ROCHESTER - Whitko High School's varsity football team is in territory it hasn't been in since 2002.
Whitko and Southwood shared 6-1 records in 2002, tying for the Three Rivers Conference title. With their 27-24 overtime win at Rochester (6-2, 5-1 TRC) Friday, the Wildcats (7-1, 6-0 TRC) captured at least a share of the conference championship and may own it outright with a win at Tippecanoe Valley this week."It was a good game for our program," Whitko coach Wayne Swender said about the victory between this season's final two undefeated TRC teams.
And the win was done in dramatic fashion.
After the Wildcats fell behind 14-0 early in the second quarter, Whitko's D.J. Fouce scored three-straight touchdowns on runs of 23, 2 and 2 yards, the last giving the Wildcats a 21-14 lead with 7:41 left in the game.
However, Rochester responded quickly with a drive that began with wide receiver Chad Scobie catching a pass, then heaving it deep to Chris Messersmith for a 52-yard gain to the Whitko 20-yard line. Four plays later, Zac Schultz scored from a yard out, knotting the score at 21-21.
Over the course of the next six minutes, Whitko fumbled the ball to Rochester, which in turn threw an interception back to the Wildcats. After regaining possession, Whitko then tossed an interception of its own, which was returned by Zac Schoen to the Whitko 40-yard line with 22.6 seconds remaining.
In the next 15 seconds, the Zebras got the ball down to the 20-yard line, giving strong-legged kicker Jonathon O'Dell a shot at the win with seven seconds left. Instead of winning the game, the snap wasn't handled cleanly and the kick was no good, setting up overtime.
In the extra period, Rochester had the ball first and ended its drive from the 10-yard line with a 20-yard field goal from O'Dell.
On Whitko's ensuing possession from the 10, Swender opted to go to the air rather than run Fouce, who had racked up 172 rushing yards on the night.
"We thought we'd do a little play-action there on first down," Swender said. "Sometimes, you just get lucky."
That "lucky" play resulted in quarterback Alex Stoddard finding Scott Skiles between two Rochester defenders in the end zone, resulting in a Whitko celebration.
"We started out kind of slow and sluggish, but we picked it up in the second quarter," Swender said. "It kind of proved something to our team. That they could do this."
The second quarter also proved that Whitko would have to go away from its runs straight up the middle.
"They shut down our belly play so well, but that kind of opened it up for D.J. with our off-tackle stuff," Swender said. "He really is a work horse. He's not a real loud kid, but he works hard and leads by example. He's one of our captains and he's done a good job with it."
In the second quarter, Fouce ran the ball 10 times for 88 yards and two scores, which came only 1:27 apart from each other thanks to a Rochester fumble at the Whitko 12-yard line.
While Fouce was running all over the Zebras, Rochester's two-headed attack of Schultz and Nate Basham was cut to one as Basham missed the game with a high-ankle sprain.
"We missed Nate," Rochester coach Mark Miller said about playing with the TRC's fourth-leading rusher. "He's a different kind of athlete. There's no doubt about that."
Miller did have the conference's top rusher in Schultz, but he was limited to 69 yards on 19 carries.
Now at 6-0 in the conference, Whitko stands alone atop the TRC standings, with Rochester and North Miami both looking up at them with 5-1 records.
"In August, when we sit down with these kids and start those two-a-days, we talk about goals," Swender said. "We just set goals of getting better each week. If we do that, we feel like the other goals will take care of themselves. One of the goals is always to win conference."
And while they may have already wrapped up a share of the crown, owning it outright would be much sweeter.
"We're going to celebrate tonight, but we're going to get back to work next week," Swender said.
