Some of the fans on Whiteland’s side of the field might have been feeling a bit nervous during the first half on Friday night, but the coaches and players weren’t.
Jake Perry rushed for 214 yards and a pair of touchdowns, leading a second-half surge that propelled the fifth-ranked Warriors past visiting Franklin, 40-28, in a Class 5A sectional opener.
Whiteland (8-2) hosts Bloomington South in a semifinal game next week.
"There wasn’t any panicking going on there," Warriors coach Darrin Fisher said of his team, which trailed 14-10 at halftime. "They were ready to come out and execute the game plan and make plays. They kind of decided they weren’t going to lose."
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After forcing a Whiteland punt to start the game, the Grizzly Cubs hopped out in front with a methodical 17-play, 73-yard touchdown march. Clayton Coll finished the job with a 1-yard scoring run at the 4:18 mark.
The Warriors pulled even on a 6-yard Jake Perry run with 4:37 to go in the half, but Franklin (2-8) struck back by cashing in on a fortuitous bounce. Drew Byerly’s throw from the Whiteland 33-yard line was tipped by a Warrior defender, but a diving Peyton Ruble dove under it in the end zone with 2:06 left.
A pass interference penalty as the second-quarter clock expired allowed Whiteland to cut it to four on a 25-yard field goal by Dalton Spangler.
Carrying the momentum from that break through the intermission, the Warriors got an interception from Dakota DeBaun at the 3-yard line. That set up a 97-yard drive, capped by a Gavin Lutz 6-yard run, that put Whiteland in front for the first time at 17-14 with 5:52 remaining in the third quarter. A Franklin punt was then blocked out of the end zone just over a minute later, and Perry’s 5-yard touchdown at the 2:20 mark stretched the Warriors’ edge to 12 points.
"I thought we executed situational football really well," Fisher said of his team’s third-quarter turnaround. "Our coaching staff did a good job of getting our kids ready for those situations."
Franklin cut it to five twice on short touchdowns by Clayton Coll, but Whiteland answered both times on scoring dashes of 15 and 34 yards to make it 40-28 with 5:21 left. Interceptions by Jacob Schultz and DeBaun down the stretch effectively sealed Franklin’s fate.
Taylor added 90 yards on the ground for the Warriors, almost all of them after halftime. Byerly finished the night with 245 yards passing in defeat.
"It slipped away from us a little bit," Franklin coach Chris Coll said. "Maybe if we can get couple more scores and keep slugging it out with them — we just weren’t able to."
