When Friday night’s postgame gathering in the main gymnasium at Center Grove was planned, it was supposed to be a triumphant welcome home for a football team celebrating a second straight state championship.
Life is full of supposed-to-be moments that never come to fruition, though — and for the hundreds who showed up to greet the Trojans after a gut-wrenching 16-13 overtime loss to Carmel, it was more like a funeral. A celebration of a life lived, or in this case a season played, but still a tear-filled longing for something that’s no longer there.
Over roughly two decades of covering sports at every level, I’ve become relatively numb to most of the highs and the lows. Years of following the “no cheering in the press box” rule teaches you to stifle emotions. But Friday night was a tough one.
The game itself was a roller-coaster ride for everyone in attendance. An endless barrage of momentum-swinging turnovers. A clutch 50-yard field goal by Luke Eckert to force an overtime that seemed impossible just seconds earlier. The stunning turn of events in that extra period that seemed to blow past in no time at all, leading to an anticlimactic finish in a game that deserved anything but.
Still trying to process it all, I followed a line of vehicles back to Center Grove so I could take in the aftermath and try to talk to a bunch of teenage kids that were clearly not in the mood to talk.
Before I could do that, though, I had to wait for the team to address their fans. Easy enough, I figured — a few people would get up, take the microphone, spout out a few platitudes about how much they appreciated the community’s support, and I could get on with my business.
But when Titus McCoy hobbled up on crutches and took the mic from head coach Eric Moore, only to have to pause to choke back tears as he spoke to his teammates, I found myself in a wrestling match with my own tear ducts.
With his senior season getting cut short by an ankle that never seemed to stop betraying him, I didn’t get much chance to see the McCoy that Center Grove fans grew to love over the past four years. My interaction with him has been extremely limited. So for me to react to that moment in the gym Friday night like I did when Mufasa died in “The Lion King” — well, I can only imagine how it must have affected those who are actually close to him.
I felt just as badly for fellow senior running back Trevor Hohlt, who had to watch last year’s state championship game from a wheelchair and then come back and sit out the second half of Friday’s title clash due to a concussion. Hohlt had to wait a full year for a chance to play at Lucas Oil Stadium, so for him to have that opportunity cut short seemed like an evil maneuver from the hands of fate.
But that’s just kind of how the 2016 season went for Center Grove — and especially for Hohlt and McCoy. Both exited the season-opening loss against Warren Central with injuries, and just when it seemed like they were going to write a happy ending to a tumultuous season, life dealt both of them — and all of their teammates and supporters, too — a giant punch to the gut.
Moments like that were hard for me to absorb at that age — and I usually rode the bench. They’re still hard for me to watch from the sideline a generation later. I have no doubt that Friday night felt like hell to those young men whether they were the thick of the action or they never played a single down. At that age, it feels like the end of the world.
But it’s not.
Sure, it felt like a funeral; the melancholy was clearly worn on the shellshocked faces of everyone who sat in the gym with the team as midnight approached. But this, too, shall pass — and judging from the conversations I had in the gymnasium with players who had every right to brush me off and wallow in the misery of an emotionally draining loss, I think that they get that.
“It sucks to see us go out this way,” McCoy said, “but there’s a new chapter in life that’s about to open for all us seniors, and I can’t wait to start it.”
Life goes on — both for the departing seniors and for the program they’re leaving behind.
