FORT WAYNE – A four-peat is a real possibility for the Bishop Luers football team. But the pondering comes twofold with who will step in in 2012, and the even broader question of which class the Knights will compete in.
Graduation will take the team’s record-setting quarterback, as well as four of the five on the offensive line. And with two proposals, one from IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox, being presented to the state’s athletic sanctioning body in the spring, the postseason could mean different opponents if the three-time Class 2A state champion Knights move up a class.
Luers coach Matt Lindsay discussed both issues Monday in the Luers’ gymnasium after the pep rally for the school’s 10th state championship, a 41-17 win Friday over Evansville Mater Dei.
Replacing senior James Knapke and his SAC-best 5,974 career passing yards, along with guys up front – Matt Wood, Bill Berghoff, Casey Baker and Javond Williams – will be a challenge. But Luers (13-1) has a good place to start with all six touchdowns scored in the state title game coming from underclassmen.
“We have a very talented junior class and classes below them,” Lindsay said. “We think the kids that are here will be able to step in and fill those roles.”
The two proposals before the IHSAA are meant to stymie the private-school dominance of recent years at the state level.
Cox’s idea would move up state championship teams in all classes under a simple two-year point system.
The second suggestion comes from the Indiana Football Coaches Association and includes a similar idea of moving up football teams a class under a tradition-factored point system, but it also has two other points with adding a sixth class and seeding the sectionals.
“We will go and play in whatever class they say,” said Lindsay, who tied Sheridan’s Larry Wright with his ninth state title as a head coach. “I think we would have won in several classes this year.
“When we have a championship football team, it’s a good football team. It doesn’t matter where they put us.”
