State title left lasting memory

Editor’s note: In more than six years, sports editor Chris Schanz has seen his fair share of athletic contests. Some stick out more than others. In this “Greatest Games” series, he will reminisce about some of the games he’ll never forget witnessing.



Cover enough games and its easy to forget small details.

A basket here, a two-run double there; as time goes on, recollections of some of sports’ most common happenings begin to fade.

It’s almost impossible going into a event knowing that it could be a momentous or memorable one.

That was not the case though as I drove to Columbus, Ohio, on the afternoon of Dec. 4, 2015, for the OHSAA Division VII state championship football game.

Fort Recovery High School, which overcame rumblings of nearly cutting the program earlier in the millennium and qualified for the playoffs for just the first time the previous year, was making its first trip to the state final in any sport since 1999.

And it was 48 minutes away from the school’s first state title since 1991.

Ohio Stadium — “The Horseshoe” — was electric that chilly afternoon. Fort Recovery, a village of approximately 1,500, had sold more than 3,000 advance tickets for the game, and the sea of purple showed out in full force behind the Indians on the home sideline.

Because of the magnitude of the game, I decided to shoot photographs of everything; pre-game warmups, the delivering of the game ball, the coin toss. Win or lose it was going to be a special day, and I wanted to document it all.

I set a personal record that still stands today for most pictures taken at a single event: 1,158. I’ve kept every single one of them, too.

My only regret is not having editor Ray Cooney there with me as a second photographer.

On this day, the Indians had a sort of swagger they hadn’t shown much of the postseason, even more than the regional final against fifth-ranked Minster and the state semifinal against No. 4 McComb.

Standing across the field from No. 8 Fort Recovery were the Mogadore Wildcats, a team that was ranked second.

As mentioned previously, details about most games have eluded me. Recollections of final scores, most plays and performances have gone by the wayside.

But not this game.

Will Homan, who later became the top rusher in FRHS history, picked off a pass on Mogadore’s second offensive play.

Darien Sheffer caught a pass from Caleb Martin on the left sideline, took contact at the 3-yard line and reached out to extend the ball across the goal line for a 15-yard touchdown four plays later.

On the next drive, it was Tanner Koch’s time to catch a Martin TD pass, this one 11 yards, to put the Indians ahead 14-0 early.

The Wildcats trimmed the margin in half, 14-7, but a couple more Martin TD passes gave the Tribe a comfortable lead. The first of those two tosses was one of those plays that just happens to stick out.

Martin, on his way to setting multiple Division VII state championship game records, dropped back to pass. Mogadore defensive lineman Kyle Callihan came around the left edge with a clear shot at the Indian quarterback. Martin rifled a dart across the middle of the field to Brandon “Speedy” Schoen, then Callihan immediately drilled him. It was a perfectly clean, although hard, hit.

But Schoen caught Martin’s missile in stride at the FRHS 40, and he went untouched the remaining 60 yards for a 75-yard score.

On the next Indian drive, Sheffer, a former quarterback, fielded a botched snap on a punt, and instead of attempting to kick he tucked the ball and ran for a first down on fourth-and-5. His improvisation kept alive a drive that culminated with a Martin-to-Koch TD pass again.

With 51 seconds left in the first half, the Indians had a commanding 27-7 lead.

I remember sending a text to Ray at halftime: “It’s happening!”

Indeed it was.

Not much of note happened in the third quarter. Neither team scored, and Martin, who had eclipsed 300 passing yards for the first time in his career, missed a series with a calf cramp.

Martin put a cherry on top of the Indians’ state title by lofting a 30-yard touchdown pass to a wide open Wes Wenning on a post route over the middle to make it 33-7 early in the fourth period.

Mogadore eventually scored again, but by then it was too little, too late.

Martin was 25-of-39 for 385 yards and five touchdowns. Wenning caught eight passes for 121 yards and a touchdown, while Schoen had 125 yards and a score on five grabs. Koch hauled in five catches, two of which were scores.

Homan had “just” 88 yards on 19 carries, two games after racking up 242 yards in the regional final against Minster.

“Ever since our first workout in early May, we knew this was the goal from the start,” Martin said in the postgame press conference. “Our goal was to get here and once we did we were going to be good enough to win the game.

“That’s what we did. We made it happen.”

Wenning said the Indians “defied all odds.”

And Mogadore coach Matt Adorni was left trying to figure out what had just happened.

“Obviously we knew coming in when you play a (Midwest Athletic Conference) school of their caliber in this setting you can’t do the things we did right off the bat,” he said. “They probably surprised us a little bit with their overall speed and athleticism. The tape didn’t do them justice.”

Fort Recovery coach Brent Niekamp had been through it all with the Indians. He coached them during the one- and two-win seasons. He was there when the district contemplated whether or not it would keep the program.

A little more time, and a couple classes of students putting in all they could to turn around the program, put Fort Recovery football on the map.

“I don’t know if I can describe it,” Niekamp said. “We went through a lot of years of being sort of a cellar dwellers in our conference.

“I guess we feel like we belong now.”