For those of you who follow the Wabash football program, you know that Saturday marks the last regular season home game for Wabash; we call it Senior Day. We’ll introduce every senior before the start of the game and each will be escorted by his parents or people who are close to them.
But it’s a unique day for several other important reasons.
First, Wabash can win its second North Coast Athletic Conference championship with a win over the Big Red. Doing so will give the Little Giants a 7-0 conference mark and earn for Wabash the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Division III playoffs for the second time in these seniors’ Wabash career.
Second, a win over Denison would give Wabash a perfect 9-0 record heading into the season-ending Monon Bell Classic at DePauw. Only two teams in Wabash history (1982 and 2002) have recorded perfect 10-0 seasons.
Third, quarterback Russ Harbaugh (left) has a chance to finish the year with highest pass completion percentage in Wabash history, and will likely have the best touchdown to interception ratio of any Little Giant quarterback.
Finally, the personalities behind the senior players make it a class to remember.
Think about Harbaugh, a very bright English major and aspiring filmmaker, who last year had to split time with junior Dustin Huff. Harbaugh has battled his roller coaster emotions to become the team’s offensive workhorse.
Montgomery County native Aaron Selby (right) will play his final regular season home game. You have to be proud of the Southmont graduate for overcoming a broken leg last year and broken foot this year to become the heart and soul of Wabash’s smothering, league-leading defense. In back to back weeks, Selby has made the key play late in the game to ensure Wabash’s wins over Wittenberg and Allegheny.
Speaking of Montgomery County: nobody gave Brandon Barkley a chance to play for Wabash. All the North Montgomery graduate has done is to earn three letters as an offensive lineman and start for three straight years on very good lines.
Linebacker Josh Foster (left) looks like an everyday Huck Finn with boyish good lucks, sandy blond hair, and little brother personality. When he puts the pads on, the Ben Davis graduate becomes a one-man wrecking crew who disrupts screen pass plays and delivers hard-hitting blows.
Mississippi native Tamarco White (below right) is one of the brightest players on the team. He’s the most quiet football player I’ve ever met, and coaxing even a "yes sir" or "no sir" out of this polite young man is a fairly deep conversation. But like Foster, the uniform makes him more Lawrence Taylor than Lawrence Welk.
The offensive line is dotted with seniors, including Sphinx Club vice president and starting center Jake Koeneman, who looks like Fred Flinstone, but is a dedicated campus leader and is in perfect sync with his quarterback.
Running back Chris Ogden is so smart it’s hard to have a conversation with him. Very quickly X’s and O’s turn into economic theory and I’m completely lost. He’s also had enough injuries to earn a couple of varsity letters in the training room. His return to the backfield, along with fellow senior Brandon Roop, has been one of the great stories of the season.
You can’t speak of great stories without mentioning Roop. Big, smiling kid bumped out of one position, learned another, and is quietly having a wonderful year as a running back. Not the fastest runner by far, he just works hard, on and off the field, and is another one of the seniors you’d be proud to call "son."
There’s four-year starting receiver Eric Summers, the oft-injured product of Cathedral High School; Tim Parker, the linebacker from Warren Central; Kyle Piazza, the j-back from Clarksville; Pete Kempf, a linebacker from Auburn; Valpo’s John Maddox, a bruising offensive lineman; and the list goes on and on.
Every senior on the Wabash football team deserves your recognition and respect. They inherited a program that had turned over coaches, made it to the Division III quarterfinals when they were freshmen, and they now have the program on the brink of another playoff run.