It felt like the thing to do. Grafton High School was having a moment in the sun. Its football team had won its way into the state Division 3 tournament finals in Madison at Camp Randall Stadium. I had to go.
I once played quarterback for Grafton's football team. That was more than half a century ago.
Generally, we were pretty successful. We lost three games over two seasons, two of which we probably should have won, but we won at least a share of the conference championship both times. We had good, stingy defenses and offenses which were usually pretty productive.
There were no playoffs back then. I remember writing one of my sports columns decrying the inclination to begin playoffs, asking pointedly what was wrong with a bunch of conference champions without spoiling nearly all their seasons with a final-game loss, which playoffs arrange for. But that was long ago and far away. Besides, the WIAA, the governing organization of interscholastic sports in the state, has divided the competition seven ways, thus providing for as many champions as can be in a state this size. In football, size of school has a lot to do with how many large people you can put on the field. Dominance is crucial in a combative sport like football, and a school without that many behemoths stands to have its players hurt far more often if they play other schools that have a much greater enrollment.
Despite the equipment improvements, that remains on the shelf. The New York Times has just run an article about today's players getting what's called CTE, the effects of intense compact on someone's brain. It was originally found in professional players who had undergone a great deal of mayhem, but it's now being found in high school players too, since many of them began playing football in grade school--something I used to decry, too, to no avail.
I worked at maintenance in the summer to earn money for my college experience at or around that same high school, which had been turned into an elementary school; the new high school had been built connecting it. Since then, I returned only momentarily for things like coaching basketball against Grafton, playing in a recreational basketball league, and covering an outstanding set of Grafton football teams that constituted a temporary dynasty in the 1980s.
So when Grafton High got into the Division 3 state title football game, I went with sentimentality but an open mind. I had no idea exactly how good that team was, or whether they had much of a chance against their opponents, Rice Lake, which played an entirely different schedule.
Grafton brought an enormous band of faithful, larger than that of Rice Lake, mostly, I'd imagine, since Camp Randall is about 90 minutes from the high school campus. Rice Lake is from the northwest part of the state, about four hours away. Their fans were just as rabid.
Deservedly so. The scores that Rice Lake had been dialing up against their opponents usually began with the numeral 5. 5, as in fifty. I don't care who you're playing, getting 50 points most of the time in high school games suggests steamrolling, especially since Wisconsin respects the national high school rule that makes the clock go without stoppage when the margin becomes beyond 35 points--meaning that in most of its games, Rice Lake had that much less time to amass its enormous scores.
Grafton had a very good team that got hot. It had lost to Port Washington 35-7 early in the season, for instance, but came back to defeat it 22-21 in the playoffs. Having not followed football in the state for a long time, having just learned that Grafton had changed conferences and been bumped down to Division 3, I had no idea whether Rice Lake had slipped into the finals because of weak competition.
It hadn't. It became apparent quite early that Rice Lake had a bevy of very good athletes who could break away for a score at any time. Grafton's task was to slow them down and keep the game within reach. This it did, and nearly pulled off what would have been another upset. Grafton had a good quarterback, Brady Hilgart, and a strong running back named Tommy Lutz. Any one of five Rice Lake players were fast enough to break away, but Lutz was very difficult to bring down. Thus were the philosophies of offense: One dared you to stop people from many different angles, the other hitched its horse to one saddle and dared you to stop that. Both worked pretty well.
Parking in Madison being what it is, I came late to the game, and Rice Lake had already scored on a long pass. But Grafton came back and scored at the beginning of the second quarter to draw within 8-6. Rice Lake's placekicker had an approach like the pre-soccer style kickers of yesteryear, straight on, something I quite frankly hadn't seen for 50-plus years, and obviously didn't have confidence in him to maintain a steady point-after, so it abandoned that approach and always went for two. The score begged Grafton to do the same to catch up, but the coach ordered a point-after kick that went through confidently but left Grafton behind, 8-7, something I simply don't understand. What if nobody else scored?
But he must have had confidence in his offense, which did not let him down. Rice Lake scored to make it 14-7, but missed their two-point conversion. Grafton responded by scoring and tied it with another very good extra point kick. Grafton's kicker, doing the now-traditional soccer style, had plenty of leg and probably could have nailed a 40-yard field goal--something worth keeping in mind should the game come to that.
The game remained tied at 14 at the half. As the teams went to their locker rooms, the Grafton band struck up the school song. Time to stand up!
Three cheers for Grafton High School,
Hail orange and black!
We are the Blackhawks,
Spirits we'll not lack (Fight! Fight! Fight!)
So fight with all your might, boys,
Fight for her fame,
Go Grafton Blackhawks,
We will win this game!
Still knew it like my name. We sang it so often during our state basketball tournament run in 1966, my freshman year, that we were likely to hum it in our sleep. The state tournament did not respect school class designations back then, so all the schools were bunched into pairings. It took seven victories to make it to the big show. Grafton, enrollment about 420 back then, was one of those Davids that went to Madison to play in the old University of Wisconsin Field House to take on Goliaths like Madison East, which we upset in the quarterfinals. The run ended the next day when Wisconsin Rapids was too much for us. But the anticipation, the suspense, the bus rides on which we yelled on the way to games and slept on the way back, the school assemblies, were all memorable.
State football tournaments began in Wisconsin in the mid-1970s. It was left to conjecture over Friday night beers to deduce what some of the great teams of the 1950s and '60s might have done. It would have been interesting to see what might have happened to the team that immediately followed the basketball run in the fall of 1966. It was a tremendous juggernaut with several terrific players. I was a sophomore and got into a couple of the more lopsided victories. Otherwise, I was reduced to keeping track of what plays were being called and how many yards they made, supposedly for quick reference to tell what could be called at a crucial point of a game. But there weren't many crucial moments in that season; we walloped everyone by at least two touchdowns and also ran up big scores. It was all great to watch from the sideline. We had four consecutive teams that either finished as champions or co-champions, and I'm confident we would have made a dent in playoff proceedings each time. But that one, in 1966, had the talent, swagger and poise of something truly special.
There is nothing quite like going to a state tournament final. The Grafton of 2023 had to win four games to get here; after long a mid-season squeaker to Greenfield, it found its groove and downed the last four opponents by a combined 199-7--again, remarkable because of the 35-point, continuous clock rule. After an easy first round win over Wisconsin Lutheran, though, it pulled off that upset over Port, eased past Menasha, and brought down Stoughton in a 17-6 win that was closer than the final score.
The Rice Lake Warriors had bolted through its tournament run by a combined total of 188-78. It had given its last four regular season foes a combined 196-43 drubbing. So both teams were capable of scoring explosions, but Rice Lake was kind of scary.
I marveled at the sophistication with which both teams organized their attacks. The Warriors' offense was a double-split, double-wing, where one wingback or another came back in motion to create lots of deception, not unlike the approach used by Army, Navy, or Air Force. Grafton sometimes went to formations with five wide receivers and competently moved the ball well with that approach. But Rice Lake didn't allow long gains, making the Blackhawks earn their way downfield. As a result, both teams burned the clock and it limited the number of possessions they had. Either way, 50 years ago, these formations would have been unheard of on the high school level. They operated with efficiency and calm disposal. Nobody looked confused about anything.
Rice Lake came out and scored again in the third quarter. It went for two again, but failed, making it 20-14. Grafton returned the favor early in the 4th, as Lutz plowed through a stiff goal line stand from the one-yard line with Category 5 collisions galore.
When the Blackhawks lined up for the extra point, the game looked about to turn. But the Warriors broke through and blocked it. That was Grafton's high-water mark. Had it taken the lead, who knows what would have happened?
But Rice Lake never lost its poise. Grafton tried to contain its potent offense but fortune intervened. Rice Lake gained a first down with a nice run in Grafton territory, fumbled, but recovered it. On the very next play, Rice Lake's fine quarterback, Jakob Kurtz, rolled to his left and found an open receiver. He threw it too high, and the ball was tipped. It looked like another opportunity for Grafton to change the game's momentum, but the ball traveled downfield and was caught in perfect stride by another Rice Lake receiver, who ran to the Grafton 16 before being corralled. Four plays later, Rice Lake had taken an irreversible lead. It added the conversion to make it 28-20.
Grafton took over with more than four minutes left, plenty of time to travel the length of the field and perhaps tie the game. Grafton's quarterback, Brady Hilgart, also did well to move the Blackhawks to midfield. There the drive stalled when, on fourth down, he couldn't find an open receiver, tried to run for the first down, and was swarmed under for no gain.
Grafton remained alive, though. It had all its time-outs left, which it used for the three downs in which Rice Lake failed to advance the ball to make a first down. About 1:30 remained with the ball in Blackhawk territory. Rice Lake had played very good containment defense, so assuming no big punt runback from near Grafton's own goal line, that would put Grafton in a tough spot without any ability to stop the clock. But the Warriors sealed that issue; they decided to fake the punt on fourth down and ran for a first down, which allowed it to run out the clock and guarantee the victory.
Grafton had acquitted itself well. The kids had much to be proud of. Someone had to win, but the competitive moment had not been too big for them in the cavernous stadium with replays galore on the massive TV screen above one end. I can't say there were any controversial officials' calls on which to build conjecture, either. How do I know they did a good job? Nobody noticed them. No nasty signs were dangled, no fights started. The traditional handshake lineup began.
I was glad to have gone. There is chaos elsewhere in many places, but there was none here. Competitive sports can, sometimes, restore a sense of order and decency. That my alma mater had participated in one expression of that gave me a nice connection, a sense of continuity. Not a bad way for kids to grow up.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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