BEATING THE BRICKIES – Article #1 /

57… and NO!

Lake Central Stops The Streak

Beating the Brickies. Wide receiver Frank Kostouros smiles when he thinks about it. So too does offensive tackle Jeff White. Head coach Elmer Britton said it was the win that “put Lake Central football on the map.”

After closing out the 1985 season with a 15-9 opening round sectional loss to the
Crown Point Bulldogs, the Lake Central Indians finished the year with two wins and seven defeats. They entered the off season knowing that Hobart was the first team on their schedule the following year – the same Hobart program who closed out their 1985 agenda five weeks after the Indians did by playing for a state championship at
the Hoosier Dome.

“We were disappointed in our season record,” Kostouros said of the ‘85 campaign. “We were a young team that year and lost a bunch of close games. But our underclassmen gained a ton of experience,” he continued. “So we had a lot of talent coming back, and we had high expectations for ourselves. We knew we were going to be good (in 1986).”

Coach Britton, who had great respect for the Brickies and Coach Don Howell, had
just as much belief, if not more, in the program they were building at LC. “Being new to the area (in 1983), I didn’t know they were unbeatable like most of the other (Region) coaches did,” joked Britton about the Brickies. “So I thought they could be beaten. I thought we could beat them.”

It was more a question of how to do it. The answer said Britton, was through
conditioning.

“I knew the way to beat Hobart was to start weightlifting. They were physically
stronger and generally in better shape than everyone else. They outlasted teams,” he continued. “When I got there (to LC), we didn’t even have a weight room, so we did whatever we could to make one. It really started there.”

When Britton arrived at Lake Central, it was the summer of 1983, and he only had a couple months before his first game, which just happened to be against Hobart – at the famous Brickie Bowl, where the Brickies were in the middle of what turned into an 11-year home winning streak. It would be the first of four straight seasons the two schools opened against each other – before Hobart dropped Lake Central. Ironically enough, Britton had asked the LC schedule makers to find a replacement for Hobart.

“I had coaches telling me to get rid of Hobart, that we couldn’t beat them and
players would start to quit after they and Merrillville started us off 0-2,” Britton said. “So I went to my bosses at the school and asked to drop (Hobart). But I think we were in a contract, so there was nothing they could do. We had to play them. But we didn’t start 0-2 – we beat Merrillville the second week.”

That first game as head coach was the Friday before the aforementioned game with the Merrillville Pirates. LC let a third quarter lead get away in that one and it’s a game the coach feels was winnable.

“We thought we had that game under control, but we found out like a lot of teams did what happens when you think you have the Brickies under control,” Britton said of Hobart, who overcame a 15-0 second half deficit to beat the Indians 27-15.

Jeff White, a team captain and all-state senior in ‘86 who would go on to play at
Arizona State, was a freshman water boy in 1983 and has vivid memories of Elmer’s first game.

“Their stadium was packed. People were everywhere. I remember their locker room was blaring music. It was pretty impressive,” he said of the fabled former football home of the Brickies. “But we had them beat and let them off the hook. I think in my mind that’s when I told myself they were beatable.”

Eventually, they would be beatable. But it would take some time. Three more years to be exact. Following the ‘83 defeat were losses in ‘84 (27-8) and ‘85 (27-0). The point differential was going in the wrong direction. The Indians had considerable ground to make up if they were going to beat the Brickies in ‘86.

With more than 30 returning lettermen on the roster, the goal in ‘86 according to White, was a state championship, with most, if not all of the off season spent working to achieve that goal – and if they could beat the Brickies in the opener, anything…and everything after that would become possible.

White said the off season preparation started with daily visits to the old Omni 41 for weight lifting and workout sessions. “We were tight,” he said. “We worked out together all through the Winter, Spring and Summer. We had a goal.”

When camp started in August, one thing was on their collective minds – beating the Brickies. “We had been thinking about them for months,” said White. “But they weren’t thinking about us.”

“Having Hobart the first week was a definite (offseason) motivator,” Kostouros said. “We had to be ready right out of the gate. But looking back, maybe it was good that we played them week one because we had months to get ready for them, rather than during the season when there wasn’t as much time.”

“We had so many guys (that could play),” said White. “We had Joe Dickleman, Johnny Boone, Frank Kostouros, Mike Fross, Dave Britton and a bunch of other really good players. We had talent and we knew it.”

Coach Britton had been dealt a winning hand – he just needed to play his cards right. He understood the task at hand and found a way to get his players to believe in what many Region football followers felt was inconceivable.

Britton recalls he and his staff kept things upbeat the week of the game. “We wanted to keep things positive. We knew who we were playing. It was Hobart – they were the top dog,” he said. “Our confidence was high, and as the head coach, I wanted to keep it that way.”

Even though the team posted a losing record the year before, the excitement leading up to the game was second to none at LC. Newspaper accounts that week were predicting as many as 10,000 to 12,000 fans could show up for the game and extra bleachers were flown in to accommodate the expected overflow crowd.

Kostouros recalls it like this, “they had helicopters that they flew in bleachers with from Kahler (Middle School). I was a 17 year old kid and had never seen anything like that before. It was crazy – but then you realize they aren’t putting those in because of your team,” he remembers thinking. “They’re putting those in because it’s Hobart.”

A slogan had been created by someone at LC and T-shirts were printed that said
“Cement The Brickies.” The Indians were out to make a statement and what better way to announce their presence with authority than by beating the number one ranked Brickies on opening night.

Despite winning only two games the previous season, the Indians came in rated as high as number five in one of the local media polls. Kostouros remembers the preseason hype.

“We were ranked (locally). We had guys getting all-conference and all-state
recognition. We were even called giant killers before the season by someone (in the local media),” he said. “It just re-enforced the belief we already had in ourselves. Now we wanted to live up to it.”

Judgment day would finally arrive at the Burial Grounds in St. John on August 29, and it did so in the form of the massive Hobart fan base and a motorcade of yellow buses with the words “School City of Hobart” painted on the sides of them. As early as the first class period, people dressed in purple and gold could be seen arriving on campus. By the end of the school day hundreds of Hobart fans were already there.

Back in those days kickoffs were typically at 7:30pm, but as early as 6:30 the field was surrounded by fans of both schools and the excitement was at a fever pitch.

The Brickies came in with a 57 game regular season winning streak and had played 87 games since they last lost to a team hailing from northwest Indiana. They’d been to five state championship games in the past seven years and had allowed only 57 points the season before. Meanwhile, LC was a program that hadn’t yet won a state tournament game and had lost five of its last six games the previous season. On paper, it didn’t look like much of a match up. But the game wasn’t being played on paper.

White recalls a lot from that night, including the coin toss. “When we went to midfield, one of their main guys who was listed in the program at about 6’4”, wasn’t that big. I was a lot bigger than he was,” he said. “I knew right then and there that we were going to win.

“I just thought we had more athletes and more talent than they did. We were
stacked.” White continued. “They were a great program, but we had a great team
(that year), and we knew it.”

Kostouros concurred, “we had confidence in ourselves as players…and we knew that we were well coached too,” said the senior pass catcher. “When you’re going up against the Hobart mystique, you better be confident…or else.”

As self-assured as he and his teammates were before the game, they still needed to get it done on the field – a task much easier said than done when you played the Brickies. With two running teams squaring off, the game plan for the Indians was an obvious one; control the clock by running the ball for a couple of first downs each possession to keep their defense off the field and limit Hobart’s offensive opportunities. Don’t turn the ball over, avoid costly mistakes and win it in the fourth quarter. A low scoring, defensive tilt was expected.

Hobart grabbed an early lead, courtesy of a first quarter Indians special teams
turnover. Quarterback Jeff Ford connected for a touchdown pass to Rene Rodriguez in the corner of the eastern end zone to close out a three play, 20 yard scoring drive, just as the sun was setting in the western end zone. This was not they way the Indians practiced it. Panic could have set in, but didn’t.

The Indians tied it up in the second frame courtesy of a Dave Britton touchdown run on a drive that was kept alive thanks to a successful fake punt, as the up back Shawn Siddall took the snap and fired a completion to Kostouros for a 23-yard gain, setting up a 12-yard touchdown by Dave Britton. The two teams went to halftime knotted up at seven.

With the game tied, the mood in the locker room was cool and confident. “Even though (the score) was tied, we felt like we were beating them,” said linebacker Scott DeVries of the Brickies. “They couldn’t move the ball on us. We gave them their only score. But after that, nothing. We felt good about (our chances).”

Lake Central’s defense stepped up big all night to slow the vaunted Hobart ground
game and limit the Brickies to just over 200 total yards of offense. Defensive tackle Joe Dickleman and nose guard Joe Sulek were especially effective at clogging up the middle, which limited Hobart’s effectiveness on the ground.

Equally impressive were the LC defensive backs, which included Siddall and Kostouros, as well as Joe Sivulich. Coach Britton gave credit to the group, saying they “played a great game for us.”

While it was the defensive unit that kept the Indians in the game all night, it was the offense that won it for them. On their last possession, the Indians started off on their own 18-yard line with just over four minutes to play in the game. A field goal would give them the lead, while a long drive that culminated in a touchdown would likely seal the victory.

During the drive, quarterback Mark Evans had some key completions, including a 10 yarder to Johnny Boone and another of 12 yards to Dave Britton, both giving the Indians a fresh set of downs to keep the chains moving and the dream alive.

Perhaps the biggest play of the night was Dave Britton’s electrifying 43-yard run
down the left sideline, giving the Brickies a first down inside the Hobart 20 with the clock winding down.

Then, with under a minute to play, Lake Central had the ball at the Hobart three yard line with the game on the line. When the Indians broke the huddle, there was a wrinkle – defensive tackle Mike Fross was lined up in the backfield in front of the fullback Dicklemen.

With thousands of people risng to their feet, the tension in the air became thicker than the vaporous clouds that hung over the former Inland Steel plant. Evans barked out the signals, took the snap from center, turned to his right, handed the ball to Dicklemen, who plowed his way into the end zone behind Fross for the go ahead touchdown. The crowd erupted as the Indians now held a 13-7 advantage with just 45 seconds remaining. The point after made the score 14-7 with less than a minute
on the clock. The LC faithful were going crazy at the Burial Grounds.

Forty-five seconds later the dream of beating the Brickies had become reality. All that hard work. All that time spent focusing on a single purpose. It had now paid off. The Lake Central Indians were giant killers indeed. They had just beaten the Hobart Brickies – something no team had done in the previous 57 regular season games. LC also became the first northwest Indiana school since the other Indians (Portage) in 1977 to beat the Brickies – a span of 87 games.

The Indians had reason to celebrate. And so they did. For a few hours anyway – but come Saturday morning it was business as usual.

“(The coaches) didn’t let us strut around on Saturday morning. We went right back to work,” Kostouros said. “We had to get the night before out of our heads. That game was over and they (coaching staff) let us know it. Time to get ready for next week.”

The Indians would continue to win week after week for the first 10 games of the
season. After beating the Brickies came a 17-7 win at Crown Point…then the Indians went on a roll, scoring more than 40 points in four of their next eight games.

Although this team didn’t realize it’s goal of winning a state title, it did earn the first two state tournament victories in school history, defeating rivals Merrillville and Crown Point, before falling in the sectional final to Dave Shelbourne’s Highland Trojans, who were led by future Northwestern quarterback Kip Kelly, in a one point nail biter 20-19.

The 1986 Lake Central Indians won 10 straight games, which was a school record at the time, as were the 10 wins in a season. They outscored their opponents 338-97, won the program’s second ever Lake Suburban conference title, were to that point the best football team in school history – and will always be remembered for beating the Brickies.

Beating the Brickies. Wide receiver Frank Kostouros will always smile when he thinks about it. So too will offensive tackle Jeff White. And beating the Brickies will forever be, as head coach Elmer Britton said, “the game that put Lake Central football on the map.”

Writers Note:

Every player I spoke to, whether featured in this story or not, gave credit for the victory, the season and the rise of the program to head coach Elmer Britton, who remains the all-time leader in wins at Lake Central with 131 – a total that may never be surpassed at the school.

Before Coach Britton, Lake Central had only eight winning seasons in 17 years
of football. During the 18-year Britton regime, LC had only two seasons with a
losing record. After Elmer Britton, the Indian football program has only finished a season with a winning record a mere six times in 23 tries.

Britton’s teams had a 13 year stretch with only one losing season and his five straight seasons with a winning record are also the best in program history.

Three of Elmer’s teams won at least 10 games in a season. He was the first coach to win a tournament football game and his four sectional titles at Lake Central are both school records – and he is the only coach to ever take LC past the regional round of the state tournament.

With the win over Hobart, Lake Central football was not only “on the map” as Coach Britton had said, his program was now a force to be reckoned with. The first
10 games went extremely well for the ‘86 team, and it set up a run that went on for
another 10 years or more, highlighted by the 1990 squad, which started 12-0 and
reached semi-state (Football Final 4). His 1993 club went 11-3 and made an appearance in the 5A state championship game, where they fell to Bloomington South 33-27.

In its first 57 years of football, Lake Central has had 28 seasons where they won more games than they lost. Half of those (14) happened when Elmer Britton was the boss. The other 14 are spread across 39 seasons and 10 head coaches, with four of them coming under Brett St. Germain from 2011-2014 – leaving the program with just 10 winning seasons over the remaining 35 years of football.

Most players expressed appreciation for their head coach with many suggesting that the football stadium at Lake Central be named in his honor – something the Region Sports Network agrees with and supports. When you look at the numbers above, it’s hard to argue against it. Since beating the Brickies is what put LC football on the map, wouldn’t it be fitting to call it The Britton Bowl?

Thank you to everyone who helped make writing this story and this possible.