2002 SWC CHAMPIONSHIP

Pomperaug 17 Immaculate 13

FIRST TITLE WILL ERASE PREVIOUS HEARTACHE
By Tony Jones
THE NEWS-TIMES
2002-11-22

TRUMBULL — The play was a simple trap to the right side of the line, and the result was minimal.

Three yards was all Pomperaug High’s Tom Tidgwell could squeeze before he was trampled by a
half dozen Immaculate players.

But those three yards are the biggest in the history of Panther football.

The South-West Conference championship football trophy had never rested in Southbury. In fact,
Pomperaug had never won anything that has to do with the SWC. Not a division title,
not a conference title.

Until Thursday night.

Tidgwell, one of the best runners in the area this season, didn’t have his usual night at the office. In fact
the senior only rushed 14 times for 35 yards. But his 3-yard run on fourth-and-one enabled Pomperaug to
run out the clock and preserve a 17-13 win over the Mustangs.

It allowed the Panthers to win their first ever football title in school history. It allowed the Pomperaug
faithful to count down the clock in a driving rain. Tidgwell gladly traded his 100-yard games
for a championship in his senior year.

"This is just the greatest feeling in the world,” Tidgwell said. "I’ve been here for four years and we’ve
been through a lot in that time. We’ve been so close at times and we’ve had some times when our
hearts were broken. All we wanted to do this season was put that football banner on the wall. That’s
what we’ve been saying all year.”

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is quite a program Chuck Drury has built off exit 16 in recent
seasons. They’ve had many successful teams. In fact, the Panthers have qualified for the state playoffs in
each of the last two seasons. There’s little doubt that the Pomperaug players would have traded all of
their gaudy statistics and their 10 wins for a trophy and the chance for universal respect in SWC country.

"We definitely wanted this one for the longest time,” quarterback Steve Hansen said. "We had some
big wins in the beginning of the year and we wanted to build on the effort. This is a great school
and we’ve wanted a banner all year. We wanted to be the best.”

The Panther players began to believe a championship was possible in the second week of the
season when they ran through Masuk 35-12. Then they handled Notre-Dame. But beyond beating the
premier teams of the SWC, Pomperaug knew it had to handle the weak sisters as well.

The hurt of losing out on a bid to the championship game last season because of a 3-0 loss to Foran
still rang fresh in the minds of the Panther players. So Pomperaug, blessed with great talent,
continued to run the ball down everyone’s throat. They continued to play stellar defense. More
than that, Drury, who’s long been known as a fire-breathing coach, settled down just a bit.

"Yeah, this feels great because the kids worked hard to get here,” Drury said. "We worked hard,
I was a little more laid back this year as far as not overreacting and getting overly excited. I think
it really paid off. We weren’t nervous today, we weren’t nervous yesterday. I was doing
the speech from ‘Any Given Sunday’ without the swear words. I looked at the kids’ faces
before the game and they were loose. I think that kept everybody calm.”

That calmness paid off mightily against Immaculate. The Mustangs came out on fire in building
a 13-3 lead midway through the second quarter.

Brett Palmer looked more like Bret Favre when he threw a beautiful 36-yard touchdown pass
to James Jordan in the first quarter. The second quarter produced more of the same for Immaculate,
as Palmer threw another long pass to Zachary Long for another 36 yards.

But with the Mustangs keying on Tidgwell, Drury adjusted and gave more carries to Ken Fraser
who responded with 125 yards rushing when the pressure was the greatest. More than the yardage,
it was the way Fraser scored that hurt Immaculate. His first touchdown came on a 14-yard burst
up the middle when he was hardly touched. His second came minutes later on a 42-yard run, one
play after the Mustangs lost the ball on a Palmer fumble.

"I knew Ken was faster on turf, so we took what they gave us,” Drury said.

The second half was totally different from the first-half track meet that produced the final score. The
game slowed to a crawl. Then the rains came, a development that made Drury the happiest man
in Trumbull. The slick ball made it considerably harder for Palmer to throw the ball.

It also made it easier for Pomperaug to sit on it and run out the clock. The Panthers never seriously
threatened to score in the second half, and when Immaculate drove deep into Pomperaug territory in
the fourth quarter for what would have been the go-ahead touchdown, the defense stepped up
(aided by a clipping penalty) and turned the Mustangs away.

And now, Pomperaug can hang a championship banner.

Back