NEW PALESTINE — The Boundary Rail has been painted red for a while, now. Seven years straight, to be exact.
The New Palestine Dragons plan to keep it that way tonight.
Ever since it was introduced in 2005, the Dragons have almost entirely owned the traveling trophy, awarded to the winner of their annual game against the Mt. Vernon Marauders. The winner gets to paint the trophy, and it’s been New Palestine red since 2013. The Dragons have won 13 of the 14 games since the Rail was introduced, the only loss coming in 2012.
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There’s a lot at stake tonight, and it’s far more than just bragging rights between county rivals.
“It’s huge for both schools,” New Palestine coach Kyle Ralph said. “The communities border each other, the Boundary Rail is a traveling trophy between the two schools. You’ve got the conference stuff on top of that, with the traveling helmet. You’ve got the conference first place after one week — half the conference is 1-0, the other half is 0-1, so you want to stay in front of that stuff.”
The Dragons have been in front of the conference for six years now, holding a 42-game Hoosier Heritage Conference winning streak and 57-game regular-season winning streak.
The Marauders are playing catch-up with the Dragons. Head coach Mike Kirschner has openly said that since he took the job at Mt. Vernon in 2018, and that hasn’t changed in his second season.
“I’ve not minced any words — we’ve worked really hard at trying to close the gap on ‘em,” Kirschner said. “They’re very talented, very athletic. We’re focused on the game at hand. Our kids are excited. We’re not a bad football team. Are we where we want to be? Absolutely not. But at the same time, we’re excited for the opportunity to go play them.”
Last year’s game, Kirschner’s first in the Boundary Rail series, was a 64-0 New Palestine win. The Marauders have scored just 13 points total against the Dragons in the seven-game stretch that New Palestine has dominated.
Stopping the New Palestine offense, led by Indiana’s all-time leading rusher Charlie Spegal, has proven difficult enough. Getting their own offense going is something Mt. Vernon is focused on for tonight’s game.
“Their offense is so potent, we’ve got to find a way to move the ball with our offense,” Kirschner said. “Last year, we couldn’t move the ball. Obviously it was a monsoon, we kept turning it over, giving them a short field. Next thing you know, we’re in trouble. We’ve got to move the chains. We’ve got to keep the ball out of Charlie’s hands, if we can.”
Both teams enter tonight’s game 3-0, but both are coming off somewhat disappointing wins. The Dragons offense wasn’t clicking in the early stages against Yorktown and took too long, in their coach’s eyes, to really get going.
Their performance in the 55-19 win wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t up to their very lofty standards.
“We need to really make a statement,” New Palestine receiver Blake Austin said. “Last week wasn’t the performance we wanted, so we need to make a statement that we can play every week how we played Center Grove and keep that going.
“We’ve just got to keep the intensity and don’t play down to anyone’s level. We know we’re better, but we still have to play to our level.”
Mt. Vernon had a penalty-laden win against another county rival, Greenfield-Central. They had the types of mistakes they know that can’t make tonight against the defending Class 5A champions, the types of mistakes that plagued them in last year’s blowout loss.
They’ve made progress since then. In 2018, the Marauders entered this same game with a 2-1 mark. They were just three games into Kirschner’s tenure.
Things have changed, including the culture around the Mt. Vernon program.
“I think that’s a huge swing in the positive direction from where they were a couple of years ago,” Ralph said. “They had a nice season last year. This second year, you can really start to see some of those things take grip now as kids are responding to it. They play tremendously hard. They work hard for him. It’s fun — it adds a lot of excitement to this when you’ve got a program with a coach of that caliber who you start to see his system now kind of take its grips on the school and the program. They are vastly improved from a year ago, and that makes it exciting.”
Kirschner isn’t going to judge just how improved his team is solely off tonight’s contest against the Dragons. He plans to look at the year as a whole to get a better answer to that.
His Marauders aren’t where he wants them to be just yet, but they are getting there. They are making progress.
“We feel a lot better than last year, going into this 3-0,” Mt. Vernon quarterback and receiver Shaun Shipley said. “There’s been a lot of turnaround from two years ago. We’re hoping to keep building on that with Coach Kirschner.”
“It’s Year 2. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and this isn’t going to get built in two years, but we’re working,” Kirschner said. “We’re getting there.”
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Heritage Christian (2-1) at Eastern Hancock (3-0), 7 p.m.
Mt. Vernon (3-0) at New Palestine (3-0), 7:30 p.m.
Greenfield-Central (0-3) at Pendleton Heights (2-1), 7:30 p.m.
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For all of Wednesday’s results across the county, check out our Local Roundup on greenfieldreporter.com.
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