There’s hardly a better feeling for anyone involved in high school football than to know that you’re going to play at least one extra game. At the same time it’s a big achievement in of itself to know how far a team has come in a short span of time.
The Greenfield-Northwestern Tigers have come a long way in just 5 games. Ever since the Tigers lost to Carrollton, 26-0 in week 3, things have been stellar. They’re on a 5-game winning streak and have out-scored their opponents 227-82 during that span.
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“We were still finding out a lot about ourselves and sometimes you have to learn lessons the hard way,” Greenfield-Northwestern head coach Joe Pembrook said. “We’ve integrated a few younger kids into our lineups, which created a bit more depth and we’ve started to execute better,”
The Tigers executed there way to a 52-20 victory over the Triopia Trojans in Greenfield on Friday night. The win for Greenfield means that they will be guaranteed a spot in the IHSA Class 1A Playoffs.
“It’s really big for us, we really wanted to get this win to get into the playoffs this week,” Greenfield’s Taegan Grigsby said.
Greenfield’s offensive line opened up holes all night long for the Tiger running backs to bulldoze their way through the line of scrimmage. Overall the Tigers rushed for 350 yards and the speedy Grigsby got the majority of them as he racked up 189 yards on just 11 carries for 4 touchdowns.
“We came out and did whatever we wanted to do and we had really good blocking tonight,” Grigsby said.
Fullback Jacob Foiles had a big day as well. He rushed for 160 yards on 10 carries with a 20-yard touchdown run.
The origins of the rushing yards start’s in the trenches with the Tigers offensive line. They have been the bedrock to the team’s success.
“It starts with our offensive line, they’re a very united group, a group that we had to rebuild this year,” Pembrook said. They’re very proud of what they’ve accomplished and they should be.”
Grigsby leads the WIVC South in rushing yards, 1,183 and rushing touchdowns, 21. The line happily blocks for him and Grigsby happily thanks them in return.
“They know that everything Taegan gets and receives is well deserved, but Taegan will be the first guy to tell you that all the credit goes to the guys up front doing their job,” Pembrook said.
Kaleb Brogdon of Triopia scored on a 25-yard rush 4 minutes and 41 seconds into the game to make it 6-0. However Greenfield leveled things up when Blane Bilbruck ran in from 9 yards out. Then the Tigers took the lead for good on a 2-point conversion 3 minutes and 31 seconds later on the ensuing possession.
Grigsby scored on a 9-yard run of his own, which was set up by a 28-yard, play-action pass from Cole Arnett to Austin Bishop. After recovering a fumble at midfield, Grigsby received a handoff, took off from the 50-yard line, and out-ran the Trojan secondary to the house to make it 24-6 at the start of the second quarter.
Things then went from good to great for the Tigers. As Triopia quarterback Isaac Werries dropped back for a pass, Logan Fernandes came in from behind Werries’ and smoked him. The hit caused Werries to fumble the ball and was tracked down by Bilbruck. He scooped the ball up at midfield and returned it the end zone to make it 30-6 in favor of Greenfield.
The Trojans made the score 30-12 on a 30-yard play-action pass from Werries to Levi Job, but it was eventually answered by a 71-yard touchdown gallop from Grisgby with 1:24 left in the first half to make it 38-12. The Tigers added two more rushing touchdowns in the second half and proceeded to slap the Trojans with a running clock.
“Right now we have a lot of team chemistry, we feel good about ourselves,” Pembrook said. “We think we’re playing our best football at the right time of the season.”
