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September 10, 2012

HUNTER: It won't take 70 more years

BY PERRY HUNTER sports@newsandtribune.com

SELLERSBURG — Silver Creek football defeated Eastern (Pekin) Saturday afternoon for a 44-18 victory. It was unique because SC football hadn’t won a game since 1942.

It is a little unfair to say it took 70 years to win because the Dragons just resurrected the program as a varsity team in 2010. But they still hadn’t won a varsity game until the other day at Pekin.

The game had been called because of bad weather the night before, so Silver Creek had to board up and go back to Washington County with a 30-12 lead in the fourth quarter.

Not winning on a regular basis had quarterback Brooks Howell having nightmares Friday night before going back “every scenario was running through my head,” he admitted.

As a Henryville resident, Henryville student/athlete and a former Henryville varsity coach, it can be a little hard to write this ... but good for them.

Congratulations on a well-deserved victory. It was a long time coming.

Maybe it is because my mother-in-law, Anita McKinley, has taught at Silver Creek Elementary for so long ... or that my wife is a 1997 graduate of SC ... or that my kids attend Silver Creek schools ... or that Silver Creek High School stepped up to help Henryville High School win the Lady Antebellum prom contest post-tornado. But good for the coaches, players and community.

The football team can be seen in Sellersburg by Highway 31 in front of the school working to improve every day, which isn’t so different from most teams. But the players continued to work and have good attitudes even though they lost their only varsity game in 2010, went winless in 2011 and hadn’t won yet this season.

I know I am not going out on a limb when I say it won’t take 70 more years for Victory No. 2. But I think it will come sooner than many expect.

I don’t know head coach Mike Donahue. But I do know the offensive coordinator Dave Rooney and the defensive coordinator Tony Garrett. Coach Rooney and Coach Garrett helped coach my daughter’s softball team this summer at Silver Creek Little League and I got to know them. I came away impressed that these were the type of people helping Coach Donahue build the Silver Creek football team.

I talked football a little with Coach Rooney, and seeing his and Coach Garrett’s attitudes about the SC football program was inspirational to me. The little we spoke about football, they were positive and not about to give up any time soon on the players in the football program.

They were fun guys that I had zero problems allowing to coach my daughter because you could tell they cared about the kids and weren’t coaching for themselves. They never said a bad word about Coach Donahue — trust me, it can happen especially when not winning — and created in me a new SC football fan.

Those guys, along with players like running back Layne Taylor, who during the spring baseball season got my 4-year-old son out doing a sliding drill with the SC baseball team — making his day and probably week — make you feel good for rewarded effort.

When you get to know personally the people involved in any sporting endeavor and when they are quality people, you find yourself cheering a little bit more for them.

Even if you are from Henryville and they are Dragons.

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