Inside the Huddle with Seth Umholtz: Bald Eagle Playoff edition

Every week senior captain Seth Umholtz gives his unique perspective on the Golden Eagle football team

By Seth Umholtz, Staff Writer|November 13, 2013

photo courtesy of Seth Umholtz

#73 Seth Umholtz

Tyrone is 17-0 all-time in its history of first round playoff games at Gray Vets Field. This was dangerously close to coming to an end Saturday night as we played Bald Eagle Area for the second time this year.

All the guys on the team knew that Bald Eagle would be coming to our field planning on beating us for the first time since 1994.

However, we seniors on the team did not want our senior year to be the year where we lost to Bald Eagle for the first time in 19 years. We also did not want to be the first senior class to lose a district quarterfinal game at our field.

This came dangerously close to happening though.

Everyone was fired up before the game—it was win or go home time and we had no plans on making an early exit from the playoffs. The first half was tough sledding for us though, we were struggling on offense and the defense had given up a big play or two.

At the same time, we had been told by our coaches the whole year to expect adversity and that we would have to overcome adversity. Their speeches came in handy in this game because we were definitely experiencing our fair share of adversity.

At halftime, we could hear the Bald Eagle players yelling as if they had already won the game—this fired us up. The fact that they had it all sewn up at halftime angered us. We decided that we were going to leave nothing out on the field. We were down by a touchdown and had nothing to lose at this point.

When Bald Eagle connected on a long pass for a touchdown in the middle of the 3rd quarter, it was a very big gut check for us. If we did not turn this game around right now, it is probably over.

Shortly after, Eli got his pick six and we all went crazy. We knew that the game was still very much within our reach and that we had come back to win football games before.

After we had come back to take the lead and eventually win the game, everyone was going wild. It was definitely big that we could come back like that against a formidable opponent to save our season.

This week we are refocusing and preparing for the toughest game of the season against Richland, Friday night on the Rams’ home turf.