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Down 12 heading into the fourth quarter of Friday night’s season opener against Fort Wayne Snider, the Warsaw football team was facing its first bout with adversity in the 2026 season. The Tigers responded incredibly well. Scoring two touchdowns on a pair of long runs while the defense bent but never broke, Warsaw was able to escape with a 33-30 win to delight the crowd at Fisher Field and begin the year with a win.
“I am so proud of the way these kids handled being down late tonight,” Warsaw head coach Bart Curtis said. “We started to feel the energy shift a little bit when things weren’t going well but they didn’t fold. It would have been really easy to fold. They’d rather go to bed tonight 1-0 than 0-1.”
The first quarter went by with relatively little happening. Both offenses were sluggish out the gate, being called for multiple dead-ball penalties that stopped drives in their tracks. On the team’s second drive of the night, Warsaw struck gold. After being given a first down on Snider’s second encroachment penalty of the game, quarterback Brady Sauer ran an option play to perfection. Electing to keep it, the junior had the entire defense fooled, going basically untouched on his way to a 48-yard touchdown. A poor hold on the ensuing PAT resulted in an unsuccessful try, leaving the score at 6-0 with 30 seconds left in the first quarter.
Once those first points went onto the board, things really got going. It didn’t take long for the Panthers to come up with an answer. The game saw two touchdowns in the next two minutes, both due to some serious speed showcased by the running backs. First up was a 74-yard score by Snider’s Braylon Burton, which was matched two plays later on a 73-yard run by Tiger Tucker. With the Panthers hitting the extra point and the home side being stopped on a conversion attempt, the visitors now led 12-7.
After getting the ball back, Snider marched right down the field. This time, the visitors were able to do it through the air. Quarterback Max Johnson got the ball to his guys, and they did the rest for him by picking up a ton of yardage after the catch.
The score came on a 30-yard play to tight end Ketron Paschall, who used every inch of his 6 '6 frame as he bowled over defenders on his way to a house call for the third lead change of the quarter. The next points scored also belonged to Snider, as the Panthers converted on a 24-yard field goal after forcing a Tiger punt.
Now trailing by five with less than five minutes until the half, Warsaw turned to a more methodical approach to burn some clock. It worked for a few minutes, as the team got to midfield with just over two minutes left. Then, disaster struck as Sauer dropped back for his first pass of the night, which was picked off by Denzell Barr in a back-breaking turn of events. Luckily, the visiting offense short circuited after the turnover, going backwards more often than forwards before the halftime whistle sounded.
“I thought that was going to be there for us, but it was a bad call on my part,” Curtis said. “I took away a scoring opportunity.”
With the way the first half ended, getting the ball to begin the third quarter trailing by just five was far from the worst-case scenario for the Tigers. However, things didn’t get much better for the home side as the second half began. Warsaw was forced to punt without achieving a first down, while Snider had no problem getting into the red zone, where Johnson threw his second touchdown pass of the night to go up 23-12.
There were still 20 minutes of game left, but the Tigers needed to get some momentum back in a hurry. They did so on their second drive of the half, with Reed putting the team on his back. A couple of big carries by the senior put Warsaw in Snider territory, where he’d finish things off with a 35-yard score. A second failed two-point conversion held the home side to just six points yet again, and they now trailed 23-18.
Warsaw junior Ethan Sinclair times his jump perfectly to bat the ball away from Snider's Katron Paschall to break up a touchdown pass attempt...Nieter
“I am still a little concerned with our offense’s ability to run our bread and butter stuff, but we showed tonight that we do have that big play ability,” Curtis said. “And we knew that coming into tonight. I’d like to see some more sustained drives, but we’re not going to give back the points we scored. We’ve got two halfbacks that can fly and that was the difference.”
The Panthers wasted no time getting back on the board with a goal line touchdown to go back up by two touchdowns. With time running out in the third quarter, the Tigers were moving the ball well and looked to be on their way to getting that touchdown back before the fourth. After another long run by Reed put the ball inside the 10, the home side was denied three times, setting up a 4th and goal from the two. In the biggest moment of the game so far, the Snider defense came up with a massive stop to deny their opponents the points and get the ball back.
Now, if the home side had any hope of coming back, it was time for their defense to have a moment. They did. In the opening moments of the fourth quarter, the Panthers went for it on 4th and 5 inside the Tiger 40. Pressure from the defensive line forced the incompletion, and it took just one play for Warsaw to capitalize. The first play from the offense was a run from Reed up the middle, and after a big burst, he had nothing but daylight in front of him on what turned into a 64-yard score. Just like that, it was a one-possession game with eleven minutes left.
This time, the defense was able to keep it a one-possession game, forcing a three-and-out on the ensuing possession. Getting the ball back with the chance to take the lead, the Tigers burned a few minutes off the clock and got to about midfield before a chop block penalty put an end to the drive.
Forced to punt with five minutes left, it was up to the defense yet again. Two minutes came off the clock, but the Panther offense was eventually forced off the field. The punt that punctuated the drive was a beauty, setting the home side up at the one-yard line with 2:48 left.
It didn’t matter. After a run by Michael Schenck gave the offense a bit of breathing room, Harman got the ball on the counter and fooled everybody. For the fourth time in the game, the Tiger runner was practically untouched en route to a long, long touchdown. This was the biggest one yet, 93 yards, and after a conversion by Sauer, Warsaw had finally come back to take a 33-30 lead.
The job wasn’t done just yet. The defense, which had been phenomenal in the second half but especially in the fourth quarter, needed one more stop. Snider was able to move the ball well on its first couple series, before a game-changing tackle by Matthew Flores-Ortega stopped the visitors for a big loss and put things out of rhythm. Having no choice but to go for it on fourth and a lot, the Panthers were unsuccessful, as an incomplete pass sealed the season-opening victory for the Tigers.
Reed finished with 257 of the team’s 478 rushing yards. Harman had 104, while Sauer had 84.
Warsaw (1-0) hosts Fort Wayne Northrop next Friday.
“They were off tonight, so I’m sure their coaches were here tonight. They’re a really talented team with some guys that are committed to some really good schools. They’re going to be a handful,” Curtis said.
