Center Grove charges into the 2023 season with a trip to Ohio leading off a run of five out-of-state opponents, four of which the Trojans have never faced before.
Daily Journal file photo
Some might view Center Grove playing its first five games of the season against teams from other states as Indiana’s top football program representing for the rest of the Hoosier State.
Does longtime Trojans coach Eric Moore see it that way? “Not really.”
As he sees it, Center Grove shouldn’t have to play five out-of-state games in the first place.
“I feel like the state of Indiana’s abandoned us to make us do this,” Moore said. “So we’re carrying the banner for Center Grove and all the kids that have played here — and the teams in the past that would have wanted to play this type of schedule that couldn’t. All of a sudden we have to, and we’re just taking it one play, one game, one quarter, everything at a time, slow everything down and get out of that week, and just keep building for the next week and just figure it out as we go along.”
The Trojans will start figuring it out this weekend, when they travel to Canton, Ohio for a Saturday season opener against reigning Ohio Division I state champion St. Edward. Fortunately for Moore and his squad, that’s the lone road game among the first five — but Weeks 2 through 5 bring a revolving door of first-time guests to Ray Skillman Stadium.
Center Grove faces another state champ when Murfreesboro, Tennessee power Oakland pays a visit on Aug. 25., and then 27-time Kentucky champion Louisville Trinity — who hosted and defeated the Trojans last season — venture up I-65 the following Friday.
Two more Ohio heavyweights, Cincinnati Moeller and Harvest Prep, come to Johnson County on Sept. 8 and 15. Those two schools were a combined 26-3 last fall.
Moore says that scheduling one-off opponents has pluses and minuses. He and his staff are essentially flying blind because, with the exception of Trinity, they haven’t seen any of these teams yet. There’s game film out there — but you don’t know how they’re going to attack you specifically.
On the flip side, those opposing coaches haven’t seen the Trojans, either, so they’re facing the same problems.
“When you play an opponent one time, it takes a lot of the coaching out of it,” Moore said. “You don’t have a chance to make the adjustments you would normally make if you haven’t played them before.”
Parts of this schedule had been built in a while ago; Trinity was a planned home-and-home before current Center Grove athletic director Joe Bronkella took over last summer. But other parts weren’t settled until last spring; Carmel pulled out of its long-running series with the Trojans over the winter, and Ben Davis postponed the usual Week 4 meeting because it had an opportunity for a one-off against Florida-based national powerhouse IMG Academy.
Bronkella had to fill those vacancies on the fly, but he got it figured out and did so without having to send the Trojans on a second long road trip.
“Joe Bronkella has done as amazing a job as anybody I can imagine, because that’s just tough,” Moore said. “He had a plan, and he went and he double- and triple-checked the people — ‘This guy got dropped by this guy that got dropped by that guy’ — he would go to the third party and try to connect, and they’d say, ‘No, we won’t play you, but this team got dropped.’ There’s a network out there.”
That network even extended out to New England — Center Grove had a Week 7 game lined up against Catholic Memorial from Boston before Pike, the Trojans’ regular Week 7 foe, decided in May to opt back in.
Moore would prefer if Bronkella didn’t have to jump through so many hoops just to find nine games.
“You’d think the IHSAA would be in charge of that,” he said. “Like, ‘No, there’s 18 schools within 20 minutes — you guys, play each other.’ But they don’t do that.”
That feeling of abandonment is part of what’s led to Center Grove adopting “Trojans vs. the World” as a theme for this season.
“That’s what we’re calling it,” Moore said. “I feel like the state sort of set us up for this. We weren’t asking to play all of these big-time teams; we just wanted games. It is what it is. I can’t believe the IHSAA let a team like us just boil in turmoil. This is bad for football. Center Grove has been good for high school football in Indiana.”
And yet Center Grove won’t play another Indiana team until Sept. 22, when it travels to Lawrence Central.
Despite all of the headaches that went into setting up this schedule and the uncertainty that lies ahead in playing it, Moore is taking a glass-half-full view of things. Sure, it’s an unforgiving gauntlet, but it’ll have the Trojans ready for anything they’ll face once tournament time arrives.
“The only negative is health,” he said. :If we get beat up, then it doesn’t help us at all. If we don’t get beat up, and we can hang in there, we won’t see guys bigger or stronger or faster; not every week in the playoffs. It should give you a great advantage.
“If we’re walking in November, or October, we’re going to be good.”
SCOUTING THE TROJANS
Coach: Eric Moore
Last season: 12-2, defeated Fort Wayne Carroll to win Class 6A state championship
Key returnees: LB Owen Bright, FB Rylan Cook, WR Noah Coy, QB Tyler Cherry, OL Payton Hutchins, LB Kaden McConnell and Michael Soderdahl, seniors; TE T.J. Williams, junior
Top newcomers: DB Luke Barrett, DB Brody Boswell, DB Connor Cannon, OL Andrew Eckhart, OL Landon Endicott, OL Tyler Frieden and RB Matthew Yoder, seniors, LB Auggy Argbah, WR Tristan Baxter, RB Austin Hennessy, WR Brevin Holubar and K/P Kade Matthews, juniors; LB Lincoln Bright, DL/LS Kobe Cherry and OL C.J. Scifres, sophomores
Outlook: The Trojans will be breaking in several new starters, and doing so against an absolute gauntlet of a schedule that begins with five straight out-of-state powers. But they’re again entering the season as the No. 1 team in Class 6A, because Moore always, always, always finds a way to put a good team on the field.
And he’s got some guys to build around. Tyler Cherry has quickly blossomed into one of the nation’s top quarterbacks despite one year of starting experience, and favorite target Coy, who obliterated the school’s receiving records last season, is also back at split end.
“I have full confidence that nobody will be able to line up mano a mano on Noah Coy and stop him,” Moore said. “He’s just that good.”
There isn’t one feature back as there has been most years, but the Trojans will rotate five different rushers behind a largely inexperienced line. How that line holds up over the course of the season will help dictate how much success Center Grove’s offense has; if Cherry has time to throw it around, look out.
Defensively, the team will be held together by senior linebackers McConnell and Owen Bright. Injuries have thinned out what will now be a pretty young front line, and the secondary is full of new faces as well. That unit will be tested right away by a St. Edward team that boasts a pair of Big Ten-bound offensive tackles, and life doesn’t get much easier after that. Moore is confident that the Trojans will be a very good team by November if they can survive the early-season grind without major injuries.
Winning a 13th straight sectional title is still the probable floor here, but that’s never the goal. Joining Warren Central (2003-06) as the only big schools to win four consecutive state championships is — and as long as Moore is on the sideline and his team is relatively healthy, that’s going to be in play.
2023 SCHEDULE
Date;Opponent;Time
Saturday;St. Edward (Ohio)*;noon
Aug. 25;Oakland (Tenn.);7 p.m.
Sept. 1;Louisville Trinity;7 p.m.
Sept. 8;Cincinnati Moeller;7 p.m.
Sept. 15;Harvest Prep (Ohio);7 p.m.
Sept. 22;at Lawrence Central;7 p.m.
Sept. 29;at Pike;7 p.m.
Oct. 6;Lawrence North;7 p.m.
Oct. 13;at Cathedral;7 p.m.
* – at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio
