August 17, 2017 at 5:04 p.m.
Proud Patriots
Program’s only sectional champs will be honored at halftime Friday
Proud Patriots
Aaron Daniels, Clint Muhlenkamp and Tim Millspaugh sat together on the tailgate on the back of a truck, their season over after a muddy slog.
The two juniors and their assistant coach were downtrodden after losing 6-0 on their home field in the sectional semifinal to a Muncie Central team led by future Washington Redskins first-round draft pick Ryan Kerrigan. But they were also confident as they looked toward the future.
They talked not about what it would feel like if they were able to win the sectional championship the following year, but about how it would feel when they did.
“At the end of our junior year, there was no doubt in our mind,” said Daniels. “We were going to win the sectional title that next year.”
Fast forward 53 weeks.
Jay County, once up by 21, was clinging to a six-point lead with less than three minutes to play. It had recovered a Muncie Southside onside kick and was simply looking to run out the clock.
But then Lance Franklin found a hole, broke through the line and hustled to the southwest end zone at Harold E. Schutz Memorial Stadium for a 39-yard touchdown.
Every player, every coach still has that moment burned in their memory. It was the moment they knew for sure that, for the first time, the Patriots would be sectional champions.
“I just exploded,” said Shane Hill, the team’s coach. “It was a place as a player and a coach that I hadn't been before … so just the sheer excitement. But more than that was just the feeling for the kids, watching it in their eyes and seeing how it made them feel and just living in that moment with them was just amazing.”
Hill and his Patriots will get to relive that moment Friday, as Jay County High School will honor them during halftime of the season opener against Blackford.
The road
The historic season wasn’t all touchdowns and end zone dances for the Patriots.
They lost their opener to Delta, albeit by the narrowest margin in more than a decade against the perennial powerhouse Eagles. They beat Blackford the next week and sat 2-2 after a shutout win over Franklin County and a shutout loss to Anderson Highland.
Then they headed to Muncie Southside for the first of what would end up being two meetings with the Rebels.
The game was wild, with Southside taking a 19-7 lead after scoring on a double-pass early in the fourth quarter, Jon Rodeffer blocking a punt to set up a Patriot touchdown, Franklin intercepting a pass and returning it for the go-ahead TD just 16 seconds later, the Rebels reclaiming the advantage in the final minute and the sprinklers turning on with 13.8 seconds left as JCHS was working on its desperation drive. Finally, quarterback Billy Wellman heaved a bomb down the left sideline and Brandon Reynard made a diving catch across the goal line for the game-winning score with 5.9 seconds remaining.
“We had our challenges and our adversity like anybody else, but we generally responded really well to it,” said Kaleb Hemmelgarn, who anchored the offensive line alongside Andrew Lancaster, Colton Prescott, Mitchell Martyne and Baxter Holdcroft. “I never felt like we kind of curled up and gave up.”
The miracle victory started a run of three in a row for the Patriots and four out of five to end the regular season. They avenged the previous season’s loss to Muncie Central in the sectional opener, then got a key blocked punt from Kyle Cook to turn the tide in a 23-16 victory at New Castle in the semifinal.
The game
The Patriots had trailed for most of their regular-season meeting with Muncie Southside, but in the rematch, with the sectional title on the line, they took control in the second quarter.
Wellman’s 61-yard touchdown pass to Scott Houston got JCHS on the scoreboard early in the first quarter, and a Dalton McGill interception led to an 18-yard Michael Jobe touchdown run a few minutes later. Another interception, this one by Daniels, led to a second Jobe TD for a 21-0 lead early in the second half.
But Southside, led by diminutive quarterback Jamil Smith, rallied, with a 9-yard touchdown pass to Cody Reynolds pulling the Rebels to within six points — 27-21 — with less than three minutes to play.
The moment was tense, but not too big for the Patriots.
“You never felt on the sideline, like, ‘Uh oh, here we go again.’ And there’s years when you do,” said Millspaugh, then the defensive coordinator — 2007 linebacker Michael Karn now has that job — and now the JCHS head coach, noting that in some seasons it just seems that a team can’t make breaks happen in critical moments. “And that team, it seemed like we always could, because we knew we were going to.”
When Southside went for the onside kick in an attempt to get the ball back, Daniels made the recovery, setting up the run that would change Jay County football history.
The reasons
Hill and Millspaugh coached some strong teams together after coming to Jay County late in the summer of 2002.
Their team that year recorded the school’s first winning season since 1988, going 6-5, with every loss coming against a state-ranked squad. The 2005 group went 6-3 in the regular season but lost to Delta in the sectional semifinal, and the 2006 Patriots had a winning record only to fall in the muddy melee against Kerrigan’s Bearcats.
So, what was special about the 2007 squad — the first, and still the only, one to break through for a sectional title.
One, leadership.
“You’ve got to have those guys that are just … driven like no other,” said Millspaugh. “And that was Michael Jobe.
“But you also have to have the guys who, when things start to go wrong, they have the confidence and the charisma to get everybody else in that huddle focused and back on the task and not thinking about what just happened. And that was Aaron Daniels.”
Those two were among a vast group of leaders from a team that included a class of 17 seniors. And they believed in themselves.
“We had a lot of confidence,” said Hemmelgarn. “It wasn’t ego, but we weren’t afraid to say, ‘You know what, we’re pretty good, and we’re going to go out and show everybody we are.’”
But it was more than that. There was also the momentum of winning four of the last five regular-season games, including three by two touchdowns or more.
“We had the ball rolling,” said Hill. “We had momentum. We were winning games. So when you’re riding that wave … heading into the sectional — I don’t think we had put a stretch together with some of those other teams like we put together during the regular season with that team, which obviously benefits you. When you’re riding high heading into the sectional, you feel like you can win the whole thing.”
There was also a little bit of good fortune, like the successful bomb to Reynard against the Rebels, the blocked punts that bounced the right way and the fact that Southside took out Delta in the sectional semifinal.
But more than all of those things, it was the intangibles.
The players remember watching movies together between two-a-day practices. They recall shouting a line from the movie “300,” about the Spartans’ stand at the Battle of Thermopylae, before each game. They reminisce about playing Fergie’s “Glamorous” after every win.
“It was just a perfect storm where you wanted to go to practice,” said Daniels. “You wanted to be in that locker room. You wanted to be around those guys.”
“We had a pretty good bond built by our senior season,” said Clint Muhlenkamp, who had also played on the JCHS boys basketball state runner-up squad a year-and-a-half earlier. “I think, quite frankly, none of us wanted the journey to end.”
The moment
After Daniels recovered the onside kick, the Patriots were simply trying to get a couple of first downs to run out the clock. They shifted to their “jumbo” package.
But then Franklin found a hole.
Muhlenkamp remembers his block being key on the play. Hill still sees offensive lineman Prescott opening a gap. Millspaugh says he was yelling at Prescott for holding.
Franklin, well, he had different things on his mind.
“It was one of those just kind of surreal moments where things kind of opened up and I started thinking, ‘Is this happening?’” he said. “Obviously, ‘Don’t trip,’ goes through your mind a bunch of times.”
He didn’t.
Franklin went untouched the rest of the way to the end zone, putting the game out of reach with a two-touchdown lead and less than two minutes to play.
Daniels had his back to the field, probably talking to someone, he said, when Franklin broke free.
“At the time, you could just feel the entire stands, the sideline, everything,” he said. “It was one of those things where everybody jumps up …”
The feeling
As they talk about their glory days on the gridiron, the players wonder out loud how so much time could have passed already.
“It’s amazing,” said Franklin, who now manages a Famous Dave’s restaurant in Indianapolis. “Some of those memories are still so fresh. It seems like it was last week.”
“It’s crazy … because it’s just so long. A decade seems like such a long time, but it feels like it’s been two, three weeks at most.”
“I cannot believe it’s been 10 years,” echoed Daniels, who would later serve as a JCHS assistant coach and now runs Celina Lynx golf course in Ohio. “That’s absolutely absurd to me.
“But to be a part of that, the only team that’s ever won a sectional title, is really, really, really special for a couple reasons.
“No. 1, it’s a place in history. It’s nostalgic. And it’s something that we will always be able to say we were the first ones.”
They’re proud.
Of that, there is no doubt.
There’s something special about being the first group to accomplish a goal like winning a sectional title. But they also would like more Patriots to have that same feeling and hope that another group will get to hoist a trophy sooner rather than later.
“I really wish there was others along the way,” said Hill. “It’s a nice feeling to have, but it sure would be nice to have a couple others … down the road. It deserves some company.”
The two juniors and their assistant coach were downtrodden after losing 6-0 on their home field in the sectional semifinal to a Muncie Central team led by future Washington Redskins first-round draft pick Ryan Kerrigan. But they were also confident as they looked toward the future.
They talked not about what it would feel like if they were able to win the sectional championship the following year, but about how it would feel when they did.
“At the end of our junior year, there was no doubt in our mind,” said Daniels. “We were going to win the sectional title that next year.”
Fast forward 53 weeks.
Jay County, once up by 21, was clinging to a six-point lead with less than three minutes to play. It had recovered a Muncie Southside onside kick and was simply looking to run out the clock.
But then Lance Franklin found a hole, broke through the line and hustled to the southwest end zone at Harold E. Schutz Memorial Stadium for a 39-yard touchdown.
Every player, every coach still has that moment burned in their memory. It was the moment they knew for sure that, for the first time, the Patriots would be sectional champions.
“I just exploded,” said Shane Hill, the team’s coach. “It was a place as a player and a coach that I hadn't been before … so just the sheer excitement. But more than that was just the feeling for the kids, watching it in their eyes and seeing how it made them feel and just living in that moment with them was just amazing.”
Hill and his Patriots will get to relive that moment Friday, as Jay County High School will honor them during halftime of the season opener against Blackford.
The road
The historic season wasn’t all touchdowns and end zone dances for the Patriots.
They lost their opener to Delta, albeit by the narrowest margin in more than a decade against the perennial powerhouse Eagles. They beat Blackford the next week and sat 2-2 after a shutout win over Franklin County and a shutout loss to Anderson Highland.
Then they headed to Muncie Southside for the first of what would end up being two meetings with the Rebels.
The game was wild, with Southside taking a 19-7 lead after scoring on a double-pass early in the fourth quarter, Jon Rodeffer blocking a punt to set up a Patriot touchdown, Franklin intercepting a pass and returning it for the go-ahead TD just 16 seconds later, the Rebels reclaiming the advantage in the final minute and the sprinklers turning on with 13.8 seconds left as JCHS was working on its desperation drive. Finally, quarterback Billy Wellman heaved a bomb down the left sideline and Brandon Reynard made a diving catch across the goal line for the game-winning score with 5.9 seconds remaining.
“We had our challenges and our adversity like anybody else, but we generally responded really well to it,” said Kaleb Hemmelgarn, who anchored the offensive line alongside Andrew Lancaster, Colton Prescott, Mitchell Martyne and Baxter Holdcroft. “I never felt like we kind of curled up and gave up.”
The miracle victory started a run of three in a row for the Patriots and four out of five to end the regular season. They avenged the previous season’s loss to Muncie Central in the sectional opener, then got a key blocked punt from Kyle Cook to turn the tide in a 23-16 victory at New Castle in the semifinal.
The game
The Patriots had trailed for most of their regular-season meeting with Muncie Southside, but in the rematch, with the sectional title on the line, they took control in the second quarter.
Wellman’s 61-yard touchdown pass to Scott Houston got JCHS on the scoreboard early in the first quarter, and a Dalton McGill interception led to an 18-yard Michael Jobe touchdown run a few minutes later. Another interception, this one by Daniels, led to a second Jobe TD for a 21-0 lead early in the second half.
But Southside, led by diminutive quarterback Jamil Smith, rallied, with a 9-yard touchdown pass to Cody Reynolds pulling the Rebels to within six points — 27-21 — with less than three minutes to play.
The moment was tense, but not too big for the Patriots.
“You never felt on the sideline, like, ‘Uh oh, here we go again.’ And there’s years when you do,” said Millspaugh, then the defensive coordinator — 2007 linebacker Michael Karn now has that job — and now the JCHS head coach, noting that in some seasons it just seems that a team can’t make breaks happen in critical moments. “And that team, it seemed like we always could, because we knew we were going to.”
When Southside went for the onside kick in an attempt to get the ball back, Daniels made the recovery, setting up the run that would change Jay County football history.
The reasons
Hill and Millspaugh coached some strong teams together after coming to Jay County late in the summer of 2002.
Their team that year recorded the school’s first winning season since 1988, going 6-5, with every loss coming against a state-ranked squad. The 2005 group went 6-3 in the regular season but lost to Delta in the sectional semifinal, and the 2006 Patriots had a winning record only to fall in the muddy melee against Kerrigan’s Bearcats.
So, what was special about the 2007 squad — the first, and still the only, one to break through for a sectional title.
One, leadership.
“You’ve got to have those guys that are just … driven like no other,” said Millspaugh. “And that was Michael Jobe.
“But you also have to have the guys who, when things start to go wrong, they have the confidence and the charisma to get everybody else in that huddle focused and back on the task and not thinking about what just happened. And that was Aaron Daniels.”
Those two were among a vast group of leaders from a team that included a class of 17 seniors. And they believed in themselves.
“We had a lot of confidence,” said Hemmelgarn. “It wasn’t ego, but we weren’t afraid to say, ‘You know what, we’re pretty good, and we’re going to go out and show everybody we are.’”
But it was more than that. There was also the momentum of winning four of the last five regular-season games, including three by two touchdowns or more.
“We had the ball rolling,” said Hill. “We had momentum. We were winning games. So when you’re riding that wave … heading into the sectional — I don’t think we had put a stretch together with some of those other teams like we put together during the regular season with that team, which obviously benefits you. When you’re riding high heading into the sectional, you feel like you can win the whole thing.”
There was also a little bit of good fortune, like the successful bomb to Reynard against the Rebels, the blocked punts that bounced the right way and the fact that Southside took out Delta in the sectional semifinal.
But more than all of those things, it was the intangibles.
The players remember watching movies together between two-a-day practices. They recall shouting a line from the movie “300,” about the Spartans’ stand at the Battle of Thermopylae, before each game. They reminisce about playing Fergie’s “Glamorous” after every win.
“It was just a perfect storm where you wanted to go to practice,” said Daniels. “You wanted to be in that locker room. You wanted to be around those guys.”
“We had a pretty good bond built by our senior season,” said Clint Muhlenkamp, who had also played on the JCHS boys basketball state runner-up squad a year-and-a-half earlier. “I think, quite frankly, none of us wanted the journey to end.”
The moment
After Daniels recovered the onside kick, the Patriots were simply trying to get a couple of first downs to run out the clock. They shifted to their “jumbo” package.
But then Franklin found a hole.
Muhlenkamp remembers his block being key on the play. Hill still sees offensive lineman Prescott opening a gap. Millspaugh says he was yelling at Prescott for holding.
Franklin, well, he had different things on his mind.
“It was one of those just kind of surreal moments where things kind of opened up and I started thinking, ‘Is this happening?’” he said. “Obviously, ‘Don’t trip,’ goes through your mind a bunch of times.”
He didn’t.
Franklin went untouched the rest of the way to the end zone, putting the game out of reach with a two-touchdown lead and less than two minutes to play.
Daniels had his back to the field, probably talking to someone, he said, when Franklin broke free.
“At the time, you could just feel the entire stands, the sideline, everything,” he said. “It was one of those things where everybody jumps up …”
The feeling
As they talk about their glory days on the gridiron, the players wonder out loud how so much time could have passed already.
“It’s amazing,” said Franklin, who now manages a Famous Dave’s restaurant in Indianapolis. “Some of those memories are still so fresh. It seems like it was last week.”
“It’s crazy … because it’s just so long. A decade seems like such a long time, but it feels like it’s been two, three weeks at most.”
“I cannot believe it’s been 10 years,” echoed Daniels, who would later serve as a JCHS assistant coach and now runs Celina Lynx golf course in Ohio. “That’s absolutely absurd to me.
“But to be a part of that, the only team that’s ever won a sectional title, is really, really, really special for a couple reasons.
“No. 1, it’s a place in history. It’s nostalgic. And it’s something that we will always be able to say we were the first ones.”
They’re proud.
Of that, there is no doubt.
There’s something special about being the first group to accomplish a goal like winning a sectional title. But they also would like more Patriots to have that same feeling and hope that another group will get to hoist a trophy sooner rather than later.
“I really wish there was others along the way,” said Hill. “It’s a nice feeling to have, but it sure would be nice to have a couple others … down the road. It deserves some company.”
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