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December 1, 2006 > Sports > Sid wins fourth straight Powderpuff title

Sid wins fourth straight Powderpuff title

By Stephen Whitfield | Thresher Editorial Staff

Sid Richardson won its fourth-straight Powderpuff championship Tuesday night, beating Hanszen 13-12 in an overtime thriller. Hanszen sophomore quarterback Kate Schaeffler pulled her team within a point in the overtime period thanks to a 15-yard touchdown pass to junior receiver Rachel Greff. Poised to send the game into a second overtime, Schaeffler ran a bootleg sneak on extra-point attempt, but was stopped behind the line of scrimmage by senior defensive lineman Meaghan Jeffcoat to seal the victory for Sid.

For the first time ever, the championship game was held at Rice Stadium instead of on one of the intramural fields. The atmosphere was unlike any other Powderpuff game this year, with the bookstore providing fans with free t-shirts and a field-goal kicking contest taking place at halftime.

“It was a lot of fun,” Sid quarterback Christi Disch, a senior, said. “I was really glad to see fans from both Sid and Hanszen come out and support us. It was cool seeing the surroundings, and taking pictures afterwards with the stadium and the lights in the background was awesome.”

In their only other meeting of the season Oct. 30, Hanszen (5-5) led for the first three quarters before Disch came off the bench and led Sid (8-2) on a game-winning touchdown drive in the fourth, and Sid won 7-6. In the title game, Hanszen again took a lead early thanks to a 15-play, 65-yard drive that took up nearly the entire first quarter. Freshman running back Chris Lin scored on an easy six-yard touchdown run to give Hanszen a 6-0 lead.

After both teams went three-and-out on subsequent possessions, Sid answered with a long touchdown drive of its own that started midway through the second quarter. Starting from midfield after a Hanszen punt, Sid marched down the field, utilizing a wide-open passing attack that, up until that point, hadn’t been effective. Aided in part by a 15-yard illegal contact penalty on Hanszen, Sid scored with just over two minutes left in the first half on a 9-yard touchdown pass to senior receiver Lyssa Allen. With the missed extra point, the two teams were tied at 6.

Hanszen responded to Sid’s score with yet another sustained drive. The naked bootleg, a play in which the quarterback fakes a toss in one direction and runs unprotected in the other direction, proved very effective against Sid’s overly aggressive defense. Schaeffler gained 44 yards on three big runs, leading Hanszen to Sid’s 10-yard line.

“We noticed the last time we played Sid that they had a pretty packed defense that we managed to get around with a lot of misdirection plays [and] play action,” Hanszen coach Dylan Farmer, a sophomore and Thresher co-sports editor, said. “We kept using dives up the middle and sweeps to the outside. … It worked pretty successfully for most of the first half, so I decided to stick with it.”

However, just as the half was coming to an end, Sid defensive back Kristen Rogers, a junior, snagged an interception in the end zone to keep Hanszen from taking the lead going into halftime.

In the third quarter, Sid’s passing game lit up Hanszen’s defense — Disch completed passes of 27, 19 and 13 yards — but could not get in the end zone. On both of its possessions, Hanszen’s defensive line forced punts from near midfield, getting two key sacks on third down.

Disch said she thought she was the weak link in the offense’s performance.

“Seven of the eight offensive players played amazing, but the quarterback did not,” she said. “I feel like I did as much good as bad. … The receivers caught everything that I threw to them that was catchable, they blocked and they ran their routes.”

Perhaps one of the major turning points in the game came early in the fourth quarter. Facing fourth-and-4 from Hanszen’s own 30, Farmer opted to go for it. Calling another bootleg, Schaeffler easily picked up the first down with an eight-yard run. Farmer said his offense felt confident it could get the first down.

“I went into the huddle, and everyone just wanted to go for it,” Farmer said. “My defensive coordinator wasn’t so sure. I just felt like we could get it. That was the best game our offense had had all season, and I felt that with the success we’d been having with the running game and the misdirections that we could do it, so we called that bootleg and Kate took it a lot farther than we needed.”

Though they failed to score on the drive, Hanszen managed to use enough clock to prevent Sid from mounting any kind of charge late in the fourth. With just over a minute remaining, Sid advanced to its own 41, but an interception by sophomore safety Adriene Giese ensured overtime.

Sid had the ball from the 20-yard line to start the overtime period and quickly dug a deep hole, losing five yards on second-and-10 after Disch slipped and fell. After an incomplete pass, Sid faced fourth-and-15. Disch’s pass to Allen on fourth down was incomplete, but a holding call on Hanszen gave them a first down. Two plays later, Disch avoided the pass rush and scored on a nine-yard touchdown run. The extra point gave Sid a 13-6 lead.

Hanszen then had to score a touchdown and convert an extra point in its overtime possession in order to keep the game going. After a five-yard run by Lin, Schaeffler rolled left, avoided a sack by Rogers and threw a strike to Greff for the touchdown. With the failed extra-point, though, Hanszen became the fourth different team to lose to Sid in the title game in the past four years.

The championship game marked just the third time all season Hanszen scored more than one touchdown. They made it to the finals primarily due to a tenacious defense that recorded five shutouts this year. The defense should return intact next season, losing only defensive end Elizabeth Fomby, a sixth-year architecture student, and safety/linebacker Myra D’Souza. With a first-year coach and a roster comprised primarily of first-time players, Hanszen was definitely not one of the favorites to make it to the championship game at the beginning of the season.

“Before the season, when we were making up plays and making up defenses, I would have never guessed that we would have this much success,” Farmer said. “Our defense carried us all year. I couldn’t say anything more about them. Towards the end of the season, they gave our offense the confidence we needed to get here.”

For Sid, this year’s championship team took a different route than the previous three. This was the first time in five years that Sid has lost more than once during a season — they lost consecutive games to Jones and Martel Oct. 21 and Oct. 22. Also, Sid adapted a more wide-open passing attack than in previous years, something that took the better part of the season to get adjusted to. The core of Sid’s roster should also remain intact next year as well, though Disch and Jeffcoat, one of the leaders on defense, will both be gone. Disch said she was pleased to maintain a high level of success despite the changes.

“We’ve had a lot of different coaches these past four years, and especially this year, our offensive scheme was completely different from anything we’d done before,” Disch said. “It’s exciting to know that we can change things up and still do just as well.”

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