Stovall: Male QB Nic Schutte reminds us that winning is bigger than scoreboards, trophies

Nic Schutte took the runner up trophy given to him after Male's 31-21 defeat to St. Xavier in Saturday's Class 6A state championship game and slowly hobbled back to the Male sideline, shoulders slumped, pace deliberate. The scene was so quiet and subdued, you could easily miss it if you weren't intentionally locked in.

After holding it for a minute, Schutte put the trophy down on the Kroger Field turf, bent over and rested his hands on his knees. His back and shoulders gave a big heave, and you could see the exhale release from his body even from the press box. Pretty soon, a couple of coaches rallied around him and gave him an embrace. One patted him on the shoulder pads. Another patted him on the head.

As the Male Bulldogs took the walk back to their locker room while St. Xavier raucously celebrated just behind them at the 50-yard line, Male's four-year starter at quarterback took a few steps with the trophy and then turned around to make his final handoff in a Male football uniform when he gave that piece of runner-up hardware to his coach.

Here's how they did it: How St. Xavier rallied back to stun Male in the Class 6A State Championship

Navigating the pain

I'm sure he wasn't being ungrateful. It just wasn’t the trophy he wanted. It wasn’t the ending he wanted.

To say that Schutte had a hell of a week would be an understatement. He lost his father, Brian Schutte, unexpectedly, just days before Saturday night's championship game, which means he found himself trying to manage the heaviness of losing a parent — not to mention his greatest supporter — along with the weight of preparing for his last football game, win, lose or draw, against a more-than-formidable opponent.

And by the time he got to the end of Saturday night’s loss to a revenge-minded St. Xavier squad, you could tell by the way he limped around the field during the game’s last moments, and shortly after the final buzzer, that his body was hurting right along with his heart.

Yes, St. X’s defense gave the senior Western Kentucky baseball commit hell — particularly in the second half.

Early in the game, Schutte made two big plays — one was a fumble on Male’s third play from scrimmage. The second was an 88-yard touchdown pass to Wisconsin pledge Vincent Anthony that gave Male an early 6-0 lead. The latter play was the kind that symbolized what Male does to its opponents more often than not — jump on them fast and early with no intentions of letting up.

Response from the win: Social media reacts to St. Xavier's upset win over Male in Class 6A state football championship

At that point, conventional thought said it was the touchdown pass and not the fumble — one of three Male turnovers Saturday night — that would serve as accurate foreshadowing for the kind of night Schutte and his Bulldogs were about to have. The opposite turned out to be true.

Saturday was supposed to be a night of unfinished business. Male’s been to the last four state championship games. It’s only won one — that was in 2018, Schutte’s freshman year. Schutte wanted to end his career with bookend state crowns. He wanted to exorcise the demons of the last two near misses. He wanted to trade in those runner-up trophies for the big, shiny first place one.

He wanted to win one more game — the biggest game — as the ultimate tribute to the spirit of his dad.

Picture of persistence

Nobody would’ve blamed Nic if he decided to take a few days off. And probably, given all that happened, nobody would’ve blamed him if he decided to end his senior season one game early. Nobody except the spirit of his father, that is. And Nic knew as much.

In fact, the only day of practice he missed last week was Tuesday — the day his father died. Missing Saturday’s state championship game against St. Xavier was completely out of the question.

“I know there’s no other place he’d want me to be than out here competing and trying to win the state championship,” Schutte said earlier in the week. “He’d be more disappointed in me if I sat out, especially in this game.

“He’s really the one who got me started playing football,” Nic Schutte said. “He coached me all the way up through middle school, and I don’t know where I’d be this day without him being right there by my side every step up of the way. He’s been my No. 1 supporter, for sure.”

And for a while, it looked as if Dad was providing support in the form of divine intervention. To be sure, Schutte had a tough, tough night. He finished 11-of-19 passing with 250 yards and two scores. But he also tossed two interceptions, and a third one that was dropped. He coughed up the ball twice, losing one, and he was sacked twice and pressured into running for his life countless other times.

From Male's perspective: For No. 1 Male, third straight loss in championship game was a shocking end

Despite that, Male kept hanging around. Schutte and his teammates kept trying to make plays. You know how they say, "It's better to be lucky than good?" Well, at times, that looked like it was going to be Nic Schutte's testimony.

There was the third down pass to the sideline that got tipped by St. X’s Luke Saner and seemed to hang in the air, up for grabs forever, before some how landing in Dominic Vrbancic's sure hands for a first down.

And speaking of Vrbancic, how did a usually stingy St. X defense allow the kind of busted coverage that allowed Vrbancic to leak out into the flat, wide open for a 19-yard score?

And how did Nic Schutte manage to get that ball back when he fumbled it with his offense’s back against its own end zone? Lose the fumble there inside the 10-yard line, and there’s no reason to think the Tigers wouldn’t have capitalized, at least with a field goal, to end the half. Instead, Male went into halftime nursing a 13-7 lead.

Vrbancic, Anthony and the rest of the Male football team tried their best to make good on Vrbancic's promise that they'd do all they could to make sure Schutte knew he wasn't in this last gridiron battle alone.

“We’re all going to be there for him,” Vrbancic said last week. “We’re all going to do whatever we can to help him feel better and feel ready for this game and help him get through the week.”

The effort was there. You could see it. The issue Saturday night wasn't at all a deficit of effort or talent. Even in victory, St. Xavier head coach Kevin Wallace acknowledged that, "nobody's going to stop (Male)."

Saturday's loss for Male, and subsequent triumph for St. X, was about the Tigers' tenacity, their ability to adjust to Male's speed and athleticism on both sides of the ball and probably a pinch of just good, old-fashioned revenge from the 28-21 loss the Tigers suffered to the Bulldogs back on Sept. 3.

More coverage from Saturday: KHSAA state championship football: Live updates, scores and highlights of Male vs. St. Xavier

Brian Schutte's impact was felt

When Male coach Chris Wolfe talked about the loss, he started out sticking to the X's and O's and execution, being careful not to make it about more than St. X outplaying his bunch on the night that mattered most.

“We needed to be better with not turning the ball over,” said Wolfe, whose team committed three turnovers. “We had been all year, and in this game we had some unfortunate errors in that area...their quarterback (Jack Sivori) did a really good job of finding some matchups and hurting us with his arm.”

But try as he might, the impact from Brian Schutte's death could not be ignored.

“It was tough,” Wolfe said. “Brian was part of our operations staff. I told the guys that this was the 54th game with these (seniors) and I had given Brian the iPad before the game 53 times, including last week.”

Although we aren't supposed to root in the press box, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping to see Schutte walk off that field a champion in memory of his father after game number 54. But in many ways, Schutte just showing up and competing as he did was a major win in the game of life — a game that, when you play it right, pays dividends much bigger than a championship trophy.

WATCH: Male football falls short in the Class 6A final after an emotional week

Watching Schutte play against all that was stacked against him — including St. X's hungry, opportunistic defense — was a reminder to me of just how indomitable the spirit of a young, determined athlete can be. And, despite the loss, Nic's gutsiness was the greatest tribute he could've given his father.

Some of the gutsiest moments I've ever witnessed in high school sports have come when athletes respond to personal crisis.

I think about how Butler softball came together after the unfortunate death of Madelynn Trout. The camaraderie built during that moment helped spur Butler on to win a state crown.

I think about how Ballard's Sydney Martin went yard for the first time in her career literally just hours after laying her mother to rest following her bout with cervical cancer.

And there are so many more examples I could give from 15 years of covering high school sports.

Now I can add Nic Schutte's performance to the mix. It wasn't pretty. It didn't end in scoreboard victory. But I believe it helped the young Male athlete know that he's probably a lot stronger than he thought he was. And one day, that revelation will pay off for the young man in a way that can't be quantified by trophies.

Two images from this game keep me hopeful about the spirit of humanity. One was watching St. X players stop in mid celebration to come over and console and comfort Male's beleaguered quarterback.

The other came from Male High School athletics' Twitter account. The tweet featured a big photo of a bulldog looking straight on at the camera, and the message above it was simple, classy and strong.

"Kudos to KHSAA. Congrats to St X…tough night for the DAWGS. Final thought of the night…Nic Schutte is a BEAST. Our kids are WINNERS."

Because winning is more than just scoreboards and trophies. And in my first time watching a Kentucky high school football game live, I'll never forget the way Nic Schutte and St. Xavier showed me that.

Gabriel Stovall is the assistant sports editor at the Louisville Courier Journal. Follow him on Twitter: @GabrielCStovall or contact him at gstovall@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Male QB shows winning is bigger than scoreboards, trophies