Greenwood coach Mike Campbell has been waiting for his team to put together a complete football game.
On Friday night, he got one.
After a frustrating stretch that has seen a few winnable games slip away, the Woodmen dominated from start to finish in an impressive 41-7 victory over county and Mid-State Conference rival Franklin in the annual Cannon Clash.
The Woodmen (4-4, 2-4) reclaim the series traveling trophy after losing by an identical 41-7 score last season — and they did so in convincing fashion. They ran twice as many plays as the Grizzly Cubs, 72-36, and finished with a 330-161 advantage in total offense.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery"We put fires out when we needed to, we did what we needed to," Campbell said. "It was just a great effort by our kids. Our coaches had them well prepared, and our kids came out and they just played hard all night.
"We made plays in the passing game. I thought Luke (Hommell) was outstanding controlling the tempo at quarterback tonight and making plays when he needed to make plays. We changed it up a little bit with Gavin (Ruppert) and he came in and made plays. We took what they gave us, and I thought our kids executed defensively."
Greenwood set the tone for the night when it opened with a 13-play, 77-yard drive that included one fourth-down conversion and ended with a 1-yard touchdown rush by Jacob Rollett. After a Franklin punt, Greenwood put together another long march that covered 80 yards in a dozen plays. Ruppert, the junior linebacker who doubles as a change-of-pace option at quarterback, capped that one off by calling his own number for a 14-yard scoring run, making it 14-0 with 9:51 left in the half.
Franklin took a more direct approach to get its first score, with Jalen Ward taking it 68 yards to the end zone on the next play from scrimmage. Greenwood answered with another methodical march, though, going 57 yards in 10 plays to rebuild the two-touchdown lead on a 3-yard run by Rollett.
The Grizzly Cubs had a chance to chip away at the deficit when it forced a turnover on downs at the Greenwood 26 with 2:13 remaining in the half, but an intentional grounding call pushed them out of scoring range. Franklin then opened the third quarter with a promising 15-play drive, only to turn it over on a fourth-down sack by J.J. Vaughn.
The rest of the night belonged to the Woodmen. After a 16-play drive that ate up more than seven minutes ended with a 1-yard Ruppert keeper, Dylan Mayhew blocked a Franklin punt to set the ball right back up inside the 1-yard line. Ruppert plunged in two plays later to stretch the lead to 34-7 with 10:12 remaining.
Senior Tanner Allen, who returned to the lineup Friday after being out with an injury since August, intercepted a pass to set up the final Greenwood score, a 5-yard keeper by Ruppert.
"Tonight, we came in with a game plan, and I think as a team, both sides of the ball, we really clicked tonight and we executed that game plan perfectly," Ruppert said. "Both sides of the ball were clicking. The chemistry was great tonight."
The Grizzly Cubs (3-5, 2-4) didn’t have much to celebrate other than Ward’s long scoring run, so it wasn’t a surprise that coach Chris Coll was a man of few words after the game.
"We played poorly," he said. "That’s my fault. We played poorly. We were not prepared to play. That’s on me."
Ethan Haessig led a balanced Greenwood ground attack with 113 yards rushing, while Hommell passed for 63 yards. Ward led the Grizzly Cubs with 103 yards on the ground and Reed Roberts passed for 86.
Franklin will try to regroup against Decatur Central next week, while the Woodmen travel to face another county foe in red-hot Whiteland.
Greenwood figures to be an underdog in that contest, but now it’s heading into it with some confidence.
"We just want to show that we’re going to compete these next couple of weeks going into the playoffs," Ruppert said.
