County-rivals meet again with regional crown on the line

LEIPSIC – The Columbus Grove and Leipsic football teams will be battling for Putnam County bragging rights when the Bulldogs and Vikings square off at Lima Shawnee on Friday.Oh, yeah. The winner will get a nifty regional championship trophy as well."This used to be a league game, so I'd still call them a common opponent," Grove coach Andy Schafer said after the No. 4-seeded Bulldogs (9-3) punched their ticket to the Division VII, Region 26 final with a 28-6 win over Lima Central Catholic."We did play them this summer in a 7-on-7, but what it all means, I haven't thought about it yet. What I do know is that it's Putnam County vs. Putnam County and it's a really, really big game."Columbus Grove is gunning for a fourth straight regional title; Leipsic is pursuing its first. Friday's winner will advance to the Division VII state semifinals, likely to face the winner of the Region 28 final between No. 1-ranked Marion Local and St. Henry.Recent history pegged Columbus Grove as a perennial power, but the Bulldogs got off to a shaky start to the 2025 season, losing their first three games. The Bulldogs regrouped and rebounded, though, and enter Friday's game riding a nine-game winning streak."It goes back to the tradition of Columbus Grove football," said Grove junior linebacker Brady Basinger, this year's Defensive Player of the Year in the Northwest Conference all-league voting."The beginning of the season we were really young, we had no experience. With a whole new offense and new defense, it takes time. Then we started to grow into our roles and started to step up."I think we clicked at the right time."Senior Landon Best, who quarterbacked Grove to the 2023 state semifinals before missing almost all of the 2024 season due to injury, is having another banner year, throwing for 1,988 yards and a school single-season record 28 touchdowns. He's also run for 256 yards and six scores.Grove has also gotten a record-breaking year from senior receiver Trevon Baxter, who has hauled in 70 passes for 910 yards and 11 touchdowns. Gavin Barraza has 42 catches for 466 yards and six TDs and Gavin Baxter has 26 receptions for 524 yards and eight scores.After graduating a 20-man senior class, many of them two- and three-year lettermen, there was bound to be some transition in the program. But there was always, Basinger said, that tradition."All of the dudes graduated last year, so now we had to step up and be those dudes," he said."We realized we had to step and be the dudes who make those plays."Leipsic coach Joe Kirkendall wasn't surprised by Grove's turn-around."When the season started, they were playing some sophomores and a freshman, similar to us," he said."They just have some seniors at the top end kind of leading things, the Best and Baxter kids, who are kind of setting the tone for them."Despite the proximity of the two schools, Leipsic and Columbus Grove did not start a football rivalry until 2015. Grove won the first two games, then Leipsic won three straight. They did not meet during the COVID season of 2020, but Grove won three straight when both were members of the Northwest Conference in 2021, 2022 and 2023.Friday's game is the first meeting between the two since Leipsic returned to the Blanchard Valley Conference. Kirkendall, who has chronicled the history of Leipsic football, well understands what the Bulldogs have gone through this season, and where they are now."They're not the same team they were at the beginning of the season, from a confidence standpoint, from the way they are playing," he said."Defensively, they started with a three (man front), then went back to a four, which is very similar to what they done in years past. It's a little different look, but they are still a cover-two defense and they keep their safeties outside the box."Offensively, they were more of a spread team (but) they've condensed some things to more of a wing-T look out of the shotgun with a lot of misdirection, a lot of jet sweeps and buck sweeps, and using the quarterback more."They have typical tough, hard-nosed Grove kids, and they figured out what fits them best."Kirkendall, who guided the Vikings to 11-win seasons in 2011 and 2019, achieved his 150th career win in last week's 36-28 regional semifinal victory over Pandora-Gilboa. There was little fanfare at the time, symbolic of a season in which the Vikings have quietly but systematically put together an 11-1 record with three games decided by a touchdown or less and few blow-outs."Part of the problem was we had so many issues on defense," said Kirkendall, noting that in the first five minutes of Leipsic's opening game with Lake High School the Vikings lost offensive guard Leo Parker, defensive end Randy Fackler and returning all-league linebacker Colin Niese to injuries.Kirkendall also found an up-side to the situation, especially with all three players back in the fold."Losing those guys, we had to evolve and put different players in those spots," he said."We had some young guys play early. They got a lot of experience and that's helped us. Scheme-wise we evolved. We're still in a four (man front) but we're a lot more flexible."We've gotten some guys back, we've gotten healthy. We understand what's going on as guys have gotten into their pieces and parts. We allowed ourselves to settle and grow, and I think we've gotten a lot better on the defensive side of the ball."Leipsic will challenge Grove's defense with an excellent passing attack of its own triggered by sophomore quarterback Marc Kirkendall and featuring junior receiver Avery Paris and junior back Marquis Williams. Kirkendall has thrown for 2,249 yards and was among the BVC leaders in touchdown passes (21), quarterback efficiency (162.9 percent) and quarterback rating (112.1).Paris caught 58 passes for a BVC-high 1,066 yards with 10 TDs; Williams was first-team all-BVC as an athlete with 846 yards rushing, 410 receiving and a league-leading 19 TDs."Other than the first Pandora-Gilboa game (a 12-7 win) and the Liberty-Benton game (a 52-0 loss), I feel our offense has been pretty good," Kirkendall said."We've had the ability to get some big plays, and put drives together when we needed to."While a regional championship trophy – and intra-county bragging rights – might be on the line, Schafer stressed a need to keep things in perspective."It's on to the next game," he said after the Bulldogs beat Lima Central Catholic in the semifinals."It's week 14, our kids will be ready and we want to just keep playing until they tell us we can't."