Buzea crowd surfs his way to a state finals appearance

Buzea crowd surfs his way to a state finals appearance

Crown Point 38, Westfield 31 (2 OT)

By Paul Honeycutt

CROWN POINT — Since I’ve had such a busy work schedule over the past few years, I traditionally read some sports articles from the newspaper or digitally every Sunday night after my son goes to sleep.

Back in the spring of 2021 during one of those nights, my wife heard a scream from the other end of the house.

“Oh s***!” I screeched.

She ran in and confusingly looked around, worried someone was robbing us or if there was a fire.

For context, every time I mention a little nugget to my wife about Region sports, especially football, I start the sentence with “I know you care, but…”

Without acknowledging her confusion or jumpiness, this time the sentence uttered to her was “I know you care, but Craig Buzea is coming back to the Region to coach. S*** just got really interesting in Northwest Indiana.”

Her dazed look turned into what she and I label as her ridiculous face, which is where she narrows her eyes, shakes her head and walks away without saying anything.

If I were to keep track, there have probably been somewhere in the high hundreds of thousands of those looks over our 14 years together.

For the lovers of anything sports related, you know the look I’m talking about.

As for the lovers of Crown Point and Region football, the looks on those faces ranged from joy to borderline sadness to relief all the way back to pure joy.

It took two overtimes and fending off a fierce Westfield comeback for the ages, but Crown Point got it done and will represent the Northern part of the state in the Class 6A state title game next Saturday after holding off 6A No. 5 Westfield (11-2) by a 38-31 double OT final.

N.O.W. that the Region and the North have been conquered in Class 6A, the ‘Dogs are on the hunt for prey known as the 6A No. 2 Ben Davis Giants (12-1), who unseated three-time defending state champion Center Grove 38-34 in their own overtime game on Friday night.

6A No. 4 Crown Point (13-0) dominated the first half, especially on the defensive side of the ball with Westfield netting just 43 yards of offense and Bulldogs taking a 17-0 lead into the half.

Down 24-10 midway through the fourth, Westfield stormed back and put up 21 unanswered between that point and through the first overtime to take a 31-24 lead.

Crown Point then scored on back-to-back overtime possessions.

The Rocks drove down to the Crown Point 3 on their second overtime possession and on fourth down, Westfield QB Jackson Gilbert’s end zone pass was tipped away and the celebration began for the Bulldogs, who will be making their first trip to Indianapolis.

While the Crown Point faithful may have been going through the rollercoaster of emotions, Buzea remained firm, as he has been in the semistate position twice before, once back in 1994 with Portage and again in 2014 with Homewood-Flossmoor in the 8A semifinal in Illinois while coming out on top in both semifinal games.

As it has been highly documented in the past, Buzea has gone through quite a journey over these past four years.

He was diagnosed with leukemia back in December 2019, but he underwent a stem cell transplant, bone marrow transplant, and chemotherapy and thankfully got through it.

Despite going through what he has, he still talks about making sure his players are well-adjusted, mature adults.

“We always try to help the players be the best versions of themselves,” Buzea said earlier this year. “It’s not just about winning and losing because while we’re trying to build up the football program here, we’re also trying to build up the people.”

Then the next fall in 2020, COVID-19 cancelled the Illinois football season, which was allowed to be played in the spring of the next year as deemed by the IHSA, the governing body of Illinois high school sports.

However, his Vikings only got to play four games because someone within the football program caught COVID. 

Then later that spring, he signed on to be the football coach at Crown Point and it was an instant gamechanger.

Fast forward to the present and all he has done over the past three years is guided his team to back-to-back undefeated regular seasons, won two straight Duneland crowns and now has led Crown Point to its first-ever state finals appearance in football.

After the string of wins the Bulldogs have put together on their state finals journey, Buzea has crowd surfed after every single one. Win or lose, Buzea still has a lot of crowd surfing left to do.