NEW PALESTINE — For 28 consecutive contests, the New Palestine Dragons football team has been flawless.
Unbeaten en route to back-to-back Class 5A state championship titles in 2018 and 2019, New Palestine hasn’t been handed an “L” since losing to Zionsville in the sectional tournament on Nov. 3, 2017.
Well, the streak is apparently over — at least virtually.
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After winning the Hoosier Helmet Challenge on June 8, an online competition that was waged on Twitter, the Dragons advanced into the National Helmet Tournament, but unfortunately lost in the round of 32 against the Fisher Bunnies of Illinois.
“I guess this is the kind of loss that I can accept,” New Palestine football coach Kyle Ralph said. “The whole thing was really cool, so it’s tough to lose. It certainly would have been cool to be a national champion in some kind of mythical helmet championship thing, but we’ll take our loss to the Bunnies gracefully.”
The Dragons were defeated by the Bunnies based on percentages. Fishers won the Region 4 showdown by garnering 57 percent of the 3,695 votes cast before the polls closed on Monday.
“I have to admit. Their helmet was really cool. I kind of thought we might be in some trouble. It’s so unique how they designed it,” Ralph said. “Their awards stickers were carrots. I thought that was super clever. It admittedly was a pretty cool helmet.”
If anything, the online helmet tournament got the competitive juices flowing in a high school landscape in need of some excitement, since the COVID-19 pandemic halted all IHSAA-sanctioned athletics this past March.
This was the first statewide helmet competition in Indiana history. Aaron Ferguson, the assistant sports editor of the Northwest Indiana Times, ran and organized the 2020 Hoosier Helmet Challenge where the state champion was invited to compete in the national tournament.
The first online statewide helmet tournament was launched in Iowa by Trevor Arnold, a head football coach and teacher at Maquoketa Valley in Delhi, Iowa, according to Ferguson.
Ferguson followed a similar tournament that took place in Illinois during his tenure at the Journal Star in Peoria before he crossed the state line for a new job.
He took on the task of running Indiana’s first tournament this spring as a way to get to know some of the schools and programs around the Hoosier State.
The event was a surprise for Ralph and several of the state’s football coaches, who started seeing their helmets appear on Twitter the past couple of months.
“The schools got put into a huge pool, and they entered their helmets. He did it through social media honestly,” Ralph said. “I really didn’t know about it until we were probably into the first or second round of the Indiana tournament. All of a sudden, I saw our helmet was in a picture.
“I thought, what is this?,” Ralph added. “Then, obviously, I got clued into what was going on, and I did some information gathering, so it was something that was totally unexpected. And, it ended up being something that was kind of fun and pretty cool.”
The Dragons beat Logansport, Rock Creek and Bishop Chatard before things started to get serious, in a way.
“It’s a lot more fun, then serious, obviously,” Ralph said. “But, we started kind of advancing weekly through the Indiana tournament, so to speak, and then all of a sudden it went from I don’t really know what’s going on here, and we won by a little bit, and then we’d win again by a little bit. Then, all of a sudden, ‘Oh, my God, we’re close to the finals in Indiana. Let’s win this thing!”
The Dragons football helmet was recently revamped with the help of Healy Awards, Inc., an awards, decals and apparel company based in Menomonee Falls, Wisc.
With a more metallic and glossy finish from year’s past, the Dragons contemporary helmet logo and award stickers were spruced up after New Palestine quarterback coach Jeremy Large and Ralph went through a few revisions to make the logo look updated.
The new look caught voters’ attention this spring, or so it seems, while the community stepped up to help the Dragons capture the Hoosier Helmet Challenge state title.
“I started advertising this thing more on Twitter, and it really got the competitive juices going some,” Ralph said. “The round to make the finals where we went against West Washington, and that’s such a great community and their helmet is super, super cool; they jumped out to a really early lead.
“It was coming down to the wire, and I’m sitting there like, ‘Look, we’re not going lose.’ So, I started texting everybody I knew.”
The final four voting was crucial as New Palestine collected 53 percent of the votes out of 1,129 ballots cast on Twitter.
“I texted our coaching staff, our leadership council, my friends from Ohio, my former players. I said, start sending this to everyone you know. We’re not going to come this far and lose. Get the votes in. We’re not losing this,” Ralph said.
“Man, we pulled out something like 3-4 percent of the vote in the final hour. We had hundreds of people go on and vote to put us over the top and win.”
In the finals, New Palestine won 51-49 percent against Lafayette Jeff with 2,167 votes tallied.
“Again, it’s a silly online vote and really cool and doesn’t really mean a lot. Except, it really, really shows how much support our community has for our program, which is amazing,” Ralph said. “It’s amazing to me how much people love Dragon football.”
New Palestine won its first-round national contest against Kenner Discovery of Louisiana by taking 60 percent of the 2,034 votes. Their magical run ended in the round of 32, however, against the Bunnies and their carrots.
“I refuse to eat that vegetable from this point forward,” Ralph laughed.
New Palestine is preparing for real, on-field contests beginning next month with its first preseason practice scheduled for July 6.
“I knew inevitably, we were going to lose out to the programs in the bigger cities in the bigger states. That’s just how it was going to go, but it was something really fun to get people excited about Dragon football in the middle of all this stuff going on right now,” Ralph said. “It’s a reminder that our season is coming up soon and we have a great brand that we’re really proud of. In that regard, it was something special beyond just the helmet and winning the tournament.”
