COLUMBUS
Tied heading into the final drive, Whiteland made a final charge.
In the closing seconds of the game, Warrior quarterback Brant Kunz called his own number to deliver the go-ahead touchdown with 16 seconds left and give his team a thrilling 28-21 season-opening victory at Columbus East.
The Warriors were facing third down with 24.4 seconds left when timeout was called. Following the timeout, Kunz did a QB sneak right into the pile, and after a few seconds the referees awarded Kunz with the go-ahead score.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“We did not want to give East the ball back, so when we got the first and goal, we just wanted to fall down and not score,” Whiteland coach Darrin Fisher said. “We just didn’t want to give them the ball back and give them a chance to score. We knew what we were going to run, we just set it up to where we could score on third down.”
East ended up with good field position to start the game on a runback from Trey Neal, but the Olympians couldn’t take advantage as a three-and-out forced them to punt. A bad punt by East gave Whiteland great field position near midfield. Whiteland took advantage of the opportunity when Kunz threw to Dalton DeBaun for a 22-yard score to put the Warriors ahead 6-0; the two-point conversion was unsuccessful.
After the Olympians punted on their next possession, Whiteland had another great field advantage. Kunz attempted to go deep on the pass, but it was intercepted near the end zone by Elliott Koopman.
This time, the East offense started driving. After some runs from Malachi Parks, Mark McDonald and Crase Bergman, the Olympians got it down to the goal line. Whiteland stopped them three times, but on fourth down, McDonald broke through leaping over the pile and the extension was good enough for the touchdown to go ahead 7-6 with 46 seconds left in the first quarter.
On the ensuing possession in the second quarter, the Warriors put together a good drive that was capped off with a Kunz 1-yard run that put Whiteland back out in front, 13-7, with 8:05 left in the second quarter.
On the ensuing possession, the Olympians got their own drive going, and it was finished with a 10-yard run from McDonald, his second touchdown of the game to go ahead 14-13 with 3:28 left. The Warriors looked to add more points to the board with less than 10 seconds left to play in the half, but the field goal was no good.
Whiteland had the opening possession of the third quarter and was slowly driving down the drive and were in Olympian territory. However, Kunz threw the ball in the air, and it was intercepted by Koopman. On the ensuing East possession, Parks coughed up the ball, and the Warriors recovered.
Whiteland drove it down to the goal line and went for it on fourth down, and the gamble paid off as Kunz kept the ball for the score and also ran in the two-point conversion to make it 21-14 after the third quarter.
In the final quarter, East got the tying touchdown when Tryce Villarreal punched it in from 5 yards out to tie the score at 21-21, setting up the final sequence.