Trojans consistently excellent during title run

<p>Back in the early days of the 21st century, one of the more common sights in sports was Tiger Woods, wearing red, hoisting a trophy above his head on a Sunday afternoon.</p><p>This fall, another juggernaut clad in red treated Indiana high school football like Tiger treated the PGA Tour during his prime.</p><p>Center Grove, like Tiger, was expected to win, and it did. Over and over and over.</p><p>On Friday night, the Trojans’ perfect run reached its end with a thorough 38-14 beatdown of second-ranked Westfield at Lucas Oil Stadium — a thorough evisceration that evoked memories of Tiger’s lopsided wins in the 1997 Masters and the 2000 U.S. Open.</p><p>Center Grove made a habit this fall of making all of the other top teams in Class 6A look extremely ordinary, week in and week out.</p><p>And yet for all of the highlight-reel plays on both sides of the ball, it’s something else that has stood out to me during this historically awesome Trojan season.</p><p>One of the most underrated things about Tiger’s salad days was his remarkable consistency. From 1998 to 2005, he went 142 consecutive tournaments without missing a cut, obliterating the previous record streak and setting a standard that’s unlikely to be matched anytime soon.</p><p>Woods didn’t finish on top every week, but he was always in the money and he almost never beat himself.</p><p>I’ve seen the same from Center Grove this year.</p><p>When you’re going against a team as talented as the Trojans, you need them to help you out a little bit. But while they had hiccups here and there — a couple of costly penalties and a turnover helped set up Shamrock scores on Friday — they’ve never left a window open wide enough for an opponent to take full advantage.</p><p>In 14 games, no Center Grove opponent managed to score more than 14 points in a game. Even after a pair of giveaways Friday, the Trojans still wound up with just nine turnovers for the year. Costly penalties were few and far between, as were missed tackles.</p><p>All season long, consistency and efficiency defined this squad just as much as the freak-of-nature exploits of Carson Steele, Tayven Jackson, Caden Curry and their crewmates were.</p><p>Here’s hoping you enjoyed the Trojans’ 2020 campaign while it lasted, because much like that incredible run we saw from Tiger in his prime, it might be a while before we anything like it again.</p><p>Equally awe-inspiring on both sides of the ball. Equal parts steady and spectacular.</p><p><em>Ryan O’Leary is the sports editor for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>.</em></p>