By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Highlands Coach Bob Sphire wanted another opinion at halftime as his Highlands Bluebirds were caught up in the middle of a slugfest at Ryle in front of a capacity crowd of 4,000 or so with fans all over the hillsides in Union.
Whatta ya’ think, Bob asked the nearest sideline sportswriter. “I have no idea who’s going to win this game,” he was told of a game, tied up at 14 at intermission “Neither do I,” Bob said with a grin.
But one thing he did know.
“It’s like a 15-round prize fight out there,” Sphire said of the way these teams – one-loss Class 6A Ryle and unbeaten 5A Highlands – were getting after it — and one another.
Too close, too competitive for anyone to predict exactly what was going to happen.
But how it was going to end: Give this one to whoever got in the final couple of shots, even if four quarters wasn’t enough to separate them.
Which it wasn’t. That 14-14 tie at halftime had morphed into a 28-28 score at the end of regulation in a game filled with highlight plays – and maybe a few missed opportunities.
And then in two plays, it was over. Ryle won the toss, chose to play defense when the ball was placed on the 10-yard line. And then a Highlands’ team with 198 yards on the ground went to the air on first down. But the player who got there first on Bluebird quarterback Rio Litmer’s quick throw right at the flag was Raider junior corner Dylan Lee, who picked it off.
“He had a great break on the ball,” said Ryle Coach Mike Engler, as he cradled the game ball after breaking the Ryle school record for football coaching wins with this 34-28 victory. He’d have “rather won it last week,” he said in the rivalry game against Cooper that had his Raiders losing that one with a score with 38 seconds left.
Not so much because it was the Battle of Union but because waiting until this week meant beating his mentor. “I played for Coach (Sphire) at Meade County and helped him start the Lexington Catholic program in 1991,” Engler said of their 15-year partnership that resulted in a state championship in 2005 before Sphire took a big job in Georgia.
All it took was one more play after the turnover that had the Highlands’ offense trotting off as on came Ryle.
“We learned from our mistakes last week,” said junior running back/linebacker Jacob Savage after proving how much the Raiders had learned on the first play, a 10-yard blast into the end zone by the 6-foot-1, 220-pounder, who finished the night with 98 yards on 13 carries and four touchdowns.
Coming into this season, Savage was considered a defense-first Division I prospect for his vicious tackling from the middle linebacker spot. But his 4.6-second speed and ability to turn the corner on sweeps may have changed that as he scored from 25-yards out, 21 and five yards.
“This is a big deal,” he said of Friday’s hang-tough victory. And that was without thinking about his coach breaking the Ryle all-time record for wins set by Bryson Warner.
“I forgot about that,” Savage said, after Engler hadn’t mentioned it this week, the Coach said. “And we did it against a great program like Highlands. And on Senior Night.” And in overtime.
“We love Coach Engler,” said Landon Lorms, the 6-3, 205-pound wide receiver/defensive back who always seems to be around the football and scored Ryle’s first TD on this night, grabbing an 18-yard fade at the flag from quarterback Nathan Verax to tie it at 7-7 with 11:14 left in the first half.
Highlands had plenty of offensive heroes, as well, outgaining Ryle 364 yards (198 rushing, 166 passing) to 312 (142 rushing, 170 passing). Senior Jack White, a 190-pounder on a 5-9 body piled up 156 yards on 22 carries, including a highlight-reel 18-yarder where he was tackled, spun around but didn’t hit the ground as he landed on the defender and just kept running after doing a 360.
Highlands also got a brilliant cutback from nine yards out for sophomore Gabe Williams who went right, put on the brakes and decided to go the other way and beat all the Raider defenders to the end zone. Then there was the Bluebirds’ second play on offense when Litmer hit Adam Surrey on a quick screen and he cut behind a crushing block from fellow senior Jackson Arnold on the corner that freed him for a quick 42-yard TD and a 7-0 Highlands’ lead.
Too easy? Maybe. Ryle scored the next 14 points. Then Highlands scored twice to retake the lead, 21-14. No way to keep Ryle down as the Raiders did the same, for a 28-21 lead that saw Highlands tie it at 28-28 with 8:55 left as neither team could score in the final minutes of regulation.
And then came overtime. And while the Ryle fans rushed the field, Bob Sphire was talking to his team at the other end, acknowledging how “It hurts.” But only one way to take a loss like this. “Get better from it,” he said, of a season that will get even tougher with a Class 5A district matchup in two weeks against unbeaten Cooper.
That’s what Ryle did after last week’s tough loss to Cooper.
“We prepared for this all week,” said Lorms, who admitted that “we like to take games down to the end.”
With a playoff future in Class 6A that will have them facing the tough Louisville schools, Engler likes how this toughens his team since “our schedule is so tough.” And doesn’t get easier for his 3-1 Raiders who face Christian Academy of Louisville and Louisville St. Xavier both on the road. But what else is new. They were underdogs to three of their four opponents (Covington Catholic, Cooper and Highlands) thus far.
HIGHLANDS 7 7 7 7 0—28
RYLE 0 14 14 0 6—34
SCORING SUMMARY
HIGHLANDS: Surrey 42 pass from Litmer (Nickelman PAT kick)
RYLE: Lormer 18 pass from Verax (Moses PAT kick)
RYLE: Savage 5 run (Moses PAT kick)
HIGHLANDS: Arnold 4 pass from Litmer (Nickelman PAT kick)
HIGHLANDS: Williams 9 run (Nickelman PAT kick)
RYLE: Savage 21 run (Moses PAT kick)
RYLE: Savage 25 run (Moses PAT kick)
HIGHLANDS: James 2 run (Nickelman PAT kick)
RYLE: Savage 10 run (no PAT)