Terrence Hill, who came in at running back after Ethan Greenfield was knocked out of the game, fights for fourth-quarter yardage in his first game since September. Ohiosi.com photo

By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

ALLIANCE, Ohio – Two Division III football heavyweights, ranked No. 1 and No. 5 in the country, took the field at Mount Union Stadium and gave the fans exactly what you would expect – a knock-down, drag-out battle that went to the final seconds of the game.

Sports, especially football, often leans on metaphors about battle. It often uses boxing terms to emphasize those points.

For North Central, those metaphors and that terminology are no accident.

Long prior to the Cardinals’ 59-52 win on Saturday afternoon, the boxing references, especially ones about perseverance, permeated North Central’s season.

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The seeds of this heavyweight fight, one in which both teams fought to the end, hearken back to the beginning of the season for North Central. The Cardinals started their year at Christopher Newport, and in an unexpected circumstance, North Central ended up flying to Washington, D.C., instead of to Newport News, and on Thursday instead of Friday, to avoid the effects of Hurricane Dorian.

And with an extra day, coach Jeff Thorne knew exactly what he wanted his team to see, and hear, and do.

The book, Chase the Lion, made the trip with North Central to Mount Union. D3sports.com photo

The team has been referencing the term, “Chase the Lion,” this season, after the title of a book by Mark Batterson. The concept is fairly straightforward: When encountering a lion, run toward it rather than away from it -- take your challenges head-on. Batterson is someone Thorne lined up against in high school on the basketball court, and is the pastor of National Community Church, in Washington. And Thorne took his team to meet Batterson.

“He's talking to us and told the story about two heavyweight boxers, John Sullivan, back in the 1890s was the world champion, and he never lost. And this guy named Gentleman Jim Corbett came in and knocked him out in 21 rounds. And Jim Corbett learned his life philosophy in a 60-round bout a year earlier, to a draw, and his motto was 'just fight one more round.' And that's the story Mark Batterson told our team.”

Batterson remembers the Cardinals’ visit well.

“I would describe them as pretty locked and loaded,” Batterson said by phone. “They were cued in on everything I was saying. These are kids who are sitting in a lot of college classes, so you never know, but when I spoke to the team, they were locked in.”

Round 1 on Saturday saw Mount Union end the first half with 18 consecutive points, and the Purple Raiders took a 38-28 lead into the locker room at halftime. That’s a point at which many teams have deflated and never recovered. In fact, most often, Mount Union has made some incredible adjustment at halftime, come out in the second half and dominated.

Not this time.

“There was never a moment where we flinched, not one time,” said quarterback Broc Rutter. “We got down 10 and everyone was like, 'Cool, we get the ball at half, let's go score and we're not going to lose.' ”

And that’s what North Central did. On the third play of the half, Rutter hit Andrew Kamienski for a medium-deep route over the middle and Kamienski was gone, taking it to the end zone for a 71-yard touchdown catch. It was the longest catch Mount Union allowed all season.

Mount Union answered, as D’Angelo Fulford hit Wayne Ruby for a 66-yard touchdown pass to put the Purple Raiders back up by 10. But even that was a bit of a victory after Mount Union wide receiver and NFL prospect Justin Hill torched the Cardinals for five catches, more than 200 yards and a touchdown in the first half.

“We had to make some adjustments at halftime to take No. 1 (Hill) away from them,” Thorne said. “I just said at halftime, ‘Let’s not let No. 1 beat us. If we’re going to lose, make somebody else beat us.’ And he (defensive coordinator Shane Dierking) did a great job of coming up with a plan.”

So Round 2 was a draw, and North Central remained 10 points down with just 2:19 gone in the third quarter.

But the tide began to turn, as the Cardinals refused to go to the mat. Rutter completed a ball for 30 yards to DeAngelo Hardy on third-and-28. He hit Kamienski on the very next play for a 59-yard gain, and Ethan Greenfield, who ran for more than 300 yards in the first-round game against Wabash, took it in 3 yards for the touchdown. North Central trailed 45-42.

The Cardinals tried an onside kick, which was unsuccessful. But the Purple Raiders could not respond. Fulford was called for an intentional grounding on a pass play in which he got out of the pocket, but did not get the ball to the line of scrimmage. And on fourth-and-5, Fulford was sacked and lost control of the ball, giving the Cardinals possession at their own 40. North Central punched its way to a 10-play drive and another touchdown pass to Kamienski, giving the Cardinals the lead once again, 49-45, and winning the round.

The teams traded touchdowns to take a draw in the next round, and North Central added a 35-yard Magnus Meyer field goal to extend the lead to seven.

And from there, it was the defense’s job to hold on. They held Fulford to 3-for-8 passing on the next drive and sacked him once, forcing a turnover on downs at the North Central 17. And the Purple Raiders had one more shot, getting the ball back with 2:39 left. Fulford hit a 50-yard pass to Ruby to get into position, but the defense reached him for a sack and held him to two 1-yard gains before the Purple Raiders’ final play.

Fulford, who had already set the Division III playoff record for yards of total offense in a single game, was flushed out of the pocket, threw on his back foot to the end zone, and his fourth-down pass was intercepted. The play, with two seconds left, sent North Central players streaming onto the field, and sealed North Central’s upset win, 59-52.

“We came in with the mind-set that it's going to be a multi-round battle, and we have to just keep going one round at a time, one drive at a time,” said Rutter. “Our defense did a great job, got some stops. They let up some points but they bent and didn't break at the end.

“There was never a moment where we flinched, not one time. We got down 10 and everyone was like, 'Cool, we get the ball at half, let's go score and we're not going to lose.'

And to cap the afternoon off, John Thorne, Jeff’s dad and the former North Central football coach, who retired in 2015, was out on the field in the center of the huddle. At 72, the former coach brought the fire to the postgame celebration, leading the players in a rousing rendition of their mantra. He shouted the phrase one or two words at a time, and the players responded, their voices echoing off the surrounding buildings of the University of Mount Union campus: “I am a champion, and I refuse to lose!”

“I'm beyond elated with the way our guys played,” Jeff Thorne said afterward. “These two guys here (Kamienski and Rutter) just refused to let us lose. At the end of every game, that's our mantra -- I am a champion, and I refuse to lose. 

“When you have guys who take the team on their back and say, 'We ain't losing today guys,' it's hard to beat you and that's what these two guys did.

“There's some pretty cool things happening right now with this group,” said Thorne. “They're believing in each other. They're faithful. They're committed, and they love each other, and that can take you a long ways.”