Time is now for FR football

“You know how you turn coal into diamonds?”
Brent Niekamp, Fort Recovery High School’s football coach, posed that question sometime in 2012.
Wes Wenning recalls he and his freshman classmates looking around at each other confused. They didn’t know.
“It takes time, and it takes pressure,” Niekamp said.
That concept, Wenning says, has stuck with the Indians.
Fort Recovery’s football program was born as a lump of coal 23 years ago.
The first team played a four-game schedule, going 1-3 with a 14-6 victory over Landmark Christian. Playing a full schedule for the first time in 1994, they posted a 6-4 record.
They wouldn’t have another winning campaign for two decades.
FRHS joined the Midwest Athletic Conference for football during the next season, promptly finishing winless in the storied conference. It was a sign of things to come.
Coach Brent Niekamp was a member of some of those early teams. During his senior season — 1998 — the Indians finished 1-9.
When he returned in 2005 as the Indians’ head coach, the team went 1-9 again. They posted the same record in 2006, completing a stretch in which they earned just four victories in 48 games.
At that point, making it to a state championship game was nothing more than a far-off dream, if it was even a dream at all.
“I never really looked at it that way,” said Niekamp. “I think for me, I just wanted to try to do a good job. I guess I was always hoping that we could, because if I couldn’t hope anymore then I probably couldn’t do it.”
Now, his Indians have done it. They will play Mogadore in the Division VII state championship game at 3 p.m. Friday at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.
Getting to The Horseshoe had little to do with luck, a lot to do with setting small goals and fighting to achieve them.
Niekamp has rarely been interested in talking about how many games he thinks his team might win. Instead, his focus has been on getting better every game, every practice, every play.
In his third season, Fort Recovery went 5-5 and won four MAC games for the first time in school history. It included a two-point loss to Anna.
The next six campaigns ended with losing records, but it was in a 4-6 squad in 2011 in which Niekamp started to see a glimmer of what the FRHS program has become.
That team was the first in school history to beat St. Henry — 25-0. It lost to Parkway in overtime and played well against Versailles.
“If we win those two games that year, we’re in (the playoffs),” said Niekamp. “So I felt like that year was kind of a turning point of playing at just a little different level and just a little different expectation.”
Last season’s seniors, who led the Indians to their first playoff berth and first postseason win, were freshmen that year. They carried the different level and expectation with them.
And this year’s group — Kyle Schroer, Adam LeFevre, Darien Sheffer, Tanner Koch, Brandon Schoen, Ross Homan, Caylen Rockwood and Wenning — followed their lead.
“The seniors were terrific last year,” said Wenning, the Tribe’s all-time leader in receiving yards and touchdowns. “They were the ones that really influenced us to work hard and continue working hard. …
“Those seniors really set the tone for us. We just continued off of their success.”
That success carried over into a 6-0 start this year, an 8-2 record overall and a No. 3 seed in the Region 26 playoffs. The Indians avenged one of those losses by beating Minster 33-21 in the regional championship game.
In the state semifinal Friday night in Lima Spartan Stadium, quarterback Caleb Martin took a snap and dropped to a knee. Then he did it again, allowing the final moments of the game to run off the clock.
It was nothing unusual. Fort Recovery football players, coaches and fans have seen plenty of it — the victory formation — over the course of more than two decades.
In the past it had been their defense watching helplessly in the waning moments of another loss. This time, it was their quarterback taking a knee, their coach removing his headset with a satisfied smile on his face, their team walking off the field victorious.
“We said from the beginning that we wanted to get to this point,” said Wenning. “We’ve always dreamed of this moment.”
Through hard work, a brutal MAC schedule and a constant belief that they could be better, the Indians have applied the pressure.
Now, it’s time.