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Brownsburg's game-ending INT at goal line secures first crown since 1985
INDIANAPOLIS - The Brownsburg Bulldogs scored a momentum-shifting, tiebreaking 12 points in just 54 seconds to kick off the fourth quarter and defeat their Hoosier Crossroads Conference foe, the Westfield Shamrocks, in Friday night’s IHSAA 6A state title game at Lucas Oil Stadium, 22-17. It is the Bulldogs’ first football championship since winning consecutive finals in 1984 and ‘85.
“I’m just really grateful,” Brownsburg head coach John Hart said. “They do humble me – the community does, the school does, and obviously this team. I think a lot of people called us about a 5-5 football team starting out the year, and I don’t know that I was arguing with them. That’s how far they’ve grown and fought together and made believers of everybody.”
With the game knotted at 10-10 and Brownsburg driving into Westfield territory to end the third quarter, a scoring stalemate was squashed by a successful fourth-down conversion attempt to give the Bulldogs their first lead of the game after trailing early.
On 4th-and-3 from the Westfield 20-yard line, senior second-string quarterback and Phil N. Eskew Mental Attitude Award recipient for Class 6A, Iosua Stephens, launched his lone completion of two passing attempts 20 yards to find sophomore Branden Sharpe for a staggering in-bounds, go-ahead snag in the back corner of the end zone.
Class 6A State Championship
Brownsburg 22, Westfield 17
“[Stephens is] the most deserving [recipient of the Mental Attitude Award] in the history of my coaching,” Hart said. “He’s the most unselfish, hardworking kid, I couldn’t say enough. There’s a lot of other deserving kids on both teams, especially ours, but nobody as much as Iosua. If our kids could have voted for it, they would have voted for him.”
The momentum now in their favor, the Bulldogs’ defense joined in on the scoring action. After holding the Shamrocks to a 3-and-out, senior Jamere Pendelton scooped his own blocked punt and ran it in for his team’s second score in six plays.
“How about that Jamere has five turnovers in three games, just by himself? It’s amazing,” Hart said. “When that happened, I thought we had the chance to really flip the game because defensively, we were set.”
Westfield countered with a quick touchdown of their own – storming down the field with 75 yards in 1:36 – to come within one score with just over seven minutes remaining.
A failed fourth-down conversion attempt by Brownsburg at the Westfield 24-yard line turned the ball over with a five-point lead and 1:45 remaining in the game. From the Bulldog 32-yard line, Shamrock senior quarterback Carsen Melvin launched the final play of the game, a pass to the front of the end zone, that was intercepted by junior Drew Bostic.
“I’ll give [the defensive coaches] a ton of credit… they kept mixing up the coverages and the pressures and we got to them,” Hart said. “Last week, that kid hadn’t been sacked the entire year, and I think we had like [3.0] sacks on him, and that’s just a great d-line.”
Down 10-0 midway through the second quarter after being dominated by Westfield in offensive yards, Brownsburg junior running back Kovon Sumpter-Bey tacked on 70 yards on quarterback Oscar Frye’s one-yard pass to jumpstart the Bulldog offense.
In the first quarter, Westfield collected 80 yards of offense on 21 plays, a stark contrast to Brownsburg’s 31 yards on seven plays.
Both teams punted out the first half before Brownsburg opened up the third quarter with a game-tying field goal, aided in a 65-yard pass from Frye to sophomore wide receiver Avin Robinson to drive his team into Shamrock territory.
“We came in, we thought we had some things in the run game, especially when Iosua came in,” Hart said. “We felt like they weren’t going to give us so much pressure, so if we got vertical on them, we’d have a chance. It’s one thing make adjustments, it’s another thing for a team and our coaching staff to put them in and execute them. I thought that was a huge difference during the game.”
With the victory, Hart became the first coach in championship history to guide three different schools to a title after winning with 4A Evansville Reitz in 2007 and 5A Warren Central in 2009. He is just the third to take three different schools to the title game, joining Russ Radtke and Craig Buzea.
“When Dr. Jim Snapp and Kelli Waggoner and Dr. Bret Daghe had a vision for this program, they said ‘When will we win a state championship?’” Hart said. “And I said, ‘We’ll be a state champion every year. We just may not win it.’ I really feel like all nine of our teams [in my tenure] have played that way.”
Class 6A State Championship Records
Team
Most Punt Return Yards: 42 by Brownsburg vs. Westfield, 2024. Old Record: 37 by Center Grove vs. Carroll (Fort Wayne), 2022.
Individual
Most Interceptions (Tied): 1 by Drew Bostic, Brownsburg vs. Westfield, 2024.
Brownsburg QB Iosua Stephens named Mental Attitude Award recipient
During the awards ceremony, Iosua Stephens of Brownsburg High School was announced by the IHSAA Executive Committee as the recipient of the Phil N. Eskew Mental Attitude Award in Class 6A Football.
The award is annually presented to a senior who is nominated by his principal and coach, and has demonstrated excellence in mental attitude, scholarship, leadership, and athletic ability during his four years of high school.
Iosua ranks in the top 15 percent of his class, has made Academic Honor Roll every semester, and is a member of Brownsburg’s chapter of the National Honor Society.
A team captain for the football team, Iosua is an Athletic Ambassador, and an academic mentor for elementary school students. He also plays basketball and runs track and field for Brownsburg.
The son of Joshua and Lorena Stephens of Brownsburg, IN, he is currently undecided on where he will attend college but is interested in studying Finance.
The award is named in honor of Commissioner Phil N. Eskew, who served as the IHSAA’s third commissioner from 1962-76. Under his leadership, the IHSAA football state tournament was initiated in 1973.
The Indianapolis Colts, the presenting sponsor of the state tournament, presented a $1,000 scholarship to Brownsburg High School’s general scholarship fund in the name of Iosua Stephens.
