By James Costello Sports Editor
WHITING — It’s been a long dry spell for Culver.
Since a run of three straight sectional football titles from 1999 to 2001, the Cavaliers haven’t had so much as a whiff of another championship, falling in the first round of sectional play all but one year, in 2007 when the team beat Frontier 25-10 in its first-round game only to drop a semifinal match-up with North Miami the following week.
Tonight, Culver breaks a seven-year drought and hopes to break another as it heads to Whiting for the Class A, Sectional 33 championship against the Oilers.
“If winning the game would validate all the hard work and all the things that we asked our kids to do, that’s more important to me,” said Cavs head coach Andy Thomas. “That our kids are rewarded for all the hard work that they’ve done. We’ve instituted a lot of things that are radically different from what they’ve done before in the weight room and in the summer time and even really throughout the school year. They really started buying into it, and something like this reinforces that everything that they’ve done has been for a reason.”
It’s Thomas’ first championship berth since taking over the program, and the fourth-year head coach is just as proud of the way his players have earned their title shot as he is of the berth itself. On their way to Whiting, the Cavaliers got off to a program-record 5-1 start to the 2009 season, and their road so far in the postseason has been inspired.

After its initial record-breaking start, Culver was on a three-game skid headed into the tournament, including a Northern State Conference loss to first-round sectional draw LaVille in the two teams’ regular-season closer. In their Sectional 33 rematch at LaVille the following week, the Cavs overcame a 16-0 halftime deficit, shutting the host Lancers out in the second half en route to a 22-16 reprisal victory.
Last week, the Cavs found themselves trailing at the half once more against Triton after giving up a touchdown with only 10 seconds on the clock. But Culver’s defensive unit pitched another second-half shutout against the repeat-champion Trojans — who just seemed to be hitting their stride in the sectional with a 27-14 upset of state-ranked Winamac the previous week — and rallied back for a 20-13 win and the Cavaliers’ first shot at a title in seven years.
“They’ve shown a lot of resiliency, a lot of guts, a lot of determination, and they’ve shown that they’re fighters,” said Thomas. “They’re not the kind of team that’s just going to cash it in. They’re going to play hard for four quarters. I’m very proud of them for that. That’s a very cool thing to see.”
Culver’s defense will be put to the test once more against a dynamic Oilers offense that gives a lot of different looks.
“We have to defend everything. They throw it all around. They run power as well, so they like to do a lot of different things,” Thomas said. “They run about 20 different screens and they run them well. We have to communicate and we have to recognize what they’re doing and do a lot of talking and communicating and just play the game together.”