Lowell wins regional on road over Concord 30-23
	A USA-365.com Special Report By Mark Smith 11-12-2005

Friday, Nov. 11, 2005,  48 degrees, dry - Class 4A, Regional at Elkhart

1st Qtr:  CONCORD (6-0)- Monty Marion 56 run.  56 yard, one play. (kick wide)  2:47 left.

2nd Qtr:  LOWELL (6-7) Scott Gray 2 run.  66-yard drive, 11 plays. (David Lang kick) 9:46 left.
LOWELL (6-10) David Lang 22 field goal.  65-yard drive, 12 plays. 2:17 left.
CONCORD (13-10) James Cira 48 pass from Bobby Cira. 59-yard drive, 3 plays  (Jeremy Howard kick) 1:40 left.
3rd Qtr:  LOWELL (13-17) Gray, 4-yard run.  72-yard run, 15 plays.  (Lang kick) 4:11 left.
4th Qtr:  CONCORD (20-17)  Eric Jackowiak 13 pass from Bobby Cira. 83-yard drive, 15 plays.  (Howard kick) 9:09 left.
LOWELL (20-23) Gray, 94-yard run. 94-yard drive, one play. (kick failed) 8:48 left.
CONCORD (23-23) Howard 36-yard field goal. 42-yard drive, 4 plays.  7:12 left.
LOWELL (23-30)  Jeff Clemens, 6-yard run. 73-yard run, 13 plays (Lang kick) 0:52 left.

RUSHING:

LOWELL  282, CONCORD 122
Scott Gray (L) 30-193, Steffan Peck (L) 7-29, Jeff Clemens (L) 5-32, Ethan Winel (L) 1-1  

Monty Marion (C) 12-97, Bobby Cira (C) 7-26, Mike Meade (C) 2-5

PASSING:

LOWELL  98, CONCORD:  226
Jimmy Ritter  5-of-7, 98 yards, Bobby Cira 12-of-31, 226 yards, 2 TDs, one INT

RECEIVING:

Mike Meade (C) 7-110 yards, Jimmy Cira (C) 4-100 yards, TD; Eric Jackowiak (C) 1-12 yards, TD
Jeff Clemens (L) 4-61 yards, Joe Wojcik (L) 1-9 yards; Steffan peck (L) 1-28 yards

PUNTS:

Jeff Clemens  (L) 3/38, Mike Meade (C)  2/38

PENALTIES:

LOWELL -  2/21 yards;  CONCORD - 8/65 yards

TURNOVERS:

LOWELL (0);  CONCORD (1)

TOTAL YARDS:

LOWELL - 380, CONCORD -  348

FIRST DOWNS:

LOWELL -  20, CONCORD -  16

ELKHART, IN (11-11-2005) - They were supposed to be here. And, in the end, they played like it. 

Lowell was the Class 4A Sectional nine favorite. You can talk about the 1-4 start and the seven game winning streak, but if you go back to the pre-season game plan,  Lowell was supposed to be in the regional championship game.  But I don't know if they were supposed to win it like this.

"To have to come all the way here to Concord?" asked senior Chris Lampa. "We were totally the underdog tonight."

The Lowell Red Devils enter the field prior to the opening kick-off at the Concord Regional, 11-11-2005.

Concord's QB Bobby Cira #3 kept the Lowell pass rush busy en route to his 12-of-31 passing for 226 yards, 2 TDs and one INT.  Lowell came from behind to win 30-23 on 11-11-2005.

The Lowell student section in the visitors' stands react favorably to the Red Devils's play on the field.

Lowell's Jonathan Capp #12, Michael Staniewicz #76 and Joe Carlson #40 raise their helmets in celebration  of their 30-23 Regional title win over Concord, 11-11-2005.

The day following their Regional tourney victory, the Lowell football players posed for a "street clothes" team photo, 11-12-2005.  Players in the front row hold a ribbon reading "Regional Champions."

And at the half, with Concord leading 13-10 and receiving the second half kickoff on their home field, things looked darker than a November Elkhart sky.

"I told them that in the next 24 minutes somebody's going to win this game and somebody's going to go home and get ready for next year," said 15th-year coach Kirk Kennedy after the 30-23 come-from-behind Lowell upset.

"I'm so proud of them. I can't say enough about them right now."
    
It wasn't the greatest game the Devils have ever played. But when they had to be, Lowell, the ground-oriented, hard-hitting strikers that simply possessed the ball longer than the other side, the Devil in them came out.  Trailing 13-10, Lowell drove 72 yards in seven minutes and 15 plays to go ahead.  Tied 23-23 in the fourth quarter, Lowell drove 73 yards in 14 plays and six minutes to go ahead to stay.

"Another thing we talked about at halftime was imparting our will on our opponent," said Kennedy, who will coach his third semistate game when the Devils host Fort Wayne South (11-2) next Friday at 7:30 p.m.  "Somebody's going to impose their will on the other team. You saw their response to being behind in the fourth quarter and you saw ours."

No doubt about that. Both teams saved their best for the second half.

The chilled crowd of about 3,500 was somewhat quiet in the first half, but Lowell's drive and four-yard TD run by Scott Gray changed that. Concord (9-4), another of those high-flying passing teams out of the Northern Lakes Conference (NCL) immediately went 83 yards in 15 plays to take a 20-17 lead.  Junior quarterback Bobby Cira (14 of 26, 245 yards) fired a 16-yard TD to Eric Jacowiak with 9:09 left in the game.

Lowell (9-4) needed to respond and they did.  Gray, who was held to just 42 yards in the first half, took a pitchout, broke through the line behind right tackle Mike Staniewicz (6-5, 253) and ran into history.  Gray (5-8, 176) outran the Concord defense for a 94-yard TD play as the Lowell crowd of about 500 roared their approval.

The senior sprinter simultaneously put his side ahead 23-20 with 8:48 to go and ran over the 2,000-yard mark for the season. Gray (289 carries, 2,050 yards) became the second Lowell player and just the eighth player in the modern history of NW Indiana high school football to rush for 2,000 yards in one season.

But nobody noticed because the game wasn't over yet.  Cira (165-288, 2,924 yards), who finished his junior season with almost 3,000 yards passing quickly fired a 42-yard pass over the top of the Lowell defense to 6-foot-4, 1,000-yard receiver Michael Meade (54-1,215 yards) at the Lowell 20.  The Devils' defense held but Jeremy Howard tied the game with a 36-yard field goal with 7:12 to play.

Three touchdowns in two minutes had everybody all upset.

"What we do is line up the ball and run right at you," said Kennedy. "What they do is spread the field and throw it all over. That's what they do best. Two opposite ends of the spectrum. Two great teams and we just made a couple more plays at the end."    

Those plays came on the 73-yard winning drive that included 13 running plays. Lowell inserted wide receiver Jeff Clemens at fullback with Scot Gray, went with three tight ends and telegraphed that they were going to run the ball the rest of the way. The Devils converted two third downs and a 4th-and-1 at the Concord 20 before Clemens's 6-yard run scored the winning TD.

"That was awesome," the Lowell senior said. "We did it all because of our line. We've got good running backs, but it was the line that makes it happen.  I wanted the ball. They'd been beating on me all night long and I wanted to carry the ball.  It's unbelievable how we've come together.  We came 2 1/2 hours on the bus for this.  We just were not going home with a loss."

Gray's TD came with 52 seconds left and even then it wasn't over.  Cira, a very accurate thrower, fired a hurried toss behind Meade but the big receiver grabbed the ball with one hand for a 14-yard gain to the Concord 44-yard-line with 18 seconds to play.

The Minutemen's RB Monty Marion #5 (left) and QB Bob Cira #3 (right) will both return for their senior year.  Will Lowell see these players again in 2006?
Lowell's RB Scott Gray #6 carried the ball 30 times for 193 yards and 3 TDs against Concord.
Red Devil QB Jimmy Ritter #7 was 5-of-7 passing for, 98 yards in the regional title game at Concord.
About 500 fans from Lowell cheered on their team from the visitors' stands at Concord, 11-11-2005.

Cira launched a long, high spiral into triple coverage at the Lowell 10-yard line that Jimmy Ritter deflected to the ground.  Cira then fired a sideline bomb towards his twin brother Jimmy inside the Lowell 15.  But that pass, too, was off the mark.

The celebration after the sectional title win on Nov. 4 over Hobart was that of a team that expected to win. The celebration on the field (that the local police tried to prevent) was that of a squad that knew they had looked defeat in the face and had run past it.

"Through this year, we've been challenged," said Lampa.  "After the Andrean game, somebody said in the paper that we didn't have the intestinal fortitude to win a game like that.  We took that to heart.  We just started working harder and we came back.  That drive at the end showed pure character.  We thought that (run defense) was one of their weaknesses and we had to exploit it."

"That's Lowell football.  The first half wasn't great.  We gave up big plays. That's what we'd talked about all week.  In the second half, we cut out their big plays and here we are."

Where they are is where only two Lowell teams, the 1994 team and the 1999 squad, have ever been.  Lowell lost 21-0 at DeKalb in the 4A Northern Semistate on November 18, 1994 and the Devils fell 24-8 at Goshen on November 19, 1999.  The win fosters the belief that this senior class can go where no Devil has gone before. The 2 1/2 hour drive on a school day and the bad style matchup had it all in doubt before the running game won out.

Lowell QB Jimmy Ritter, who led the freshmen Devils to a 9-0 record in 2002, admitted the game was in doubt after two quarters.

"I was scared at halftime," Ritter said later.  "I thought they had all the momentum.  But when we got that turnover (a Clemens interception, the game's only turnover) that reversed it.  Ball control was huge.  We had seven and eight minute drives."

And as good as this season has become for Lowell with an eight game winning streak and sectional and regional titles, there is one larger hurdle to climb. This is the first time Lowell has ever won a playoff game outside of Northwest Indiana and this will be the first ever semistate home game for the Devils.  No Lowell high school team has ever reached the state finals in any IHSAA sport.  But the Devils don't seem to be thinking that big. At least not yet.

One more home game. "Sounds good," says Clemens. 

REGIONAL NOTES:  When he talked about what they tried to do late in the game, Lowell's Jeff Clemens quickly referred to a long lost game from 2003.   

"We had to look out for the draw play. They were running it and East Noble beat us on that draw play two years ago when we missed 11 tackles on one play."

Konrad Mundon's fourth quarter TD run through the entire Lowell team gave Noble a 20-13 win at Lowell in the 4A Regional championship game in November of 2003, a play no one on the field will ever forget because Mundon, who gained 2,000 yards the next season, broke a tackle every five yards.

Concord did not quite fill the grandstand for a regional championship game with 48 degree weather.  Concord has drawn better for basketball state tourney games.

What did Lowell and coach Kirk Kennedy do against Concord's four wide receiver attack that has rolled up 3,000 passing yards?

"Pray," answered Kennedy. "Actually we gave them (the corner backs) deep help a lot which gave them the confidence to play the wide receivers a little tighter.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.  That's a great offensive team.  That No. 9 (Michael Meade) caught the ball with one hand.  We beat a great offensive team."

Some Lowell fans had problems finding Concord, which is on the far east side of Elkhart very near the Goshen city limits. The bus with the cheerleaders was among the many that missed the school turnoff of the first try.  Most everyone left home especially early and made it to the Dunlap area (where Concord is located) on time for the kickoff.

Concord followers cited the 80 yards in penalties as a key to the game and there is validity in that.  Twice, Concord jumped offside giving Lowell first downs and a key roughing the punter penalty in the second quarter led to the first Lowell TD.

Red Devil sophomore David Lang, after not making a field goal for 11 games has hit three in two playoff games, giving the Devils great hope for the future in that aspect of the game.

Concord junior Monty Marion broke four tackles on a 56-yard run in the first quarter, giving the Minutemen a 6-0 lead.  Everyone spoke highly of Concord's prospects for 2006 and, with Lowell's deep (27 sophs including four regulars on the playoff roster) sophomore class, there is even a fair possibility of a Lowell-Concord rematch in the regional next November.  But there is one glaring problem for the Minutemen. Friday's game was the 10th time this season that Concord had given up 20 or more points in a game.

Fort Wayne South (11-2), which rallied to win at Delta 24-17 Friday, is one of three sectional champions this season (Bishop Luers and Snider) out of Fort Wayne's famed Summit Athletic Conference that has produced 10 state champions in the last 25 years.  South trailed Delta 17-3 but rallied with three fourth quarter TDs to win, scoring on a blocked punt to tie the game.

Game reports cited South's team speed which overcame a bigger Delta squad.  South sounds like Lowell with 3,500 yards rushing and less than 1,000 yards passing on the season but they went without a first down in the entire second and third quarter against Delta before rallying.  QB Quinton Scott (5-10, 190) and halfback Deontrai Campbell (5-10, 185) are both 1,000-yard rushers.  But the Archers are no bigger physically than Lowell.  Delta coach Grant Zgunda was quoted after the game as saying that his team had not played against a defense as quick as South.  In the entire recorded history of Fort Wayne South football, the Archers have never won more than nine games in school history.

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Revised: November 13, 2005 .