Remembrance of games past: Adversity spurs Wildcats’ run of dominance in 2010s
By
Rusty Rae, McMinnville N-R/News-Register 9/11/2020
In Linfield’s first game of the 2008 football season, the
Wildcats traveled to Abilene, Texas, opening head coach Joseph Smith’s third
season, and arriving with high hopes for a play-off bid.
Greeted by a weather front pushed from a tropical storm in
the Gulf and a loaded Cowboy team with similar aspirations, the Wildcats
departed with a 29-22 loss and a broken QB in Aaron Boehme, who went down with a fractured clavicle in the third
quarter.
It was not the start anticipated by Smith or any of the
Wildcats. Smith reflected he thought his ‘Cats, while young in places, had made
the improvements to be a playoff contender. With Cole Franklin, a freshman,
run-first QB at the helm, Smith had to retool the ‘Cat offense.
Linfield would go on to finish a third consecutive 6-3
season, after a 52-28 loss to eventual conference champion Willamette, ending
their playoff hopes. Though disappointing, the Abilene defeat was actually the
catalyst for a revival of dominating ‘Cat football, as Linfield monopolized the
Northwest Conference and made deep runs into the DIII national playoffs in
subsequent seasons.
Boehme remembers the crazy weather of the day that saw a torrential
downpour at one point in the game, field temperatures which topped 90 degrees
and a wind gusting to near 40 mph at times. The first half was just as demented
as the weather as the ‘Cats went down 21-7.
Depending on which end of the field a team had the wind
could represent a friend or foe. Boehme recalled when the first half ended,
kicker Scot Birkhofer, with the formidable wind at his back, missed a long
field goal – a 52-yarder as time expired – that would have been good from 62
yards, but the swirling wind carried it wide right.
In the third quarter the ‘Cats took advantage of an
intentional grounding call on a fourth-and-five play, earning great field
position at the Cowboy 37. On a third-and-13 from Hardin-Simmons 15, the ‘Cats
ran a stretch play, but Boehme, in his true junior year, said everyone was
covered, so he scrambled.
“I could have slid down, but we needed the first down so I
pushed for the extra yards,” he said. He came up short, and when a Cowboy
defender landed on top of him he felt an intense stab in his shoulder.
“The pain was pretty instantaneous and I remember saying to
myself ‘Ah crap.’” At first, Boehme thought it was just a stinger. However, by
the time he reached the sidelines he realized it was worse. And, in fact, it
was much more serious, his collarbone broken in three places, ending his day
along with the season.
Birkhofer kicked a short field goal to pull his team to a
21-10 deficit. Linfield, behind a game Cole Franklin, rallied in the fourth
quarter, getting an 18-yard scamper by Travis Masters for a TD at the 10:11
mark. The PAT, a run by Franklin, failed.
Franklin, who had set up the next score with a 34-yard run,
hit Masters from the Cowboy nine-yard line for a second score. The two-point
PAT again failed, but the ‘Cats had come all the way back, leading now 22-21.
Hardin-Simmons scored the game winner at the 1:17 mark, taking advantage of a
pair of monumental pass plays.
Boehme hoped, if Linfield could win out and make the
playoffs, he would be ready to play. But the loss to Willamette derailed those
plans.
However, from the ashes of the loss to the Cowboys, Boehme,
who stayed active with the team, attending most of the meetings, continued to
grow.
“There wasn’t a question in my mind I was ready to play QB
at the time, he said, adding, “Being able to watch Cole, critique what I saw in
the game and on tape and learn what I would do differently, really helped ready
me for the next season.
As the poet Maya Angelou wrote, “I can be changed by what
happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”
The following season, after working with receivers, he led
the ‘Cats to the DIII semifinals, where Linfield fell to eventual national
champion University of Wisconsin Whitewater, 27-17. The following year Boehme,
the NWC offensive player of the year in 2009 and 2010, led the ‘Cats to the
round of 16, where they dropped an overtime contest to St. Thomas, in
Minnesota, 24-17.
Boehme is now in his 10th season as an assistant coach with
Linfield, currently, Co-Offensive Coordinator and Receivers Coach.
A bonus game for this initial retrospective goes back in
history 52 years, to Ad Rutschman’s
first contest as head football coach at Linfield. And here’s the great bar bet
for you: Which Oregon football team is undefeated against Boise State?
That answer is, of course, Linfield University (nee
college), which beat the highly favored Broncos in Boise by a 17-7 score.
Rutschman recalled that at the time Boise was in its first year at a four-year
school and had led an outstanding junior college program, sending many players
to the University of Oregon and other four year institutions.
“I was still in the process of installing my offense and
defense – teaching both coaches and players. We had a tremendous defensive
effort with linebackers Roy Umeno and Virgil Ripley dominating the Boise
offensive effort,” he recalled
Their pressure on the Boise QB allowed defensive backs Jim
Consbruck and Joe Robillard to repulse the Boise aerial game, and Consbruck
took an errant pass into the end zone for Linfield’s final score.
….
Photo:
Composite image of current Linfield football assistant coach Aaron Boehme and a
picture of Boehme during his playing days with the Wildcats in 2010. Boehme
injured his clavicle in 2008, but returned to lead the ‘Cats. Rusty
Rae/News-Register
