Lampa 2, Jeff Barker;  RONCALLI-Brandon Roberts

TACKLES : 

LOWELL - CLEMENS, Jeff 10; KUIPER, Josh 7; KING, Ryan 4; GRAY, Scott 3; LAMPA, Chris 4; WINEL, Ethan 1; TRAVIS, Jed 2;
DOWLING, Mike 1; McGEE, Eric 2; BARKER, Jeff 2; LANG, David 1;
STANIEWICZ, Mike 1; PECK, Steffan 1; LUNSFORD, Mark 1. 

RONCALLI - PERRY, Bill 7; WILSON, Steve 4; BONICH, Nick 6; LALLY, Chris 4; AGRESTA, Jordan 7;
MERKEL, Nick 6; AXUM, Brandon 6; ROBERTS,Brandon 4; PETERMAN, Tyler 3;
DANHAUER, Kyle 3; JENKINS, Josh 3 LAWSON, Lyle 2; DUNCAN, Eric 0; BABB,
Rory 1 KOLISEK, Jake 1; BOVA, Matt 0; MASENGALE, Pete 0.

Officials: 

Referee: Robert Kania; Umpire: William Sorukas; Linesman: Albert DeRue;
Line judge: John Coppens; Back judge: Tim Stutsman; Scorer: D. George;

INDIANAPOLIS, IN (11-26-2005) - It was Lowell's greatest day ever.  The day they found that the playing field for David and Goliath was the same one.  The day they walked with kings and then became one.

The day when Lowell rallied from a 13-point fourth quarter deficit to simultaneously end the three-year state championship reign of tradition-rich Roncalli, and win the south Lake County school's first-ever state championship, 28-27 in a spectacular 4A state football championship game on the floor of the RCA Dome in downtown Indianapolis.

I know the hardtop home of the Indianapolis Colts makes the fan noise sound louder.  But I've never heard anything like the roar from the 5,000 Lowell fans when a touchdown pass from Jimmy Ritter to Jeff Clemens cut the defending state champions lead to 27-21 with 9:12 left.  Or when junior Josh Kuiper made a pivotal interception with 7:29 to go.  Or when Scott Gray's four-yard run put the Devils ahead for the first time with 5:51 to go.

A group of boys who always thought they could be champions, but until recently, never imagined they would be, put a period on Lowell high school athletic history.  In almost a century of Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) sports state championships, Saturday was the first time a team from Lowell had won anything.  But in doing so, the Devils painted a come-from-behind against-all-odds state finals masterpiece unlike any in the 33-year history of the Indiana state tournament.

Coach Kirk Kennedy, who was 2-8 in his first season at Lowell in 1991, was overwhelmed by the dramatic rally and the biggest victory in Lowell history. "I'm just happy for all these coaches who have worked so hard and all these boys who hung in there and believed that we would get this thing back on track (after a 1-4 start to the season).  What we do is not flashy so it must be in the execution.  I'm just the driver and I turn the key.  These other guys make it happen."

Teams have upset other teams in the title game before, but this was not just another team.  Roncalli (12-3), the south side Indianapolis Catholic school with eight state titles in the last quarter century, dominated Lowell for a half.  The Rebels were trying for prep immortality. Roncalli wanted to become the first football class in state history to win four state championships.  Lowell (11-4), which had rallied to beat two unranked foes to reach the school's first-ever state title game, showed life in the third period, but still trailed 27-14 with ten minutes left in the season.  Don't let anybody tell you that Roncalli was not the better team or that the Rebels didn't play well or have ultimate motivation on this day.  But the favorites were stalked down the stretch on a late November Saturday afternoon as the unranked Lowell boys just made play after play to win what might be the greatest Hoosier state title game upset of all time.

"Roncalli is a helluva team," said Lowell star Jeff Clemens, who made 12 tackles and caught a fourth-quarter TD pass to ignite the winning rally.  "They played their hearts out.  We didn't look at it as them having won three straight state championships.  We just looked at them as another team we have to beat."

"We're just a second half team.  We have been all year.  We just stepped it up and made some big play.  This feels awesome.  The best game of my life."

Senior Chris Lampa, who blitzed for a sack of Roncalli QB Paul Corsaro to shoot down the Rebel's last possession, said the entire season, right down to the final game, had almost been scripted.

"Look at this place," he said. "We're in a professional stadium.  Everyone from Lowell is here.  Maybe we came out a little timid.  Everyone favored Roncalli.  They've won three tiles in a row. They're legendary in Indiana.  But it was just like last week (down 14-0 at the half) against Fort Wayne South.  This is the story of our season.  We're down and we come back. Everyone on this team has the heart and desire and they don't quit."

Lineman Jed Travis simply said, "I don't believe this."

There were many chances to quit.  Lowell trailed by 14 at the half and it might have been worse if not for a sack by Lampa on Corsaro that turned the ball over at midfield in the final minute of the second quarter.  Roncalli, which had won 23 playoff games in a row, had scored on three of their first four possessions while Lowell had fumbled at their own 22-yard-line and committed an illegal procedure penalty, nullifying a 30-yard field goal by David Lang.

But the Devils drove 70 yards on 15 plays to start the third quarter with Gray scoring on a 3rd-and-goal play from the one-yard-line.   Thirteen of the 15 plays were runs by Clemens, Gray or Ritter.  Roncalli responded by going 71 yards in nine plays to make it 27-14 on a 24-yard run by Brandon Axum, but Ritter blocked the extra point.  Then, with the large Lowell fan following growing louder behind them, the Devils drove 65 yards in 11 plays to score on a 21-yard Ritter to Clemens pass dropped into a crowd of defenders with 9:12 left in the game.

It was probably Lowell's effective persistence (they did not punt in the entire game) that influenced Roncalli coach Bruce Scifres to call for QB Paul Corsaro to pass on a 3rd-and-11 from the Roncalli 30-yard-line with less than eight minutes to play and a six point lead. 

Kuiper, who began the season as Lowell's part-time quarterback, charged up from the safety position, a spot he rarely plays, and grabbed his first career interception with 7:29 left.

"He's been a quarterback, outside linebacker," said Kennedy. "In this defense he's a safety. He made a great play."

With the Devil crowd on their feet, Lowell scored from the 28-yard-line in four plays, alternating runs but Gray and Clemens.  The speed of Lowell's two players on the artificial turf and the effectiveness of Lowell's offensive line created the winning TD.

"I cant believe it," said Lowell center and linebacker Ryan King.  "I don't know if I'm going to be able to believe it until I get on the bus.  I'm exhausted from the game.  I wasn't ever sure we'd win until we stopped the final plays.  But we did it and now we're state champions."

Scifres, who has only lost 39 games in 16 years, thought his team had opened the door for the Devils, who charged through it.

"We just shot ourselves in the foot in the second half," the coach said later. "It's not like Roncalli to give up leads.  Their kids played very hard.  Lowell blocked a PAT, we throw an interception and we had a kickoff return for a touchdown called back. Some of that was self-imposed and obviously a lot of it had to do with (Lowell's) kids playing their hearts out and making plays.  Lowell has a great team and they did a great job."

After Lowell took the 28-27 lead, Axum grabbed the kickoff an raced 86 yards for a touchdown. But a penalty called early in the run, erased the potential wining score. 

Roncalli drove 30 yards in 11 plays but a sack of Corsaro by Lampa and Mike Staniewicz gave the ball back to Lowell with 1:15 to play. Since Roncalli had no time outs, Lowell QB Jimmy Ritter just dropped to a knee three times and the clock ran out.

Lowell Coach Kirk Kennedy, 115-59 in his 15th year at the school, was all smiles after his first rallied to defeat Roncalli 28-27 for the state Class 4A Championship Nov. 26 at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

"This game is a perfect example of what happens when the underdog hangs in there," said Kennedy.  "The favorite tightens up a bit and we got full of confidence.  Next thing you know the tables have turned.  We definitely outlasted them down the stretch."

Roncalli was a bigger team physically with players like senior offensive tackle Will Roush (6-5, 318) and junior tight end Joe Britner (6-6, 226).

"Just like last week. Last week their tackling got less effective as time went on and that's a result of getting tired, recalled senior linebacker/tight end Chris Lampa. "Conditioning. Conditioning's a part of football that a lot of people have forgotten about."

"It's a tribute to everyone on the team," Lampa said.  "There was no giving up because it was the last game of the season.  There is no next week.  It's a tribute to the coaching staff.  They would not let our best not come out.  It's a tribute to the town. Look at everybody's who's here.  It's just a tribute to every player who ever played."

Lowell simply never gave up and put together a fourth quarter rally that will live on tape and in print after all of them have long since gone on to bigger and better things.  Teams will pull state finals upsets again, but it is highly unlikely that an underdog on the field (Roncalli was a 14-point computer favorite) and in the athletic stature of the school will ever again be defeated by a team with absolutely no state profile, much less state caliber team success.

"We earned our way here," Kennedy said. "Something didn't happen to somebody else to get us here.  We had to beat people.  And when we got here today we made the best of it.  I guess the best thing I can say about it all is that we earned it.  They won the first half 21-7 and we won the second half 21-6."

"Our job as coaches is to get them to do things they don't think they can do.  But they have to do them.  These guys earned the right to be tired today. That was a great football team we beat.  We beat a lot of tradition.  And it's a great story."

It's a full length movie.  For a school that had compiled 23 consecutive non-winning seasons in the period from 1969 to 1992 and had never even played a game south of Monticello to go to Indianapolis and come from 13 points behind in the final 10 minutes to defeat the south side Indianapolis Catholic school, the three-time defending state champ, might be the greatest high school football story ever told.  At least in Lowell.

STATE CHAMPIONSHIP NOTES:  Lowell's Ethan Winel is leaving Lowell as his family is moving to Illinois.  He will attend Montini Catholic.   "I start school Tuesday," he said after the game.  "I never thought it would come down to this.  I've known for about a month and every game we won kept me here another week.  I have to wait 30 days to wrestle (because of the transfer)."

Winel explained Lowell's first half problems.

"We were running around on defense," he said. "Everybody trying to play everyone else's position, not our own.  We had more gas in the second half.  I think we wore them out."

Paid attendance at the RCA Dome Saturday was 31,964 for three games, an average of almost 3,200 paying fans per school.  The bump was largely due to huge crowds from Roncalli, Lowell and Northwood, who brought very large groups, considering the size (all have less than 1200 students) of the schools. There was a caravan of cars painted with Lowell well-wishes and slogans rolling south down I-65 in the morning and early afternoon sun Saturday.  The two-day attendance for the football state finals was 44,303, the fourth largest since the state moved to five classes in the 1980s.

Early in the season, Lowell's Jimmy Ritter didn't run the ball at all, but Saturday he carried 11 times, making the Devils more difficult to defense.

"To his credit, he hung in there," said coach Kirk Kennedy.  "He took a lot of big hits.  To his credit, he kept coming.  When we run that power sweep we run, we get a lot of blockers at the point of attack.  If we can sustain our blocks with three or four bodies in front of him, I like those odds."

Jeff Clemens, who seems never to tire during the game, carried the state title trophy around on the field afterwards. 

"It's heavy," he said of the four foot high wooden award.  "But I'm going to hang onto it."

Clemens said he learned to understand his coach.

"You can learn a lot from coach Kennedy. He's got a lot to say and if you can take it all in you can take it all in, you become a better man."

Scott Gray carried 19 times for 153 yards and finished the 15-game season with 322 carries for a Lowell school record 2, 336 yards, unofficially the most by any NW Indiana running back in the 33 years of the Indiana state tournament.  Gray ended the season with 31 touchdowns.

Gray thought Roncalli got tired as the game went on.

"I thought they did," he said. "You could see it.  We have seven or eight guys going both ways.  I didn't have any legs in the first half, but it got better. The funny thing about that first run (Gray had a 50-yard run in the second quarter) was that we audibled and the fullback went the wrong way. I had two guys in the whole and I just tried to make them both miss."

Lowell's running game picked up as the season progressed. 

"We made some changes," said Gray. "We moved Ryan (King) to center and Travis to guard. That helped a lot. And Randy Layman went back to tackle.  Mike (Staniewicz) improved so much.  At the start of the year he was a little shaky and by the end he had gotten so much better."

Roncalli's Paul Corsaro tossed a 64-yard TD pass to Andy Barkocy, the longest TD pass ever in a 4A title game.  Roncalli senior Chris Merkel gained 109 yards on 22 carries giving him 1,988 yards on 332 carries.  The Rebels debated the clip call on Axum's potential game-winning TD and they also thought that Jimmy Ritter had fumbled near the goal line before Lowell's second TD in the third period. Ritter clearly did not fumble but the clip on Clemens was a weak call.  To be fair, however, obvious pass interference against Steffan Peck was ignored in the second quarter.  The penalty that should have been flagged would have given Lowell a 1st-and-goal situation at the Roncalli 7-yard-line.

Jimmy Ritter completed 7 of 13 passes for 67 yards to push him over the 1,000-yard mark for the year. Ritter (86-153, 1,045 yards) is Lowell's first 1,000-yard passer in this decade.

Roncalli has allowed just 168 points all season. The Rebels' last playoff loss was 17-14 in overtime to Cathedral on Nov. 2, 2001.  This was the Rebels' 12th state championship game, they sold over 4,000 tickets for the game creating a sea of red, white and blue across from the Lowell sideline.  The upper deck of the 55,000-seat RCA Dome is closed off for high school games and the crowd looks bigger than it is.

Roncalli linebacker Nick Banich was given the Class 4 state finals Mental Attitude Award after the game. Banich is a 4.1 student  and football co-captain.  Northwood, wearing all-black uniforms -- almost exact copies of Lowell's home jerseys, upset a lifeless Bishop Chatard 7-0 for the 3A state title, Northwood's first crown in six title games.  The loss for Chatard was their first-ever after seven state title game wins.

The ominous note is, Chatard had just eight seniors in the two-platoon starting lineup.  All-stater Joe Holland (331 carries, 2,257 yards, 32 TDs), a similar player to Lowell's Jeff Clemens, and fellow halfback Tyler Kleinschmidt (100 carries, 770 yards both return) and their sophomore class includes a core group of defenders who reportedly allowed only seven points in three years in grade school football.

Warren Central won a third consecutive 5A state title with a 55-20 rout of Hamilton Southeastern. Warren Central senior QB Dexter Taylor carried 12 times for 158 yards giving him 145 carries for 2,111 yards for the season.  Junior fullback Darren Evans (6-1, 208) returns next season after finishing the year with 240 carries for 2,167 yards.  A lot of Warren's success has to do with an offensive line that averages 260 pounds per man and most of them also return in 2006.

Southeastern high will split into Southeastern and Fishers in 2006.  Both reportedly will be Class 5A in football as Southeastern had 3,300 students in four grades this year.

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Revised: November 28, 2005 .