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.
This fall, another juggernaut clad in red treated Indiana high school football like Tiger treated the PGA Tour during his prime.
Center Grove, like Tiger, was expected to win, and it did. Over and over and over.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Woods didn’t finish on top every week, but he was always in the money and he almost never beat himself.
I’ve seen the same from Center Grove this year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Equally awe-inspiring on both sides of the ball. Equal parts steady and spectacular.
Ryan O’Leary is the sports editor for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
