GREENFIELD — After a high school career of being Greenfield-Central’s primary ball-carrier in the Cougars’ Wishbone offense, Andrew Zellers will get one more chance running the football.
Zellers will be part of the 57th Annual Murat Shrine North/South Football All-Star Classic to be played Friday, July 14 at Decatur Central High School. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
Zellers is one of two Cougars playing in the game and four with Hancock County connections representing the South team. Kyler Grill, a linebacker from Mt. Vernon, joins Greenfield-Central offensive lineman Garrett Taylor. Trent Taylor, formerly the defensive coordinator at G-C, and new head football coach at Knightstown, will be one of the assistant coaches.
For Zellers, it won’t be his final time in a football uniform, just the last time he’ll be on the offensive side.
The 6-0, 210-pounder who rushed for 2,823 yards in a four-year career for Greenfield-Central will play collegiately at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne. For the NAIA school, also nicknamed Cougars, Zellers will play linebacker, as well as be a part of the university’s baseball team.
“It’ll be my last time running the ball for a while, but I think it’ll be fun to do it one more time and then go play defense up there,” Zellers said. “I’ve always been a linebacker growing up. It’s always been my passion, defense. But, with (Greenfield-Central) coach (Travis) Nolting coming in and the offense we ran, it made more sense for me to play fullback.
“(I) just (wanted to be) a team player and go out and do my best. I got my limited time on defense, but it was good for the team and it still got me to where I want to be. It helped me as a football player, to just be an athlete.”
He was an obvious great fit at fullback.
Zellers was a 1,000-yard rusher in each of his last two seasons even though he missed some games due to injury. As a senior, he scored 15 touchdowns. As a junior, he set a school record with a 97-yard touchdown run against Pendleton Heights.
For his career, he scored 31 touchdowns, including one on an 83-yard fumble return, as a sophomore, in one of those infrequent opportunities on defense. He was a varsity player for four seasons and the team’s starting fullback his last three.
“He was a great linebacker for us, but we needed him to play fullback,” Nolting said. “Not only did he make sacrifices, ‘I really love playing linebacker, but coach needs me to play fulltime fullback,’ he never complained. He just did what the team needed him to do. Andrew Zellers has been a pivotal part of the resurgence of football at Greenfield-Central.”
Zellers was the prototype that Nolting prefers as his Wishbone fullback. He has the size that gave him the ability to bowl you over, but he also had the speed, when he got into the open field, that made him hard to catch.
Along with the record-breaking run as a junior, and the long return on defense as a sophomore, Zellers had multiple 50-plus yard scoring runs as well as those short-yardage bull-dozing carries.
“He could either out-run you and bust off a 70-yard run or he could run you over and grind out three or four yards a carry. A very dynamic, very versatile young man,” Nolting added.
Next week’s all-star game will be the end of one chapter of Zellers’ athletic career, but he has already started working on the next.
Once high school baseball season ended, he began playing in a summer league. Plus, USF has started preseason training and he has been going back and forth to Fort Wayne four times per week.
“It keeps me busy and I like it,” Zellers said.
But before he goes all in with his new Cougar teammates, he’ll get one last chance at running the ball as a Greenfield-Central Cougar.
“It’s definitely a good way to go out on top after having a rough game in (losing to New Palestine in) the sectional,” Zellers said. “It’ll be nice to represent Greenfield-Central one more time and hopefully get the win in the North-South game.”
