The Joy and Chaos of Ending the State’s Longest Losing Streak
One night, at age four, I remember walking toward my father, excited to greet him. Just as we were about to embrace, five uniformed men grabbed him, lifted him off the ground, and hauled him away. I quickly turned around to see if anyone could help. I saw dozens of people headed my direction. Some were yelling. Others were screaming. All of them were running. As they sprinted by, one of them bumped into me, causing the helmet I was wearing to shift forward, covering my eyes.
I became disoriented. I couldn’t see, and all I could hear were people’s screams. I peed my pants and began to cry. It was the scariest night of my childhood.
To everyone else, though, it was cause for celebration. It began with high school football players hoisting the head coach upon their shoulders, as cheering fans rushed the field. It culminated in a makeshift, late night parade down Main Street, led by the town’s only fire truck and an ‘81 Buick LeSabre.
After 28 consecutive losses, spanning almost four years, the mighty Lapel Bulldogs had finally won a football game.
Farming, Hunting, and Basketball
Across America, you will find places where high school football is king. Some are big, some are small. Some in the city, some in the country. These places can be different in many ways, but there is always one common denominator: winning. In these football hotbeds, state titles are the norm. Season tickets are contested in divorce proceedings. College coaches roam the hallways of the high school in search of their next blue chip recruit. On Friday nights during the season, the streets are empty and the stores are closed.
Tiny Lapel, Indiana (pop. 2,358), a sleepy farming community 20 miles outside of Indianapolis, is no such place. But when you are a young coach in search of your first head coaching gig, places like Lapel are often your only option. Such was the case for my dad, in 1978, when he accepted the offer to coach what was likely the worst team in all of Hoosierland.
These days, the Lapel High School Bulldogs actually do pretty well on the football field. The Dawgs have never sniffed a state championship, but you can usually count on them having a winning record. Lapel’s enrollment, while still small, has steadily increased as the suburbs of Indianapolis have gradually grown closer over the past forty years. And the state’s open enrollment policy has enabled some talented athletes from nearby Anderson (pop. 54,513) to come play for Bulldogs, too.
But back in 1981, despite my father’s best efforts, the Bulldogs were abysmal. They were so bad that they owned the state’s longest losing streak — 28 games — with no realistic end in sight. Because of the school’s size, it was the mid-1970s before Lapel even began fielding a football team. That lack of tradition all but evaporated what was already a shallow talent pool.
Most of the boys there only knew three seasons: hunting, farming, and basketball. Building a culture of caring about football was likely my dad’s greatest challenge. For some kids, the best scenario he could muster was convincing them to at least play football until hunting season began.
While the personnel issues were daunting, so was the schedule. There were really only two or three games in which Lapel would even have a chance of winning. Lapel faced both the defending state champion, Sheridan, and the season’s eventual state champion, Hamilton Southeastern. One year, at Sheridan, my mother arrived after kickoff, and Sheridan had already jumped out to something like a 42–0 second quarter lead. As the Lapel coach’s wife, she was entitled to free admission. All she had to do was reveal her identity to the ticket office manager. On that night, she decided disassociation with Lapel Football was worth the $3 price of admission.
The Bulldog 4–3–5
No sport relies more heavily on the use of strategic formations and predetermined play calls than football. On the defensive side, some of the sport’s most successful formations have become famous. There’s Buddy Ryan’s vaunted “46” defense, made famous by the 1985 Chicago Bears. Monte Kiffin’s “Tampa-2” enabled both the ’02 Buccaneers and ’06 Colts to win Super Bowls. And no defensive front is more revered than the “3–4”, which has been mastered by Bill Parcells’ disciples Bill Belichick and Nick Saban. I like to think of my dad as a defensive mastermind, too. His lasting contribution to the game of football is the “Bulldog 4–3–5”.
My dad knew the odds of winning a game that year were low, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Even if they don’t win, he thought, he wanted to give them a chance to be more competitive. He and the coaches devised formations and plays that would showcase their most talented players. They worked the team hard in practices and diligently studied film of their opponents. And, just in case, they even came up with a creative solution for their lack of speed, size, experience — well, lack of everything — on defense: the Bulldog 4–3–5.
The Bulldog 4–3–5 looks much like a traditional 4–3 up front — four down linemen and three linebackers. The secret sauce, though, is the placement of five defensive backs: two corners, two safeties, and one rover — the “Bulldog”. The key to running the 4–3–5 lies with the player assigned as the Bulldog. Success depends on his ability to disguise himself, perhaps as a fourth linebacker, a third safety, or a referee, the goalpost, or blades of grass. Otherwise, everyone will notice that Lapel is illegally fielding 12 players.
I imagine the feeling of being named the Bulldog on Lapel’s starting defense was akin to being the tuba player selected to dot the “i” at Ohio State.
The Game
That season, I was four years old. Game nights were the highlight of my social calendar. (This has not changed much.) For every game, I suited up in my “uniform”, put on my cartoonishly oversized helmet, and roamed the sidelines like I was the most badass preschooler around. Then, when the game ended, I would grab my dad’s hand and walk with him back to the locker room. It never occurred to me that the game’s result would have any impact on this routine.
One night, as usual, Lapel was losing. But this time, they only trailed nearby rival Shenandoah High by a touchdown in the 4th quarter. The way my dad tells the story, the Bulldogs were hanging tough because of some extra motivation they received during the week.
Apparently the Shenandoah coach had lit a fire under the asses of the Lapel players — well, the 17 or 18 of them who remained after the rest of the team had taken off with their dads, uncles, and brothers for the start of hunting season — because he was quoted in the newspaper as saying the Lapel game that week was an automatic win. (We aren’t going to dwell on the matter of what ridiculous newspaper out there would actually be using ink to preview this game. Let’s just assume it happened.)
The Bulldogs trailed 7–0, but had driven the ball deep into Shenandoah territory. Only a few minutes remained on the clock. The crowd was on its feet, daring themselves to believe that this time, things would be different. Lapel’s quarterback took the snap and tossed the ball back. The tailback, running to his left, caught the ball and juked a defender. Only one man stood between the running back and the endzone. Just then, Lapel’s 5 foot 7, 98-pound left tackle unleashed a crushing block to clear the tailback’s path. TOUCHDOWN.
What came next would be the defining moment of my father’s young coaching career. Would he kick the extra point to tie the game, or go for two and the victory?
Most of my life, I believed my dad went for two because of his killer instinct, his meticulous scouting of the Shenandoah defense, and his desire to punish the opposing coach who would dare speak confidently about the possibility of defeating the worst team in the state. For confirmation, I asked him about it recently.
“Dad, did you go for two just to show him who was boss? Teach him a lesson? Shove it down his throat?”
“No. I gathered the coaches together, and we all agreed, there ain’t no way we’re gonna beat those assholes in overtime. So we better go for two now or we’re screwed.”
Go for two they did. And it worked. Lapel 8, Shenandoah 7. Less than a minute remained. Time for the Bulldog 4–3–5.* The Raiders ran a few plays, but got nowhere. Game over. Streak over.
*He didn’t really run the Bulldog 4–3–5 with the game on the line. We’re just having fun here. I don’t need any 1981 Shenandoah Football truthers in my life.
The Victory Parade
Fans rushing the field is a pretty chaotic experience, even for adults. But to me, a 4-year-old, it was Pamplona. I wandered around aimlessly as I cried. I looked for my dad but couldn’t find him. I gazed up to the bleachers, where my mom and grandpa had been sitting. No one was there. Later, my mother would tell me they watched the whole thing unfold as they slowly walked down from the stands. When I asked her why she didn’t come save me, she said, “From here, it looked like you were having a great time.”
No one in my family rescued me that night. Instead it was one of my babysitters — a Lapel cheerleader — who saw me upset. She asked me what was wrong and I told her I just wanted to find my dad and go home. “Okay, we’ll find your dad now. But you can’t go home yet because we’re all gonna get on the fire truck and have a parade through town!”
One of the lasting observations I remember from childhood is how adults — even older kids, in this case — often have no idea what will bring a sense of calm and safety to a stressed out child. I’m sure she was thinking, “Kids love fire trucks. That’ll make him happy.” Yes, I did love a good ol’ toy fire truck. But a real one? Have you ever seen a little kid’s reaction to a loud siren going off right next to them? At that age, I would rather be stung by a swarm of bees than be anywhere near an active fire truck.
After finally being reunited with my family, discussion had shifted from “How much PTSD will our little boy have based on the past 10 minutes?” to “How can we convince him to get on that scary ass fire truck and ride through town with sirens blaring and 30 screaming teenagers on board?” Another swing and miss from the grown ups in charge.
I put my foot down. “I’m glad we won. I’m happy for Dad. I love Lapel Football. But there ain’t no way in hell I’m getting on that god damn fire truck tonight.” (Forty years later, that’s the translation.)
We reached a compromise. The players, cheerleaders, mascot, and coaches would ride on the fire truck. The coach’s son will ride behind the fire truck in his grandpa’s brand new, Limited Edition, 1981 Buick LeSabre.
Off we went. Grandpa (and his tank of a car) made me feel a lot less frazzled. I remember pulling behind the giant, yellow fire truck in the school parking lot. Car horns were honking. People were cheering. Feeling safe inside the car, I could finally appreciate what was happening. I saw smiles on the faces of players I was accustomed to seeing hanging their heads, defeated, as they walked off the field. We turned onto Main Street, where more people had gathered on both sides. The fire truck blared its sirens. I winced, but hung in there. It looked like everyone was having so much fun.
Heck, the next week, we even won again. And that modest two-game win streak began a run all the way to the state champio-…okay you know that didn’t happen. But for one fleeting period of about thirteen days, those 17 or 18 kids who stayed — either because they loved football or didn’t own a hunting rifle — felt like gods.
Dad’s Lapel Legacy
My dad coached a couple more years, with modest success, then hung up his high-cut nylon coaching shorts with giant belt loops to become an assistant principal at a nearby high school. He ended up being an administrator at three different high schools, in three different towns. At each of them, we made new friends and cheered for those teams. But compared to “head football coach”, there’s no romance in being an assistant principal. So none of those places ever landed closer to our hearts than Lapel.
None of us have ever actually lived in Lapel, but we have always maintained a connection. Dad joined the Lapel American Legion back in 1978, when he was coaching, and he’s been a member ever since. He’s even been Post Commander a few times. When the Bulldogs boys basketball team made it to the state championship game and captured the school’s first ever state title in any sport, my parents were in the stands at Conseco Fieldhouse cheering them on, and I was on the phone with them, listening in to the final seconds as they ticked off the clock from my home in Arizona.
And now, this year, when my son told me he wanted to play football for the first time, even though we live twenty minutes away, I knew the league in which I wanted him to participate. He’s not sold on the sport just yet…it’s pretty rough out there and he’s small for his age, but I am thankful that he gave it a go. Practices were hard, but the ice cream afterwards was great.
On the day they handed out equipment, Dad tagged along with Matthew and me. As I was helping Matt try on a pair of shoulder pads, I glanced over to see that my dad had struck up a conversation with the current Lapel High School head coach, Tim Miller. He was rattling off all the classic stories I’d heard a million times, but it was special knowing that this time, those stories were connecting the struggles of Lapel’s early football days with its present-day solid standing.
I thought, maybe one day, when Lapel is battling its old nemesis, Shenandoah, late in the 4th quarter of the state playoffs, and Coach Miller is looking for that last bit of inspiration to push his Bulldogs over the top, he might exclaim to his team, “Boys, there once was a time when Lapel had the longest losing streak in the state, and Shenandoah’s coach told everyone he knew that there was no way they would ever lose to our Bulldogs. But guess what? WE BEAT ‘EM! And if we did it then, WE CAN DO IT NOW!”
More important than a hypothetical halftime speech, though, is seeing how those victories so long ago really did establish the foundation of what is now a winning tradition. In the championship game of the Lapel Optimist Youth Football League, Matthew’s team found itself in a battle against the best team from neighboring Mount Vernon, and — just like the Shenandoah game decades before — a last-minute two-point conversion attempt was the difference. This time, Lapel’s defense denied the attempt, then had to produce a goal line stand after conceding an onside kick, but hung on to win 22–20.
Fans rushed the field, but now, at 6 foot 3, I can see over them, so it was nothing but joy for me as I observed the celebration. There was no parade this time, but, just for fun, Matthew and I took a little detour on our way home. With a championship trophy on his lap and a big smile on his face, we drove to the old high school, where his practices were held, and retraced the parade route from decades before. There were no cars in the parking lot and no people along Main Street, but with “We Are The Champions” blaring and both of us hooting and hollering, it was all the same to us.
