Panthers' Streak Snapped

NAPPANEE - Jimtown head football coach Bill Sharpe said that the home field advantage that NorthWood held over his Jimmies on Friday night would not mean anything.

He was right.

What did mean something was 225-pound senior running back Brian Smith. Smith put his Jimtown teammates on his shoulders and carried them to a 28-14 victory over the Panthers on the opening night of the 1997 high school football season.

The victory stopped the longest current regular-season winning streak in the state at 37 games. NorthWood had not lost in the regular season since 1992. It was only head coach Rich Dodson's second regular-season loss in six years as head coach of the Panthers.

In a powerful display of brute force, Smith rushed for 162 yards on 25 carries, a 6.5 yard per carry average. He scored two touchdowns, one in which he simply barreled through Panther star Aaron Huber. But it wasn't just Smith who battered the NorthWood defensive line.

The Jimtown offensive line created holes all night, giving Travis Daniels enough room to rush for 87 yards on five carries and Adrian Pettis 59 yards on seven carries and a touchdown.

The Jimmies started the ground war domination from the opening drive, pounding out a seven play, 80-yard drive capped off by a 22-yard reception by Adrian Pettis for a touchdown.

After shutting down NorthWood three-and-out on the Panthers opening possession, Jimtown started with the ball on its own 38 yard line. In four plays, Jimtown was knocking on the door again at the 11-yard line.

However, the NorthWood defense held its ground and stopped Smith on a fourth-and-one play from the two-yard line.

In the second quarter, Jimtown capitalized on a gift from NorthWood. On a second down from their own eight-yard line, the Panthers coughed up the football. Pete Svetanoff recovered the fumble, and Smith scored two plays later as the Jimmies forged ahead 14-0.

NorthWood put together a seven-play drive late in the first half, but was stalled by a false start penalty on third down and was forced to punt as the half wound down.

In the second half, NorthWood began to turn the momentum. A 5 1/2 minute, 12-play drive got NorthWood on the board as Huber scored from six yards out to cut the lead in half, 14-7.

But Jimtown put the dagger in the hearts of the NorthWood hopeful as Jim House had a 38-yard kick return that put the Jimmies almost to midfield. Jimtown decided to keep the ball on the ground and covered 57 yards on nine carries to go ahead 21-7.

"Jimmy House is a great kid and a very good athlete. He can do things like that," Sharpe said.

Jimtown tacked on another touchdown midway through the fourth quarter as Smith carried the ball six times on the drive for 31 yards including the final touchdown for the visitors.

Despite the loss, the Panthers can look to many positives as they approach game two against Bremen. Sophomore quarterback Charlie Roeder completed 59 percent of his passes for 149 yards against the highly ranked Jimtown defense. Huber played well on both sides of the ball, rushing for 79 yards, intercepting one pass, and returning three kicks.

"Charlie's got some ability, and I think we're going to have some good receivers along the way," Dodson said. "As the offensive line gets a little better, we can turn Roeder loose a little bit and we don't have to play catch up, I think we're going to be really good. Offense is not the problem right now."

Dodson, though, also understood the problem with being such a young and inexperienced team.

"We didn't know how to prepare for Jimtown because we were still trying to learn how to tackle and get in stances," he said. "I'm serious when I say that. We knew we had to stop the fullback, but in practice we don't have anybody that big to practice stopping. It was an eye opener for our kids."

Sharpe downplayed Jimtown's victory in the first meeting ever by the two schools.

"I thought every kid we had came out and played hard," Sharpe said. "This was a game of field position, and they never had it and we did. If people don't see that, then they don't know anything about the game. That's just one of those things where we got it in great position every time."

NorthWood (0-1) will host Bremen on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in a battle of two unlikely schools still looking for their first win. Bremen lost its opener on Friday night to Plymouth.