.png)
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
The Winamac football team succumbed to Lafayette Central Catholic’s air raid offense last week.
The Knights passed the ball 30 times while running it only eight. But five of the 30 passes from Central Catholic’s Bobby Metzger wound up in the end zone. Winamac fell behind 42-0 in a game they eventually lost 42-14 in a Class 2A, Sectional 34 quarterfinal.
“We knew they were going to be athletic, and we knew we just couldn’t sit back and try and get some pressure on them, so credit to those guys,” Winamac coach Josh Burgess said. “They made plays. Honestly, I thought we had guys in position on a lot of those big plays too. They were just a step quicker than we were. We were just a half-step slow, so credit to them. They made a lot of big plays that got us.”
Offensively, Winamac had a 133-11 advantage in rushing yards, but Burgess said the Warriors “were not as consistent as we needed to be.”
Winamac finished with a 3-7, a one-win improvement on their 2022 record.
“I thought on the back end of the schedule, we played a lot better,” Burgess said. “We were much improved over the first part of the season. That had to do with getting guys back and getting guys in the position we needed to get them in. So obviously, we want more than three wins, but the attitude, effort and the improvement was good, and I think we have a solid core of younger guys coming back too that will carry us forward as we go.”
A new-look Hoosier North awaits Winamac, which is expected to have the largest enrollment in the conference with Knox and LaVille leaving and North Miami and South Central (Union Mills) joining for football.
Possibly worth noting is that Winamac’s last 10 wins have been over Class 1A schools. Their last win over a Class 2A school came against Manchester in September 2021.
“We’re going to lose a good group of seniors, 12 in all,” Burgess said. “But we’ve got good numbers in our middle school program. Each of our middle school teams had around 15 to 20 kids. We’ve got a good eighth grade class. They had a pretty good season, so hoping to get a good number of those kids coming up, and hopefully, our numbers will keep going up here in the next couple of years.
“Numbers-wise, I think we’re in a similar situation to most of the teams in the conference, especially with Knox and LaVille leaving. So you never know until you get there, until you get everybody there and start in the summer in August. But I think our numbers are going to be fine. I like what we’ve got coming up, and I like what we have coming back.”
