SYRACUSE - The plaque presented to the team captains of Wawasee High School's varsity football team Tuesday evening read, "If you didn't come to play, get out of the way."

The Warriors have been shoving teams out of the way all season long, pulling themselves to a school record 13-1 mark. Saturday afternoon, at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, the Warriors will be in the biggest shoving match of all.

Not one like the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns were in two weeks ago. Or one like Clemson and South Carolina were in Saturday. Or even one reminiscent of the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons.

The 10th-ranked Warriors will battle seventh-ranked Indianapolis Roncalli Saturday at 3:30 p.m. for the Class 4A state championship, a matchup Wawasee was on the short end of in 1985. But the current Warriors say they're confident in themselves that they can knock off the two-time defending champs.

"They're a great team," said senior running back and team captain Jordan Swain, his hair now fashioned in a mohawk like so many of his teammates. "They're a great team, but they're beatable."

After the players, coaching staff and athletic department personel spent an hour answering questions thrown at them by television, newspaper and radio media, approximately 1,500 fans turned out for a pep rally at the school's gymnasium.

The cheerleaders led the large crowd in a cheer of "can't stop, won't stop," the team's new motto.

Players, students and faculty members participated in a dance contest.

Athletic director Mary Hurley spoke briefly, announcing that Warrior fans have already purchased 2,300 state finals tickets, and then she introduced the 1985 state runner-up team.

The former players made their way to center court and bridged the 19-year gap with the current players by presenting them with black T-shirts emblazoned with the 1985 logo "Roam To The Dome."

In 1985, the Warriors were 3-5 entering the state tournament and made it to the Dome by allowing just 22 points through the sectional, regional and semistate rounds.

Wawasee's current team finished the regular season 8-1 and has used not only defense but a stout offense to punch its ticket to the state finals.

Prior to the start of the pep rally, Myron Dickerson, coach of the 1985 team, spoke of how Joe Rietveld took over a program used to losing and turned it into a winner.

"He deserves a lot of credit," said Dickerson, who coached the Warriors for 10 years, his final season the 1989 campaign. "He came into a program that hadn't had a winning season in a number of years. I thought last year he did a great job. You have to get the young men to believe they're winners, and he's done that. We didn't have the offensive power this team has. They can be a juggernaut."

En route to their school-record 13 wins, the Warriors defeated rival Warsaw for the W Trophy, Goshen for the Indian Trophy and shared the Northern Lakes Conference crown with NorthWood and Concord, as well as claiming the sectional, regional and semistate titles.

Now there's just one trophy left for the Warriors to hold over their heads, the one that has filled their dreams since they were youngsters playing for the Wawasee Waves.

Saturday those dreams can become reality. [[In-content Ad]]