Prior to last week’s Class 6A football regional against Warren Central, Center Grove offensive lineman Bailey Smith said he couldn’t shake that one inescapable thought:
This could be my last game.
It wasn’t; the Trojans thumped the Warriors 28-7 to advance to tonight’s semistate game at Ben Davis. But the reality doesn’t change this week — for Smith and his fellow seniors, this could be the end of the road. And if it isn’t, next week’s state championship game will be.
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Which is why this group of 34 12th-graders is savoring every moment of their final run together.
“We all grow up believing in a state championship and not look past high school,” senior running back Titus McCoy said. “That’s what we’re doing right now, and the fact that we’re two games away in our senior season, it means a lot. It makes us work even harder and more hungry for it.”
“It puts us a little more focused,” Smith added, “just knowing that you’d better give it all you’ve got because you don’t know how many opportunities you’re going to have left.”
Center Grove has lost just seven games since the current seniors entered high school — and during the past two seasons, when most of them saw the bulk of their varsity action, the team is 25-1. Having avenged the lone blemish on that record by eliminating Warren Central last week, the Trojans are now two wins away from a repeat state championship, something no team has pulled off in Indiana’s largest class since 2006.
Any journey is enjoyable when it’s successful, but it means even more to this group because of all the experiences they’ve shared on the field throughout the years, going as far back as elementary school.
“We’ve been playing together for a really long time,” offensive lineman Dylan Bramlett said, “so obviously it means a lot — especially when you get to do what you love with the people you love.”
“Last year, the seniors were awesome,” fellow lineman Clay Hadley added, “but this year it’s our brothers, and we’re fighting for each other.”
Center Grove’s seniors constantly refer to one another as brothers, which might sound a little bit corny if it wasn’t so obviously sincere. The class, and the whole team by extension, has become a family, and that closeness has obviously generated results.
Those results — not only at the varsity level, but even in the youth football ranks — have given the group a self-assuredness that only comes with continued success.
“We had a lot of success early on as kids,” senior quarterback Jack Kellams said, “and we’ve always been really close with each other. So I’ve kind of felt as years go on, we’re playing against the same kids we’ve always played against our entire lives, so we’ve felt like once we matched up to them this year it’d be kind of the same thing. We have that confidence that we can beat anyone in the state if we just go out there and play our game.”
So far, that mindset has served these Trojan seniors well. Either tonight or a week from now, though, their journey together is going to reach its endpoint — and that reality has truly sunk in during this postseason.
“As soon as the playoffs hit, it really hit me that (the end of) the season’s coming quick,” Kellams said, “so it’s important to take each game completely seriously and lay it all out there on the field every Friday night.”
It could all come to an end at Ben Davis tonight, and if it does it won’t do anything to tarnish the legacy of this senior class. They’ll still leave with a state championship and four consecutive semistate appearances to their credit.
But right now, they’re not trying to hear any of that. There’s only one ending that these guys are willing to accept.
“It’s kind of hard to figure out how we would go out without another state championship,” Smith said. “We’ve just got to make every game count.
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Center Grove’s senior class has enjoyed plenty of success on the gridiron. A look at how the Trojans have fared over the past four seasons:
Year;Record
2013;11-2
2014;9-4
2015;14-0*
2016;11-1
Total;45-7
* – won Class 6A state championship
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Tonight’s area semistate football games:
Class 6A
Center Grove (11-1) at Ben Davis (9-3), 7 p.m.
Class 4A
Roncalli (13-0) at East Central (11-2), 7:30 p.m.
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