YANKTON, S.D. - Doane football authored an exciting finish to their 2024 campaign, scoring a touchdown with zeroes on the clock and then connecting on a two-point conversion that survived a coaches’ challenge and ultimately secured the Tigers (3-8, 3-7 GPAC) a 22-21 win over Mount Marty (6-5, 5-5 GPAC) on Saturday afternoon in South Dakota.  

Trailing by seven in the final minutes of the game, the Tigers forced a Lancer punt and took over at their own 4-yard line and had to drive the length of the field in less than three minutes in their season finale. And that’s exactly what Doane did. Freshman quarterback Sam Hartman showed tremendous escapability on the final drive, somehow extending the play multiple times on the possession. A 58-yard catch-and-run by Darnell Riley got the Tigers into enemy territory, and, finally, with no time remaining in the game, Hartman scrambled, bought time, and hit Andrew Waido in the end zone with a 12-yard completion to bring Doane within a single point.  

Head coach Jonathan Johnson said there was no hesitation among the coaches once the Tigers began to piece together that final drive: Doane would try for the two-point conversion to decide the game rather than rely on the sure-footed Kelen Meyer to kick a PAT and force overtime. Doane called a timeout to set up their play, and then Mount Marty countered with a timeout of their own, and the Tigers changed up their approach on their second bid at the two points.  

Once again, Hartman rolled out to his right, somehow shaking away from a sack from Jon Carlstedt and other Lancers, and fired a pass into the end zone that James Miles caught on a dive towards the sideline. It appeared that the Tigers had completed the pass, converted the try, and won the game – but Mount Marty challenged the scoring ruling, steeping the game even further into a dramatic simmer.  

2024 was the first year of widespread official video review in the NAIA, and just about every Doane game this year included a review of some kind, so it seemed fitting that the Tigers’ final game this year came down to one last review. The contention was whether or not Hartman’s knee hit down before the pass was thrown, and after a few minutes of review the officials confirmed the initial call – after some delay, Doane had indeed secured the win, a 22-21 thriller in the season finale.  

For Johnson and his fellow first-year coaches, it was mission accomplished: the coaches had preached to the players all season about the need to “fight to the finish,” and their personal goal was to leave this season better than they found it – in other words, to win more games than the previous coaching staff did. And though they had to battle, this year’s Tiger team accomplished exactly that, engineering as good of a finish as a coaching staff could have dreamed up to secure win number three on the campaign, one more than Doane tallied in 2023.  

There’s still plenty more to build towards going into year two of this coaching staff with close to two dozen seniors expected to depart and new players expected to arrive. But Doane was a program to be reckoned with less than a decade ago, and this crop of players, coaches and staff wants to take the Tigers back to that tier. This win was just one small step on that long path, but perhaps as the 2024 season closes this will can serve as a kickstarter for many wins to come in 2025 and beyond.  

 

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