Final observations on Hart-Saugus

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Standing on Hart’s sideline as the final seconds ticked away on the scoreboard, I prepared myself for the onslaught approaching from behind. A huge, red and black wave of teenagers -- some of them wearing T-shirts with the phrase ‘Saugus Who?’ written on the front -- had jumped the fence that separated the grandstands from the field and were waiting like crouched tigers for Saugus RB Ryan Zirbel to be tackled.

Once the Hart defense brought down the Centurions’ running star for the final time and secured a 24-21 victory, the big red and black wave engulfed the field, personally delivering me a couple of elbow and shoulder hits along the way.

Oh well, I guess its been four years since Hart last won a Foothill League title and that’s an amazingly long time when you consider all the success this team had in the 1990s and the first few years of this millennium.

‘We won 13 [league titles] in a row and 14 out of 15 years,’ Hart Coach Mike Herrington said, ‘and when you don’t win it for three years, you realize how precious those league championships are.’

The idea that the 2008 Hart graduating class would never see the football team win a league championship was something the Indians didn’t want to accept. They know they’re playing on a team with a long-heralded football tradition and there was a lot of pride at stake against a talented Saugus squad just as eager to win its first league title in 26 years.

‘It was great because no one here had seen a league title before now,’ said Hart RB Delano Howell, who rushed for 141 yards and three TDs in 29 carries. ‘We saw what the papers said about how we were the underdog and we wanted to prove that we could still do it.’

I guess that explains why all those rowdy, jubilant kids stormed the field.

-- Austin Knoblauch