By Mike Hutsell
Contributing Writer
CLARKSVILLE â??? Providence football coach
Gene Sartini probably could claim, literally, to have seen everything happen on
a football field.
Before Sept. 30,
he had walked off the field a winner 251 times in his coaching career.
Sartiniâ??s career
started when he coached Laura Engleâ??s fatherâ??s grade-school team, so finding
anything that surprises him is a pretty rare occurrence. Thatâ??s probably why last
Saturday can best be summed up like this.
â??Iâ??ve never been
a part of a game like that,â? Sartini told a host of reporters on a damp, dreary
swamp where Jeffersonvilleâ??s
Blair Field once sat. â??Iâ??ve done this a long time â??? Iâ??ve never seen that happen.â?
â??That,â? as
Sartini described it, was perhaps the rarest of rare finishes on a football
playing field. Sartiniâ??s Pioneers had battled Jeffersonville for four full quarters, some 60
minutes over the course of two days. When it was all said and done, the
scoreboard simply read:
2-0.
Thatâ??s not a
forfeit, thatâ??s a final score. Thanks to a third-quarter safety when the Red
Devilsâ?? Terrence Johnson threw the ball out of the end zone after a bad snap
from center, Providence had scored the lone points in a wet and wild, rain-filled
mudfest.
â??We just tried
to play field position the whole way,â? Sartini said. â??There wasnâ??t going to be
a lot of points with the weather and the field the way it was. We needed them
to make a mistake for something to happen.â?
Providenceâ??s safety-dance
victory was just one of the remnants of a weekend marked by weather that would
have made Noah sweat.
Rain and
lightning invaded the south last Friday afternoon, forcing much of the action
on Friday to be shifted around to Saturday.
New Albany started a 35-0 beat down of Madison on Friday. By the time the game ended
Saturday, local radio crews had given up trying to read the numbers on the
Bulldogsâ?? mud stained black & red uniforms.
Class 4A No. 1
Columbus East pounded Floyd Central to the tune of a 35-7 score in the first
half Friday, and the contest was scheduled to be finished Saturday morning. However,
the teams opted not to complete the contest, which was allowed to stand as
complete.
Perhaps the
biggest game between teams in the south last weekend â??? and the one that has the most people
talking about it these days â???
was a scheduled Mid-Southern Conference showdown between North
Harrison and Brownstown.
The game never
kicked off Friday evening, and Saturdayâ??s makeup was buried under water left
standing on Brownstownâ??s home field. The two teams decided to play things out
on Monday â?¦ only to be informed later that the IHSAA wants no part of this
whole Monday Night Football idea.
The contest, one
that pitted an unbeaten Cougars team against the perennial Mid-Southern
Conference heavyweight Braves, will not be played out this season. The IHSAA,
citing a rule prohibiting teams from playing more than one game in a week,
pulled the plug on all games that were on the slate for Monday, with no plans
for any make up contests in the works.
Instead, there
will be no game played in a matchup that likely would have determined the final
standings in the MSC race. North Harrison,
unbeaten in conference play, will miss its toughest road date of the season.
Brownstown, which has one conference loss, will not get an opportunity to play
spoiler and make its way back into the conference mix.
The decision
sets up this Fridayâ??s game between North Harrison and Clarksville as a de facto conference
championship. The Generals, like North Harrison,
are unbeaten in the MSC, with Friday nightâ??s game their final conference game
on the 2006 slate.
The Cougars
still have dates left against Corydon and Salem
in the final two weeks, but they will be decided favorites entering both of
those contests.
Brownstown,
which has won at least a share of every MSC title since 1995, now needs a lot
of help in its bid to maintain its dynasty.
All of this thanks
to one wet and wild weekend! One where it only seemed like everything that
could possibly happen did, and everything that could possibly go wrong did as well.
Mike Hutsell is the sports editor of the Jeffersonville
Evening News and New Albany Tribune. He can be reached at
mike.hutsell@newsandtribune.com.
So
what do you
think? Share your thoughts in our Football forum.
Processing your request, Please wait....
