Basketball on grass: How New Castle revived its football program

NEW CASTLE, Ind. — On the ride home from Yorktown late last Friday night, Kyle York’s phone buzzed. The New Castle head coach looked down to see a text message from one of his best friends: Indiana head coach Tom Allen.

After a long night that ended with a 62-55 overtime win over the Tigers, Allen texted, "Wow congratulations on another win. So happy for you and the Trojans. … However, the defense, we can talk about that later. Just score baby!”

Allen, a New Castle alum, is keeping a watchful eye on the Trojans (3-2) this year. Like everyone else, Allen is wondering if this will be New Castle’s first winning season since 1984, the year before his dad (also named Tom Allen) took over the program. York was two years old.

"Like I told Kyle today, the game has changed,” Allen said in an interview with The Star Press on Wednesday night. "The key to the game in today’s world is you score more points than they do. And that’s what they did. I haven’t seen the (Yorktown) game obviously, but wow, how about that score?

"He’s got the folks there in New Castle all excited and everything,” he added. "He’s off to a great start, for sure.”

New Castle’s revival involves a strong-armed quarterback putting up video-game numbers that may rewrite the state record book, along with a deep and talented receiving core. But it starts with a former IU assistant and the current IU head coach.

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York left coaching in 2012 to start a family. After 10 years of college coaching split between IU and Drake, his career was ready to take off as he interviewed to be Drake’s defensive coordinator. But family, he said, was more important. So after his wife gave birth to twins, he moved back to New Castle to take over the family business in construction manufacturing. His father, Greg York, is the mayor in New Castle, and Kyle played football and basketball at New Castle, so this was the place to settle down. His coaching career, as far as he was concerned, was over.

He watched as his fellow assistants at Drake moved on to bigger jobs, like Chris Creighton (head coach at Eastern Michigan), Neal Neathery (defensive coordinator at Eastern Michigan), Brian Ward (defensive coordinator at Syracuse) and Allen, of course, who is now the head coach at IU.

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York was content. He even bought another business on April 1. But then the head coaching position at New Castle came open, and he got a call April 10. York said he was contacted by people doing the coaching search to gauge his interest. He didn’t have any, he said. They asked again. York said no again, but he also called Allen, who grew into one of his best friends while they were at Drake despite being over a decade apart in age (Allen’s dad was York’s PE teacher in elementary school).

"I said (to Allen), ‘You’re not going to believe this. … They’re asking me to coach,’” York recalled. "Tom was like, ‘Dude, you’re meant to do this. Listen to them.’”

So the third time was the charm for York, who agreed to interview. But Allen advised York on several things before the process moved along further. Allen, who has coached at the high school and college level for three decades, said it was crucial to make sure that the school was fully committed to the football program. New Castle, after all, always will be a basketball school with the largest high school fieldhouse in the country just a few hundred feet away from its football field.

"What the heck am I getting myself into?” York asked Allen.

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On April 9, football was not on York's radar. By May, he had the keys to a program that had won 11 games in the last nine seasons. But he knew what he wanted to do with the program right away.

"We had a meeting,” Luke Bumbalough said, "and the first thing he said was ‘We’re going to play basketball on grass. Fly around, air it out. If you can’t run, learn how to run.’”

Said Triston Chesher, "Hearing that made you want to play football.” That’s because it was a far cry from last season, when New Castle went 3-7 after rushing 358 times compared with 145 passes. This season: 90 rushing attempts, 227 pass attempts.

That sold Bumbalough, a wide receiver, and Niah Williamson, the starting quarterback. Both are starters on the basketball team, and both could have very easily decided to take it easy in the fall and rest up for a winter in which New Castle could potentially contend for a state title in Class 3A.

"It’s a basketball community first, but we’ve always had strong support for the football program,” New Castle athletic director Shane Osting said. "It’s just now we’re winning some games, and the way we’re winning, there’s definitely a lot of excitement.”

Added York: "When I took over, I said that all these basketball players can play football, we’ve just never given them the chance. Eyebrows would raise. I would say no, these guys may be better at football then they are basketball. Nobody would listen, but I think some people might be believing what I was saying.”

The numbers speak for themselves. Williamson leads the state in passing with 1,934 yards – 381 yards ahead of the next quarterback. The single-season record is 4,468 yards by Evansville Mater Dei’s Jake Schiff in 2001. At his current pace of 386.8 passing yards per game, Williamson would need to play 12 games to break it – meaning the Trojans would play three playoff games. Williamson doesn’t have any college offers yet, but he is intent on playing at the next level.

Bumbalough, a junior, is a different story. He can play either college basketball or college football – or both. He worked out for a college basketball coach earlier this week before school, and York said the basketball coach said that they would keep Bumbalough on their board specifically because he is playing football. He is second in the state with 824 receiving yards and first with 15 touchdowns. Chesher isn’t far behind in ninth with 557 yards.

While New Castle very well make a run deep into March, a few players make get a late start, because the football team appears ready to make its own run into late October and November.

"Everyone in the school used to hate on the football team: ‘Oh they’re going to get smashed, lose by 80,’” Williamson said. "Well, we’ve proven them wrong.”

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New Castle’s fans showed up in full force last Friday, completely filling the visitor bleachers at Yorktown. Other fans lined the fence to watch one of the best offenses in the state put up the aforementioned 62 points, which along with Yorktown’s 55 points was part of the highest-scoring game in the state since 2015. Bumbalough said that most of the fans he interacted with after the game couldn’t talk; they had lost their voices from yelling so much.

Heading into a highly anticipated showdown with Delta (3-2), which boasts the state’s leading rusher in Charlie Spegal, York asked the Trojans if they knew what the plaque looked like for being in third place in the HHC midway through the season. Translated: We haven’t done anything yet.

The program, though doesn’t appear to be a one-hit wonder: Williamson is a senior, but the receiving core that also includes Nicholas Greiser, James Thompson and Tytus Ragle are all sophomores and juniors. Leading tackler Stephen Spears, who wears American flag socks during games, is a junior.

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The main piece of advice York got from those he reached out to – like former Ball State coach Bill Lynch, Ball State offensive coordinator Joey Lynch, Allen and many more – was to surround himself with the right people. So York prioritized "people who knew how to work with kids, not necessarily football people.” York wanted people who could instill belief into a program that has long suffered; he had plenty of football connections to call about X’s and O’s. That has created an environment where kids started trying to join the team during the middle of the season after initially deciding not to play.

The only regret may be from Williamson, who said, "It sucks he came here my senior year. We could have been doing this a couple years ago.” But at the very least, Williamson will break all kinds of single-season marks at New Castle, and maybe take aim at the state record books after throwing for just eight touchdown passes all of last season (he had seven alone last game).

The excitement that Allen referenced is just beginning in a town in love with basketball, but with room in its heart for football too.

"Never in a million years did I think I would be running this program and back in coaching,” York said, "but it’s a blast."

Ryan O’Gara is a sports features writer at The Star Press. Contact him at (765) 213-5829, rogara@muncie.gannett.com or @RyanOGara.