I made two trips to Lucas Oil Stadium last week, each one neatly summarizing one of the two ends of the 2020 spectrum.
On Monday, when I went downtown for the state football interview sessions, the air felt chilly and there was a long line of cars wrapped around the stadium — struggling folks who were waiting for one of the more than 2,000 Thanksgiving meals that the Colts were passing out to families in need.
This year has been particularly hard on a great number of Americans, thanks to the pandemic and … some other factors … and the scene outside Lucas Oil helped drive that sense of near-universal melancholy home once again. Had the sun not been shining, the whole atmosphere would have felt downright dystopian.
But then, on Friday, at that very same location, all felt right with the world for just a little while. Center Grove and Roncalli fans turned out in droves to watch their respective teams win state championships in convincing fashion and celebrate as if none of the garbage we’ve endured this year had happened at all.
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Of course, COVID-19 has indeed happened, and the pandemic and its related effects are still very much with us as we near the end of 2020, a year that will rank among the most memorable of all of our lifetimes for all of the wrong reasons. That reality will continue to slap us in our (hopefully masked) faces on a near-daily basis for the foreseeable future.
To avoid succumbing to the depression, we’ve all needed to find ways to get away from it all.
For many of us, escape came in the form of family — you know, those people you share a home with that maybe you didn’t get to spend enough quality time with back when the world was still “normal.” For some, it came in pursuing a hobby or project that you might not have had time for before. Building something. Writing a book. Taking a class.
And then, of course, there’s sports.
If you’re bothering to read this section today, chances are that sports are a part of your life in some way. And chances are that when it, like so many other things, went away in March and largely stayed away for the next five months, you felt a void in your life. I know I did. And as coronavirus numbers continued to worsen, many of us wondered whether we might not have sports in the fall, either.
But somehow, we did, and the world felt at least a little bit right again. The NBA playoffs, though contested inside a bubble, were amazing throughout. We got a World Series and a Stanley Cup, too. And pro and college football, despite numerous hiccups, have returned as well.
We’ve had plenty to cheer for this fall locally, too, with numerous impressive exploits across Johnson County in cross country, golf, tennis, volleyball, soccer and football.
But none of it topped what we saw from Center Grove on Friday nights. The Trojans were widely expected to be the best high school football team in Indiana, but they didn’t just live up to the hype. They exceeded it.
From Week 1, when they laid waste to Decatur Central, through shutout wins over Warren Central, Carmel and North Central, through more competitive games against Lawrence North and Cathedral and far less competitive ones in the postseason, Center Grove decisively proved itself as the best team in the state this year — and in the discussion alongside the best from any year.
And yes, that sort of discussion is very much justified. The Trojans were a team without a glaring weakness.
A big offensive line that loved to bully opposing defenses? Check. A stable of talented running backs, fronted by a leading Mr. Football candidate in Carson Steele? Check. A dangerous quarterback with a rock-solid receiving corps? Check. A money placekicker? Check.
And that defense. Oh my, that defense.
The Trojans’ D had no holes. Teams had little to no luck trying to run the ball against that front seven, and quarterbacks seldom had time to get quality throws off against a menacing pass rush led by a pair of national recruits in Caden Curry and Austin Booker.
When someone did get out of the backfield with the ball, they usually weren’t going far. Center Grove’s linebackers and defensive backs almost never missed tackles or blew assignments. If you beat them, chances are you did something impressive to earn it.
Playing against perhaps the most difficult schedule it could have had without facing themselves, the Trojans allowed just 107 points in 14 games and never let any team score more than twice.
Combine that with an offense that averaged more than 42 points a game and you’ve got an almost unbeatable combo.
Though I got a little backlash from certain corners of Indianapolis for saying this on Twitter over the weekend, I’ll stand by it — this edition of Center Grove is the best high school football team I’ve seen across four (yikes) different decades and three different states.
I’ve covered plenty of future major Division I and NFL talent in person; I’m not easily shocked or impressed. But these guys found a way to both shock and impress me in some way just about every week. Whether it was Steele plowing his way through would-be tacklers, the defensive line getting into the opposing backfield on what seemed like every other play, linebacker Trey Clark delivering hits that had me pondering a 911 call or any number of other things, a “wow” moment usually wasn’t far off with these Trojans.
That was the case even on the nights when they didn’t have their “A” game all the way through. Center Grove wasn’t firing on all cylinders against Cathedral, for example, but in the final minute and a half we saw that defense come up with a critical fourth-down stop to set up a game-winning drive that saw QB Tayven Jackson morph into a young Tom Brady at just the right moment.
It’s a shame that more people didn’t get a chance to witness it all in person this year, because it truly needed to be seen to believed — and it might be a while before we see a team this good again.
I say that with the caveat that Center Grove should still be pretty damn good next fall, too.
All I know is that if Eric Moore’s team does make a similar run in 2021, here’s hoping it’s just one part of a more normal reality instead of just a sweet, but momentary, escape.
Ryan O’Leary is the sports editor for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
