Cathedral rallies to beat Zionsville 35-21
By ROSS WEBER
ISL Correspondent
When Zionsville quarterback Joshua Hinkle went down in the first quarter against Indianapolis Cathedral, the whole stadium at Arsenal Tech High School fell silent.
The ambulance was called onto the field, and there was a delay of almost twenty minutes before play resumed.
When backup quarterback sophomore Trevor Liechty stepped in, few knew what to expect. Before then, it was a slow-moving and methodical game, but on the first play, he threw a 48-yard bomb to receiver Ben Kocher to tie the score at 7.
From then on, it was an explosive football game.
Liechty had a coming out party and will definitely be a player to keep an eye on over the next two seasons of his high school career. But Cathedral’s senior leaders capitalized on Zionsville’s mistakes to get a 35-21 comeback victory.
“We came out and played for each other,” Cathedral quarterback Collin Barthel said.
The Irish advanced to host Anderson next week for the 5A Sectional 13 Championship.
The teams went back and forth for much of the game, with Cathedral getting long and well-orchestrated drives from Barthel and Zionsville taking its shots down the field against an overmatched Irish secondary.
By halfway through the third quarter, Leichty already had two touchdown passes, had led a 22-play, 94-yard touchdown drive and only had four incompletions. For a sophomore getting his first action against one of the top teams in the state, he was calm, cool and collected.
Then, the Eagles’ mistakes began to pile up.
A Zionsville fumble recovered by Cathedral linebacker Kyle Loechel led to a Barthel quarterback sneak to tie the game at 21 in the third quarter.
“That was mine, that was all mine,” Loechel said about the fumble recovery, “No one was going to take that from me.”
After ten more minutes of hard fought football, Barthel started to find a new favorite target in sophomore wide receiver Dan Dolan, who caught an 8-yard touchdown pass on a quick slant that gave Cathedral the lead with less than two and a half minutes to play in the game.
“At the end of the year, we always expect sophomores like this to step up.” Barthel said, “Danny Dolan just made a great play at the end of the game and I think his future is bright.”
Zionsville took over the ball from its 31-yard line with one timeout, two minutes remaining, a red hot quarterback and an inspired team. The game was not over yet.
That was, until Cathedral senior Austin Compton intercepted a pass from Liechty and returned it 60 yards for a touchdown to ice the game. It was the first mistake of the night by Liechty, but it was the only one the Irish needed.
When asked how memorable his pick six would be down the road, he shifted the focus to the team’s goal.
“It’s state first,” he said. “It’s state first.”
