Tribal arrival

“The next time you put on your pads will be in Columbus.”
It’s a statement Fort Recovery High School football coach Brent Niekamp told his team at the end of practice Wednesday.
It’s here.
Week 15.
The Division VII state championship.
And the eighth-ranked Indians (12-2) will be there, ready to go to war, just as they have the previous 14 weeks.
“It’s amazing that they were able to put that target out there, strive for it and here it is,” said Niekamp, whose team plays the No. 2 Mogadore Wildcats at 3 p.m. Friday at Ohio Stadium on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus. “It doesn’t always work out like that. They set the standard very high and kept working to attain that.”
While the stage will be big — The Horseshoe is the third-largest stadium in the country with a capacity just north of 107,000 — the Indians won’t let themselves get caught up in the moment.
“The biggest thing is, the field is still 100 yards long,” said senior Ross Homan. “I ain’t going to lie, it’s going to be awesome. There is a game plan we need to execute and at the end of the day we’re going to put rings on our fingers.”
It’s a swagger not often found in Fort Recovery, especially when it comes to football. But with the state’s biggest stage looming, and the teams the Tribe handled to get there, the confidence is reasonable.
“We just have to stay focused,” junior quarterback Caleb Marin said. “We have been focused all week and we know we just have to go into Friday with our mindsets right. We know that if we have our mindsets right we are going to play our game and we know we can win.”
Jason Roessner, the team’s leading tackler with 120 stops, said this game is what the Indians have been preparing for all season.
“We’re going to be excited,” the junior said. “This is something we’ve had in mind. This doesn’t scare us.”
Neither does the opponent, a Mogadore team that has three state championships in its history, its last in 2002. Mogadore is a village just southeast of Akron with a population nearing 4,000.
The Wildcats (13-1) are a run-heavy team, averaging nearly 40 rushing plays per game. Senior Luke Cramer and junior Austin Williams lead the way with 884 and 655 yards respectively. Williams has a team-high 14 touchdowns on 112 carries, while Cramer has rushed 155 times with nine scores.
The Wildcats have another running back, senior Nate Alexander, but he was injured in the regional championship and is not expected to play. He totaled 616 yards and eight touchdowns on 83 carries. Senior Josh Thompkins has stepped up in his absence, totaling 323 yards with seven touchdowns on the season.
Niekamp said it will be up to the front seven on defense to keep those three backs bottled up.
“Those guys are going to have to be really active, playing with good leverage up front,” he said. The Indians have allowed an average of 118 rushing yards per game in the postseason. “I feel like that has been a strength of our defense so I feel pretty good about going in and meeting the challenge.”
This is not the time to reinvent the wheel, Roessner said, but rather to continue playing the way the Indians have all season.
“We just have to come out intense and keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Roessner said. “We don’t have to change anything up, we just have to stick to what we know.”
Mogadore quarterback Zeddie Pollock doesn’t throw often — an average of 15 passes per game — but he’s effective, completing 61 percent of his attempts. He has thrown for 1,929 yards with 28 touchdowns compared to just six interceptions.
Martin has similar numbers for the Indians, completing 56.6 percent of his 270 pass attempts for 2,021 yards, 17 touchdowns and nine interceptions.
“Our offense has been pretty balanced as of late,” Martin said. “We’ve really been clicking. We know that if we do our thing Friday, keep a balanced offense — throw the ball well, run the ball well and rely on our offensive line — we’re going to do pretty darn good.”
The offensive line has been the bread and butter for the Tribe, which is averaging 410 yards of offense in each of the four playoff games, including plowing over 2014 Division VI champ Minster to the tune of 293 rushing yards. Homan rushed for 242 of those yards against the Wildcats.
“The offensive line has been awesome all year, for (injured senior) Kyle (Schroer), for me,” said Homan, who has more than half — 613 of 1,094 — of his rushing yards in the last four games. “Every time I go out there it seems like there is holes two guys wide to run through.”
One of the keys for the Indians has been controlling the line of scrimmage, and Niekamp said it is just as crucial this week too.
“I think it’s going to be important that we get to their linebackers,” he said. Inside linebackers Paul Skye and Williams lead the team with 135 and 104 tackles respectively. “If we get everybody covered up then at least we give our runner a chance.”
 Mogadore coach Matt Adorni, who was an assistant on the Wildcats’ last state championship team, said a key for his defense is to slow down the Indians’ rushing attack.
“I don’t think you completely shut them down,” he said. “Be patient on defense. We can’t let them break big plays. We have to keep them guessing on defense.”
Adorni and the Wildcats are familiar with MAC schools.
“We know what they’re about as a league and that area of the state,” Adorni said. “MAC schools don’t typically beat themselves. They are sound in all three phases.
“We hope we can handle them. On paper it looks like a good matchup. When you get to this point you’re not playing any bad teams.”