The game had no impact on either team’s playoff chances, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell it by the way both ADM and visiting Norwalk played Friday night in Adel.
Tigers head coach Mike Whisner was as pumped up as he’s been all season after his team pulled out a 28-24 win over the Warriors in non-district action. Junior quarterback Frank Weiland scored the go-ahead touchdown on a 17-yard scamper with 2:45 remaining in the ball game and the Tigers held off Norwalk on the Warriors’ ensuing drive to seal the victory.
Facing fourth and long inside ADM’s 20 with less than two minutes to play, Norwalk quarterback Brady Brandsfield’s deep ball for Luke Greenslade fell incomplete. After ADM took over downs, Johnny Reel busted of a big run to the Norwalk 45, Weiland took a pair of kneel-downs, and the celebration in Adel was on.
Norwalk struck first on a one-yard touchdown run by Corey Harding just 2:31 into the game. ADM responded less than a minute later on a 42-yard strike from Weiland to Jake Sloss. The Warriors again took the lead with 38 seconds left in the first quarter on a 52-yard pass from Brandsfield to Justin South.
ADM knotted the score at 14 with 9:06 left in the first half on Weiland’s 41-yard pass to Sloss, who finished with a game-high 132 receiving yards on eight catches and the two touchdowns, his eighth and ninth of the season.
The teams traded possessions for the rest of the half plus eight minutes into the third quarter, many of the drives stalled by penalties. There was enough laundry on the field to fill two washing machines, as the teams were flagged a combined 27 times. Reel broke the deadlock with four minutes left in the third by lunging in from a yard out to give ADM a 21-14 lead.
Norwalk rallied to take a 24-21 lead on Brandfield’s three-yard rushing score six seconds into the fourth quarter and Carson Olerich’s 22-yard field goal with 5:14 to go in the game. That field goal was forced by a goal-line stand by ADM’s defense, setting up the dramatic finish and heroic effort by Weiland, who spun through several tackles to get the game-winning score.
Weiland finished with 317 yards on 23-of-37 passing and two touchdowns to three interceptions, and was the team’s leading rusher with 76 yards on 19 carries.
The win unfortunately came at a price, as junior running back Blake Crannell tore his ACL late in the first half and will miss the rest of the season.
ADM faces a winner-take-all scenario next week at home against Harlan, with the winner of that game earning the fourth and final playoff spot in Class 3A – District 8.