:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/shawmedia/C6B7RQPYUWB3DRVXDJTJTZU2GE.jpg)
I think the word that best describes the end of the Newton football team’s 2011 season is agonizing.
Disappointing would be too kind. So would heartbreaking. What the Cardinals and their fans alike experienced down the stretch of the campaign was more painful than those two.
Newton saw a 4-0 start turn into a 5-4 finish, leaving the Cards to follow the playoffs from home for a fourth straight season. It’s been especially tough, with seeing three of the four other Jasper County schools — PCM, CMB and Lynnville-Sully — each make it in after being in the same boat last year.
The Cardinals started the season as well as anyone could have hoped, beating two top 10 ranked teams and then winning their first two Class 3A District 8 games. Even after a stunning loss to then-winless Perry, Newton was still 5-1 (3-1) after a bounce-back win against Knoxville.
But then the Cards got into the gauntlet of their schedule, facing the top three teams in the district in succession to close out the regular season. Despite a valiant effort, Newton lost all three, which included down-to-the-wire finishes in the last two.
The Cardinals entered the 2011 season with high expectations, and rightfully so. They had closed out the previous season by knocking off the top two teams in the district and returned a load of talent on both sides of the ball. Despite going 4-5 last year, Newton entered the highly-anticipated Week 1 matchup against No.8 Pella with a lot of momentum.
Hardly anyone would have expected the Cardinals to blow out the Little Dutch on their home turf, but that’s exactly what happened as Newton dominated both sides of the football, winning 41-14. They outscored Pella 28-7 in the second half and senior running back Zach Roskilly rolled up 198 rushing yards.
The win turned the heads of the Associated Press voters, which ranked the Cardinals 10th heading into another big non-district matchup at home against No. 15 Oskaloosa. That game was anything but pretty, with the teams combining for 32 penalties. Newton trailed by a point late in the fourth quarter before junior Andrew Clements returned a punt 51 yards for a touchdown — the top play of the Cardinals’ season in my opinion — for the game-winner as the game ended 20-15.
At that point, Newton had just beat two high quality opponents to start the season. It moved up another spot in the rankings, and you really couldn’t blame Cardinal fans for getting caught up in the hype.
District play began in Week 3, and the wins kept coming. Newton ground out a 19-7 win at Dallas Center-Grimes as Roskilly churned out another 196 yards and the defense held the Mustangs to just 60 total. The Cardinals followed that up with a 40-6 rout of winless Saydel on Homecoming in a game that wasn’t even that close. Newton led 33-0 at half and pulled its starters late in the third quarter. Before he left, Roskilly had run for a career-high 223 yards and four touchdowns on 20 carries.
At that point, the Cardinals were flying high at 4-0 (2-0) and ranked eighth. With two then-winless opponents next on the schedule, it seemed that a playoff berth would be wrapped up by the end of September. Senior quarterback Brian Rose had only completed 19 total passes, but it didn’t matter since the team was averaging nearly 240 rushing yards per game.
But things all started to change in Week 5 at Perry. The Bluejays were winless, but had been without a handful of key starters for the first four weeks. Those players were all back for Homecoming against the Cardinals, and Perry was a much better team than their record showed because of it. With its potent running game stifled, Newton trailed 14-0 midway through the third quarter. It was at that point that the Cardinals’ offense transformed into a Rose-led passing attack — which it would stick with the rest of the season. It had success against the Bluejays, but Newton’s defense couldn’t get the stops it needed and the Cardinals fell, 21-7.
Newton rebounded with win at home the following week against Knoxville, but it was an uneasy 31-23 victory over the then-winless Panthers. The Cardinals led 28-3 in the first half, but were unable to put Knoxville away, and the Panthers rolled up 500 yards of offense as its comeback fell short.
Still, the win moved No. 12 Newton to 5-1 (3-1) overall, which meant it likely needed to win just one of its final three games to make the postseason. Unfortunately, the Cardinals’ schedule was backloaded with the district’s top three teams — Adel-DeSoto-Minburn, Norwalk and Carlisle, with two of those games on the road.
As expected, the toughest of those three matchups was the first one — at the Gavin Glenn-led and sixth-ranked Tigers. Newton hung right with them for more than a half, even taking a 10-7 lead early in the fourth quarter. But ADM imposed its will on the Cardinals the rest of the game, scoring on four straight touchdown drives of 80, 63, 83 and 82 yards and exhausting Newton’s defense en rout to a 33-10 win.
Week 8 at home against Norwalk was plain crazy. The teams combined for 40 first downs, over 1,000 yards of offense and a boat load of big plays. Sadly for Newton, it also included two very questionable penalties late in the fourth quarter that helped doom the Cardinals to a 35-27 loss on Senior Night. A roughing the punter call kept the Warriors’ go-ahead drive alive, and they threw the game-winning touchdown pass one play later. Newton tried to rally, but officials marked Roskilly short on a fourth down play, though he appeared to clearly pick up a first down to keep the drive going in Norwalk territory.
That loss left Newton at 5-3 (3-3), which meant it needed a win and perhaps some help to get in the playoffs. Via Iowa’s district tiebreaking system, the Cards needed to either beat Carlisle by at least 12, or just win in regulation and have Perry lose by at least 12. The Bluejays got blown out, but Newton saw a 19-6 third quarter lead disappear, and the Cardinals went on to lose 34-27 in overtime after their game-winning 47-yard field goal attempt narrowly missed on the final play of regulation.
A repetitive theme carried throughout the final five games this season. Rose and the Newton offense moved up and down the field with consistency, but had trouble finding the endzone once it got inside the opponent’s 25-yard line. Thankfully, the Cardinals had one of the state’s best kickers in senior Matt Easley — who set a school record with 10 field goals made this season. But too often Newton had to settle for field goals instead of touchdowns, and it kept coming back to bite it.
Meanwhile, with many starters going both ways, the Cardinals defense tired in the second half of those games despite its best efforts. After holding opponents to just 155 yards of offense per game in the 4-0 start to the season, Newton gave up a staggering 452 per contest in the 1-4 downfall. The defense struggled particularly against the run down the stretch, giving up 265 rushing yards to Knoxville, 311 to ADM, 407 to Norwalk and 322 to Carlisle.
A big factor in that was an ankle injury to junior lineman Derrick Hurt — one of the best offensive and defensive lineman in the state — which kept him at far less than 100 percent the rest of the season. It was impressive to see him tough out the rest of he season on one good leg, but sad to see such a key player banged up down the stretch.
Newton finished the season scoring 24.8 points per game, while surrendering 20.9. It averaged and gave up 320 yards per game.
Roskilly was a one-man-show of sorts through Newton’s first four games, averaging 179 yards a game along with eight touchdowns. As the Cardinals went heavy on the pass the rest of the way, he managed only 77 yards per game in the final five games and scored just once more. He finished the season third in the district with 1,099 yards on 175 attempts — a 6.3 yards per carry average. His 99-yard TD against Norwalk tied the state record.
What Rose and senior receivers Collin Reynolds and Reid McDermott did in the second half of the season was nothing short of stellar. Through the first four games, Rose had just 19-of-47 passes for 214 yards and a TD. By season’s end, he completed 125-of-212 passes (59 percent) for an even 1,400 yards and seven scores. In the final five games alone, he completed more than 64 percent for 237 yards per game, breaking and re-breaking and re-breaking school records with each game. With his Cardinal career now over, Rose is the school’s career leader in passing yardage (2,073), attempts (300), completions (171), completion percentage (57.0). He’s also the single-season record holder in each category, and has the single-game marks for each as well. He finished as the district’s second-best quarterback only to ADM’s Glenn.
Of course, no quarterback can be great without his receivers, and Rose had an exceptional one in Reynolds. He ended up leading the district in receptions (49), yards (731) and touchdowns (7). His yardage mark was the best in school history, as was his single-game mark of 165 against Knoxville. McDermott also came up huge down the stretch, finishing second to Reynolds in the district with 45 receptions. McDermott and Reynolds now share the school’s single-game receptions mark of 16, each setting it in the last two games.
Easley already held the career field goals made record before the season even started, and he added 10 more to it this year. He became the first Newton kicker to make four field goals in a game (vs. Carlisle). He was also an effective weapon on kickoffs, as 21 of his went for touchbacks.
McDermott also had a nice season punting the ball. He averaged 37.9 yards per kick, and had 11 downed inside the 20-yard line.
Senior Nick VanDerWilt led Newton in tackles with 85.5, followed by junior Dakota Hills (66), senior Shane Hedrick (43), McDermott (32.5) and Hurt (32). Hedrick and Hurt each had 13 tackles for loss, with each added two sacks.
Despite the impressive numbers Newton put up collectively and individually, it doesn’t ease the pain it ended the season with. Worth noting, however, is the fact that all six of the nine teams of the Cardinals schedule made the playoffs. Pella and ADM square off on Monday in the 3A Quarterfinals. The Dutch are 10-1 this season, having won 10 straight since their season-opening loss to Newton.
I have no doubt that district 8 was the toughest in 3A this season. Five of the eight teams were ranked at one point. Newton can be proud of the fact that it beat the top two teams in district 7 (Pella, Oskaloosa). There were five playoff-caliber teams in district 8 this year, but only four can get in. Unfortunately, the Cardinals were the odd one out this year.