Sometimes you don’t realize what you have just witnessed or taken part in for a long time, and sometimes you fully understand while it’s still happening.
As the fourth quarter of Friday’s 5A Sectional 11 championship game was winding down, it was pretty clear this game was going to come down to the final possession and the ending would be memorable.
We should not have been surprised.
Warsaw and Concord have been playing since 1964. Going into this season, they’d met 60 times, and each team had 30 wins.
In September, they played a Week-5 thriller in which Warsaw jumped out to a stunning 17-0 lead at halftime against the then-4-0 Minutemen.
Both teams were ranked in 5A, and both teams had strong hopes for a Northern Lakes Conference championship at that point in the season.
Concord would own the second half, and a touchdown with 23-seconds left lifted them to a 28-24 win over the Tigers and put the Minutemen on the inside track to a league title.
But there was an odd feeling as the two teams left the grass surface of Jake Field that night. The two teams figuratively looked over their shoulders at each other, knowing that there was a very real possibility that they would see each other again before Thanksgiving.
And last Friday night, there they were - Warsaw and Concord - on that same field where they had battled almost two months prior, but this time a sectional championship was on the line.
It would be crazy to think that these two teams could put on as great a show as they had in Week 5, right?
How could we possibly think that high school kids could play 48 more minutes that would leave us breathless?
Could they?
They did.
This time Concord took the early lead and just before halftime things looked bleak for the visitors.
Then, just before halftime, the Tigers got the break they needed.
Concord’s quarterback faked a handoff, and two steps later he dropped the ball. Warsaw recovered the fumble and scored trailing 21-17 at the half.
Warsaw took the opening drive of the third quarter, marched down the field and took the lead. But true to form in this game, Warsaw’s drawn-out scoring drive was answered with a quick strike to put the Minutemen ahead 28-24 with 9:17 to play.
Twenty-eight to twenty-four, Concord. Could it end that way again? Impossible. Incredible.
Warsaw would get the ball one last time…just like Concord did in September.
And like it was in September, the winning drive was marked with individual efforts to sustain the possession and save the game, and subsequently, the season. Kids rising higher than the moment in a way they may never have before.
But this time, the heroes wore orange and black.
Warsaw would score with 12-seconds left to take the lead 31-28, and then stopped a series of laterals on the game’s final play to seal the win.
No one who was there to participate in it, or to witness it, could fully understand the uniqueness of the events that took place that night.
Please, let me try.
In a 48-minute football game, Warsaw possessed the ball for 40 minutes and 13 seconds.
Concord scored three touchdowns on 16 plays from scrimmage. Those 16 plays included nine running plays, seven pass attempts, a kneel-down at the end of the half and the multiple-lateral chaos at the end of the game.
The Tigers ran 73 plays from scrimmage.
Warsaw converted nine of 11 attempts on third down, and went four-of-five on fourth down. Concord was 0-2 on third down.
Concord averaged 24.5 yards per carry, with three TD runs from scrimmage over 50 yards. They also returned a kickoff for a score.
Warsaw’s shortest touchdown drive was 9 minutes and 15 seconds long. Concord’s total time of possession for the game was 7:47.
Two teams. Two epic games that will not be, nor could they ever be, forgotten.
It was a great personal honor to have worn a headset to chronicle these two games, to watch these two teams play each other, to watch young men - some wearing black, some wearing green - be more than maybe even they realized they could be.
And it should be mentioned that as intense as these two games were, as much as was on the line for them, as emotional as it was on both sides—there was not one sign of unsportsmanlike conduct. No pushing or shoving after the whistle like we see in rivalry games. No openly unsavory taunting.
There was too much at stake for any of that, and everyone knew it.
Everyone who participated should be proud of their effort, and they should know that their effort was a credit to themselves, their families and their communities.
And someday they will be able to look back on those two Friday nights in the fall of 2024 like we do—with an awe that is rarely seen in high school sports.