Greenwood has relied heavily on the run this season, but with fullback Isaiah Borjas sitting out, quarterback Seth Gallman took to the air a bit more on Friday night.
Whiteland didn’t have an answer for it.
Gallman had a career night, completing 17 of 20 passes for 227 yards, and Brandon Rosado rushed for a pair of touchdowns as the Woodmen left town with a 21-10 triumph.
The loss snapped a five-game Whiteland winning streak.
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“We got outhit, we got outhustled, we got outplayed, we got outcoached,” Warriors head coach Darrin Fisher said. “They just flat beat us. Every way you can be beat, they beat us.”
The Woodmen (6-3) opened the game with a 14-play, 72-yard drive, riding the arm of Gallman and the legs of Rosado up the field. Gallman capped the march with a 1-yard sneak to get the visitors on top early.
The Warriors (5-4) responded quickly behind Edwin Cisneros, who accounted for 57 yards on a six-play drive that he finished off by tying the game with a 1-yard run at the 3:47 mark of the opening period.
Rosado put the Woodmen back in front with 7:35 remaining in the half when he took a late pitch from Gallman and bulled into the end zone from 13 yards out.
Though Rosado was finishing off the drives, Gallman was responsible for much of the overall gains, particularly early. The junior connected on 14 of 15 first-half passes for 162 yards.
“We knew we could hit some of our quicks,” Gallman said, “and the receivers did a really good job, basically caught everything for me.”
Whiteland’s first two drives of the second half got to the 16 and 20 of Greenwood, but the Warriors managed to squeeze just three points out of those possessions, cutting it to 14-10 on a 37-yard field goal by Jacob Ballain.
The Woodmen, though, put the game away with a 60-yard touchdown drive in the middle of the fourth quarter. A 36-yard pass from Gallman to Isaiah Drew on third-and-8 set the ball up at the Whiteland 7-yard line, and Rosado was able to punch it in on the next play, stretching the lead to 11 points with less than four minutes to go.
Whiteland hosts Franklin in the first round of the Class 5A sectional Oct. 28. Greenwood is back in action next Friday, traveling to Frankfort for a Class 4A sectional opener — and the Woodmen will be going in with some positive momentum after beating the Warriors for the first time since 2011.
“The thing I’m most proud of, we talked about just being tough,” Greenwood coach Mike Campbell said, “and setting a standard of how we want to play and be a physical team, especially leading into the playoffs, and we took a step in the right direction tonight.”
