Football: Crown Point ready for next round

Updated: November 10, 2011 8:13PM

CROWN POINT — A couple hundred red-clad kids — some with their faces painted, some with their bodies painted, all screaming as loud as they could — pushed up against the railing on the visitors’ stands at Merrillville’s Demaree Stadium.

They were about a dozen deep, and as the clock ticked away the final seconds of Crown Point’s 42-21 victory over the host Pirates in last Friday’s Class 5A Sectional 1 championship game, it seemed a safe bet that they were going to leap over the railing and storm the field — not a wise move, considering it’s a several-foot drop to the field below.

In front of them, on the turf, stood the last (and only) line of defense — Crown Point athletic director Bill Dorulla and assistant athletic director Mike Malaski. Their job at these sorts of events? Make sure the students don’t do anything stupid.

They weren’t worried.

“We’ve done this before,” Malaski said. “They know not to jump.”

Sure enough, they didn’t.

And why would they? Winning sectional championships at Crown Point is old hat, these days. Ho-hum.

Since the spring season, the Bulldogs have won 11 of 14 sectional championships. In the spring, the baseball team won sectional and regional titles. The boys and girls track teams each won a sectional. So did the softball team. So did the girls tennis team.

Remarkably, this fall’s been even better. The boys soccer team won sectional, regional, semistate and state championships. The girls soccer team won sectionals and regionals. Boys tennis won a sectional. So did girls cross country and girls golf. And the boys cross country team didn’t win a sectional, but it still qualified for state, joining the girls in Terre Haute.

Add in the football team’s surprising sectional championship, and that makes 10 IHSAA postseason trophies this fall — a school record for a single season.

“Last year, we won 10 total,” Dorulla says.

So what is it about Crown Point? Is it just a good run of athletes passing through the school? Is it the multitude of multi-sport athletes getting exponentially better — particularly under pressure — as they continue to experience postseason success season after season? Is it something in the water?

Zach Plesac — a standout pitcher on the baseball team and a starting wideout on the football team — just shrugs.

“We just like winning,” he says. 

Cool under pressure

They were chatting amiably. They were goofing around. They were listening to music. Oh, they were focused. But they weren’t freaked.

Yes, the locker room before a football sectional championship — on the road, against your biggest rival — can be a tense place. Not at Crown Point.

“I don’t sense very much nervousness before or during a game,” says senior kicker Brett Bayer. “Most people are pretty calm about it.”

Well, sure. Crown Point coach Chip Pettit estimates that about 50 percent of his players play other sports. And even more sing in the choir, or perform in school plays and musicals. Pressure is nothing new to these guys.

Heck, Bayer just won a state championship two weeks ago with the soccer team. It was his second sectional championship in less than a month.

“It really helps,” he said. “Just being in that position before, not being overwhelmed by the pressure, not really overthinking it. Just knowing that you’ve been through it, you’ve done it before, and it’s not as big a deal as it might seem.”

It wasn’t always that way, of course. Senior Tyler Kral’s first experience in this setting was his freshman year, when he was called up from the junior varsity and dressed for the football sectional opener at Merrillville. The Bulldogs lost 42-6.

“For me, that was kind of an eye-opener,” Kral said. “You realize just how big a stage this is.”

Since that game in 2008, Kral has won individual sectionals and regionals in wrestling. Won a team state title as a freshman. Placed third in the state at 215 pounds as a junior. Won a track sectional last year. Qualified for state in the shot put.

So no, visiting undefeated megapower Penn tonight isn’t going to leave him quaking in his cleats.

“I know it’s helped me a lot,” Kral says. “I’ve been playing three sports here at Crown Point for three years now. Especially with wrestling, I’ve learned my capabilities and I know I can always improve. There are a lot of guys here like that, and that’s why we have 11 guys out there all focusing on what needs to be done. Everyone’s accountable.”

Kral says the pressure is different in a team sport such as football than an individual sport such as wrestling. Screw up in wrestling, nobody’s really affected but you. Screw up in football, and you can bring down six dozen of your closest friends.

But those one-on-one experiences can help in team sports, too. Plesac played third base and pitched in the postseason. And when he’s racing down the sideline and the ball’s in the air coming his way, football’s suddenly an individual sport.

“It’s kind of the same thing, if you think about it,” Plesac says. “The ball’s coming to you, it’s just you, and you’ve got to make the catch. If you’re pitching, it’s just you against the batter.”

Some coaches want their kids focusing on one sport year-round, so they can get better and better. Others have a more old-school mentality, and encourage their players to join other teams and learn new skills and experience new challenges.

Pettit falls in the latter category.

“I’ve always been a big proponent of having the multi-sport athlete,” said Pettit, who was Crown Point’s quarterback and Indiana’s first-ever Mr. Baseball in 1992 before playing baseball, not football, in college at Valparaiso. “Those kids are used to competing all the time. That’s not to say we don’t have some good players who are just football kids, but there’s just something about always being in competition. Those kids don’t get worn down mentally as the season goes on. When the lights go on, on Friday night, they’re not wide-eyed and in awe about it.”

Motivating factor

Pettit said Crown Point has a “very positive culture” in extra-curricular activities, from the parents to the teachers to the coaches to the community at large. And the teams clearly feed off each other — few schools can match Crown Point’s traveling student section, which is chock full of athletes from other sports.

Of course, there’s a healthy rivalry among the teams, too. So while success breeds success, it also breeds jealousy — which at Crown Point, just breeds more success.

“There’s always been a thing between the soccer team and the football team,” Kral said. “We’re like, ‘Oh, you guys are just soccer players, you run around and kick a ball.’ And the soccer team says, ‘Oh, you guys are just football players, big dumb and stupid, just going around hitting each other.’ So when soccer won state, we were like, ‘OK, let’s see if we can top them a little bit.’ ”

Then there’s Bayer, a member of both teams. During the season, he worked out with the football team twice a week for an hour before soccer practice. This week is the first time he was with the football team every day.

But he doesn’t consider himself a soccer player first, or a football player first. In fact, he wisely stays out of the whole Jets and Sharks thing all together.

“I don’t pick a side,” he said.

For all the success the school has enjoyed, perhaps nobody at Crown Point has ever had a fall quite like Bayer’s. A state championship in soccer, a sectional championship — maybe more — in football.

At the same time.

“It still really hasn’t set in yet,” Bayer said. “But as the season comes to an end, whenever that may be, I’ll be able to look back on it and think how special this really is.”

That said, this is Crown Point. Whenever football ends — whether it’s tonight, next week, or Thanksgiving weekend at Lucas Oil Stadium — Bayer’s not done yet.

“I’ll still have baseball to look forward to,” he said. “Hopefully we can get down to state this time.”

Worth the effort

Funny thing about success. It’s expensive. There’s a lot of gas to pay for to shuttle these kids around the state week after week. A lot of food. A lot of hotel rooms, too.

“Yeah, you lose a little money because you don’t get reimbursed for all your expenses,” Dorulla said. “But we kind of plan for this, and we have money from fundraising and booster clubs that we have available for our teams when we go downstate. We try to do it right. The kids deserve it.”

It’s also a lot of work for the athletic department. Financial reports, dealing with the IHSAA, setting up travel, working out schedules — there’s no break between seasons. Not this year. Not at Crown Point.

Remember, school officials need to be present at all these events — crowd control being just one reason.

On Oct. 22, the Crown Point boys and girls cross country teams were in New Prairie in the morning for the semistate. The boys soccer team was playing in the morning at Warsaw. The girls soccer team was playing a little later in Fort Wayne.

So an assistant principal went to New Prairie. Dorulla and Malaski went to Warsaw for the 10 a.m boys soccer game. Crown Point won. The two hopped back in the car and drove farther east to Fort Wayne for the girls game. Crown Point lost. Then it was back in the car and back to Warsaw for the boys semistate championship. Crown Point won.

The next weekend, it was a drive south to Terre Haute for the cross country state finals, followed by a jaunt east to Indianapolis to watch the boys soccer team win a state championship in penalty kicks. Then back home to the region.

Just another routine weekend for Crown Point, the region’s hardware hub.

“It’s been a lot of traveling,” Dorulla said. “And it’s a lot of work, and a lot of time and effort. But the kids are putting in that effort, too. They’ve earned all this. It’s fun seeing the kids have so much success. And that’s the most important thing — it’s fun.”

© 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article, click here.