Govs eye breakthrough against Griffith

Morton coach Roy Richards is determined to knock off Griffith on Friday.
(Stephanie Dowell/Post-Tribune)

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HAMMOND -- It's a shade past 7:30 on Monday night, and the Morton football team is huddled around a TV that has been rolled into a hallway adjacent to the gym.

At the front of the group, closest to the TV, is Roy Richards, leading his team in yet another film study of the Griffith Panthers. The tape is from Week 1, another embarrassingly lopsided loss by the Governors to their neighbors to the south.

Richards is watching the guys in white jerseys with the black pants and gold domes dash off big runs against the guys -- his guys -- in the red jerseys with the red pants and silver domes. And on his glitzy new turf field, no less.

He's gesturing at the screen with his finger, telling his guys how they're not going to let this happen again.

He's up out of his chair, demonstrating how his linebackers have to keep their pads parallel to the line of scrimmage when taking on blockers at the point of attack.

He can't emphasize to his defensive ends enough how they have to keep their outside arm free to prevent the ball carrier from escaping around the edge.

He's stressing the fundamentals -- the same stuff his guys have heard all season -- how important it is to play mistake-free football. Because he knows the team on the other side of the field tonight, a team that Richards knows also stayed at school a little later this week in preparation for this game, won't beat itself.

He knows if Morton is going to defeat Griffith and capture the program's first sectional title, his Governors have to be ready to play.

Because Griffith, playing in its 21st straight sectional championship game, sure as heck will be. Without fail, Panthers coach Russ Radtke always has his team playing its best football when the leaves are changing.

That's one of the reasons Richards admires the program he is 0-11 against -- not counting a Griffith victory in 2003 that was later ruled a forfeit -- since taking over at Morton 10 years ago. The program that has ended the Governors' past four seasons in sectionals, and would love nothing more than to do the same again tonight.

Richards admires how the Panthers have become a model of consistency in these parts -- across the state, for that matter -- a measuring stick for teams like his. He admires their five sectional championships and two trips to semistate since he's been at Morton.

He admires their bravado, their belief that they're always going to be playing in November.

He admires how they never give up, even when you think you've got them on the ropes (witness Morton's heartbreaking, gut-wrenching 37-34 sectional-opening loss to Griffith last season).

But mostly, he admires Griffith because there's no team he so badly wants to beat.

"It's no secret whatsoever," said Morton junior outside linebacker Eddie Malatinka. "Not to any of us."

Not to anybody in the region, for that matter.

If Richards' passion is coaching football, his all-out obsession has become beating those gosh-darn Griffith Panthers. And that fixation has rubbed off on those around him.

"I truly believe our football program is obsessed with trying to beat Griffith," Richards said. "And I'll tell you this. We would have felt cheated if Hobart had beaten 'em (last week). If you get to the sectional championship and you don't play Griffith, you know what every other Morton team would have said to these kids? 'Well, you got lucky, you didn't have to play Griffith.' It's almost as if there's an asterisk on that trophy unless you can beat Griffith to get it. And that's kind of what we plan on doing."

Morton, of course, has been trying to do that for some time now. But the Panthers have always been a step ahead. Or 10. Or 100.

Despite -- or perhaps, because of -- the lopsided nature of this series, the Governors consider Griffith a bitter rival.

"Oh, this is a top-three rival," Malatinka said before rethinking that statement. "Actually, this is our No. 1 rival. What am I saying? We never beat 'em, man. This is No. 1."

Mutual respect

Griffith might not feel the same about Morton, but even Radtke admits the game has taken on new meaning, if only because this will be the 10th meeting between the two schools in the past five years.

"We've seen each other so much that it does become a little more of a rivalry rather than just an opponent, that's for sure," Radtke said.

There's no bad blood -- "It's about as respectful of a rivalry as we've ever had," Richards said -- and it's nothing personal between Richards and Radtke or Morton and Griffith.

Richards just desperately wants to begin to even out a rivalry that, as far as he is concerned, started not long after he arrived at Morton.

"My second year here, we drew them (in the sectional opener)," Richards said. "We were down 21-0 at half and came out in the second half and outscored them 21-7. It was 28-21, and you could see for the first time that there was a 'Wow, this might be a legitimate team we're playing' mentality from them. And from then on, you didn't back down. It's kind of like the first time you ever punched a guy back and saw blood in his mouth, and you realize that he bleeds, too."

Morton, of course, lost that game 49-21. For the longest time, that was a pretty standard margin of defeat for the Governors. Back then, losing to Griffith was all but a foregone conclusion -- if only because the Panthers' program was far more established.

Griffith won state in 1997, two years before Richards arrived at Morton. His first year, Richards had 17 kids on his roster to start the season. By the end of that first season, though, 13 more kids had joined the team. And the numbers only swelled from there.

Soon enough, the Governors became the premier team of the former Lake Athletic Conference Blue. But the weak competition they played in that league wasn't preparing them for sectional showdowns with teams like Griffith, which again ended Morton's season in 2002.

"We were the 10-1 team in the sectional championship without a chance," Richards said. "By the time we realized what real competition was, it was too late. So we thought, let's beef (our schedule) up. Our record will show that we're getting our butts kicked. But at some point in time, the program will get better."

Initially, Morton took its lumps upon joining the more-competitive LAC Black -- which at the time included the likes of Griffith, Lowell and Hobart -- in 2003.

And even when the Governors had their first winning season in the LAC Black, beating Lowell, Hobart, Andrean and Munster during their 8-5 campaign in 2005, they still lost to Griffith. Twice.

Such was the case in 2006. And again last season. Though, if it's any consolation, the Governors have closed the gap on Griffith since Richards first took over. But they still haven't snapped the streak.

In 2005, Morton lost to Griffith 24-21 in the sectional final. Last season, the Governors suffered the same fate in the sectional opener. In the final minute of that game, they scored the tying touchdown, missed the go-ahead extra point, recovered an onside kick and still lost on a last-second field goal after a late fumble.

"You figure you're going to lose on the option, you figure you're going to lose on the fullback breaking loose, you're going to lose on something other than missing an extra point," Richards said. "And when that happened, it makes you realize that there's a lot more ways to lose to Griffith than you thought. They just find a way to constantly keep an edge on you."

Chasing the rabbit

And that's what's so frustrating to Richards and the Governors. It's not as if they're a bad team. It's not as if Richards is a bad coach. It's not as if they don't prepare for the Panthers as much as anybody.

Heck, Richards tailors many of his schemes toward one end: beating Griffith.

"If there's stuff that we can do to Hammond High, to Clark and to Highland that won't work on Griffith, we're not going to run it because we're wasting our time," Richards said. "There are things we think we could be running throughout the year that we don't run because we don't think it will work against them."

But the chase, that seemingly futile quest to catch Griffith, hasn't been all bad for Morton. In fact, Richards believes it has made his program that much better.

And while a victory over the Panthers would in many ways signify another step for a program that has steadily been on the rise since Richards took the reins, the Governors' coach wonders what would come next.

"It's almost going to be a letdown when -- if -- you ever beat them," Richards said. "Because that is the rabbit that you're chasing around the track. They are constantly setting a new bar, and it's making teams like Morton, Morton. I really, truly think that we're as good as we are because we're chasing them, and I think catching them, when that happens, then it's just going to be one of those things where if you sleep, you've got to sleep with your eye open because you know they're going to want that title back real fast."

That, of course, is not to say the Governors don't want to exact plenty of pent-up revenge tonight. They're confident that this time, they can catch those rabbits -- er, Panthers.

"On football sign-ups in (the spring), every kid that walks into that room feels like they're going to win a sectional championship," Richards said. "And that's something that we never used to have. Ever since we started playing (Griffith) tight, we started feeling like we've got it. Absolutely, there's plenty of envy (of Griffith). There's a lot of envy in that, I don't want their trophy -- I want the one they're about to get. They can have last year's because they earned it. I want to get the one this year before they get it."

Contact David Robb at 648-3122 or drobb@post-trib.com