By RYAN WALKER
PONETO — Last Friday night in Poneto, bells were heard ringing quite loudly in the distance near Carnes Field at Southern Wells High School.
It wasn’t church bells or any other ordinary bell — it was the sound of a winning football team.
The ringing of the victory bell is a tradition of Southern Wells football after each win during the season but it has gone quiet. Over the course of three years and 22 games, it hasn’t been touched. In 2020, the even program had a junior varsity-only schedule played with seniors and juniors due to the lack of numbers on the roster.
The Raiders hadn’t won a game since Oct. 11, 2019, in a 38-21 win over Heritage. On Friday, Aug. 17, 2023, the Raiders are back in the win column with a 29-26 victory over Elwood — and it was a dogfight to do it.
Southern Wells was up 17-12 at halftime, but a late surge by Elwood eventually grasped a 26-23 lead in the fourth quarter. But a 20-yard rushing touchdown by senior Bryar Gearheart with 5:55 left in the game was the final jab to defeat the Panthers.
“It was a great football game,” first-year head coach Jeff Sprunger said after Monday’s practice. “Emotionally, it was a great football game because you had those moments where it felt like you had everything clicking right, and then you had those moments where you’re thinking ‘Gosh Ned, what are we doing out there,’ you know like we’re going to let this thing possibly slip away.”
It was the first career game as the head man for the Raiders’ football team for Sprunger, who had spent some time as the coach at Whitko a few years after his father had retired. In a similar story, Sprunger’s brother Brad Sprunger, won with Whitko in his first season as the head coach, breaking a 15-game losing streak at that program.
Over the past three seasons, Jeff has been on the sidelines as an assistant for the Raiders and fell in love with the program, and wants the best for the kids. When the Southern Wells job opened, there wasn’t any question about applying. He wanted the boys, who had fought through so much adversity, to have a familiar face leading them. Somebody who would care for the program and give everything he’s got.
Sprunger got the job and had peers scratching their heads to take on a large rebuild with a program that had lost that much, but that didn’t matter to him.
“When I was applying when the spot came open, a lot of people questioned me, ‘Why you going into that program? That’s a tough program to go and try to fix and rebuild.’ You know, honestly, if we were going to rebuild with wins or not, my thought was these senior boys deserve somebody that’s going to put in the time, energy … I’ve felt like I just had a calling that I need to be that guy.”
Going into the season, Sprunger held his first meeting with the team and made one thing clear. On Aug. 18, they returned to school with a win, and “We’re going to ring the bell, and we’re to ring it before it breaks or cracks or whatever and make sure everybody here in the community hears it.”
That determination became a reality as the long bus ride home from Elwood High School came to a celebration at Southern Wells High School that Friday night with the members of the community.
Sprunger recalls what he thought was a few hundred people waiting for the victors to arrive. Fans celebrated and took videos and pictures of the feat. The social media page (Southern Wells Raiders Athletics on Facebook) had blew up overnight, with everyone uploading footage trying to capture the moment. The community backs their Raiders, and the players know it.
“It was amazing,” senior linebacker Brayden Jackson said after Monday’s practice. “Just the whole day, everybody at school and everybody on us cheering us on, believing in us that we could do it. Then to go up to the game and be ready to win and waiting so long for a chance to beat somebody, and, in the end, everybody celebrating and having people waiting for us. It’s amazing. We all had this goal to win and just kept fighting and fighting, which is special.”
Sprunger understands that there will still be bumps in the road, and it might take some years to continue to build a winning program. At least for now, the Raiders found a way to win. After the past few losing seasons, there has been incredible growth already, and it’s just the start.
“The boys really showed their growth maturity-wise being able to handle that adversity that maybe in the past couple years we haven’t been able to do and be able to fight back from a deficit late in the game and play a full game,” he said. “A lot of excitement that we’re hoping to allow to be contagious here and go into the following week and the weeks to come.”
Southern Wells will travel to Madison-Grant for its next game at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25.
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