Franklin ends football season with win at Hanover

HANOVER — Franklin College jumped on football archrival Hanover College with four touchdowns in the first half and went on to win 42-28 in Saturday’s annual battle for the Victory Bell trophy.

The Grizzlies closed out their 2009 season at 5-2 in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference—tying for second place with Manchester College—and finished 7-3 overall. The host Panthers dropped to 3-4 in the HCAC and 3-7 overall.

The win, which featured the teams combining for 995 total offensive yards, marked Franklin’s fifth straight over Hanover.

Hanover sophomore Daniel Passafiume set the NCAA record for most receptions in a single game, catching 25 passes for the Panthers. The graduate of St. Xavier High School in Louisville, Ky., finished with 153 receiving yards and two touchdowns.

Passafiume’s 25 receptions were one more than the previous all-divisions mark shared by Jerry Rice and Chas Gessner. Rice set the previous record for Mississippi Valley State University in 1983 against Southern University, and Gessner tied it in 2002 for Brown University against the University of Rhode Island.

This season, Passafiume had 114 receptions for 1,054 yards and 14 touchdowns.
Franklin senior and Brownstown Central High School graduate Adam Mellencamp finished with three receptions for 38 yards, including one 20-yard gain.

On defense, Franklin senior and Seymour High School graduate Teddy Henkle had four solo tackles and Franklin junior and BCHS graduate Daymond Reynolds had two solo tackles.

For the season, Mellencamp played in all 10 games and led the team with 55 receptions for 836 yards, with an average of 83.6 yards per game. He scored eight touchdowns, and his longest was for 62 yards.

Mellencamp also had 10 punt returns for a total of 67 yards and a long of 26, and he had three kick returns for a total of 65 yards and a long of 26. He led the team in all-purpose yards, too.

Henkle was the third-best tackler on the team, collecting 34 solo and 22 assist tackles through 10 games. Reynolds ended the season with four solo and three assist tackles through eight games played.