Linton Miner Football

07/15/2026

I pulled together some info from my 26 years doing Miner Football.... Which just happens to be the same as Linton Football from 2000 onward. Now I hate not including the late 90's success because that only makes it look better... but I wanted to reflect on my years in the booth... Of all these games... I only missed 2 of a total 324 football broadcasts!! 91 post season games. and 5 Miners games at Lucas Oil over the years.

check this out:

From 2000 onward--- Linton has a collective record of 264-60. than a win percent of 81.98

2000-2009:
Total: 93-24 79.5% Regular: 75-14 84.2% Post: 18-10 64.3%
4 Sectional Titles, 2 Regional Titles

2010-2019:
Total: 109-21 83.9% Regular: 78-12 86.7% Post: 31-9 77.5%
6 Sectional Titles, 5 Regional Titles, 2 Semi-State Titles, 1 State Title

2020-2025:
Total: 62-15 80.5% Regular: 45-9 83.3% Post:17-6 73.9%
3 Sectional Titles, 2 Regional Titles, 1 Semi-State Title

2000-2025:
Total: 264-60 81.5% Regular: 198-35 85.0% Post: 66-25 72.5%
13 Sectional Titles, 9 Regional Titles, 3 Semi-State Titles, 1 State Title.

Most of those seasons LInton was in 1A but starting in 2017 we we bumped up to 2A. We had been 2A before from 1989 thru 1997.

from 2000-now as 1A Linton was 181-33 84.6% over-all. and 46-16 74.2% in post season. 2A 83-27 75.5% over all and 20-9 69.0% in post-season. It has to be said that the current and most recent Miners regular seasons in 2A have seen a big upgrade in opponent level yet the Miners have still won 80% if those games and competed for sectional titles in 5 of the last 6 years, winning 3 of them and once more reaching Lucas Oil to play for a 2A title.

Course I'd be remiss not to mention those great Rick Wellington Years...

1995-1999
Total: 42-16 72.4% Regular: 32-11 74.4% Post: 10-5 66.7%
2 Sectional Titles, 2 Regional Titles

This means from 1995 through 2025 ..30 years of Miner Football...

Total 306-74 80.1%; Regular 230-46 83.3%; Post 76-30 71.7%
15 sectional Titles, 11 Regional Titles, 3 Semi State Titles, 1 State Titles

Add the 80s where Linton had 2 Sectionals ('84 and '86) and a Regional Title in 1986 to those totals... 17 Sect, 13 Reg.

then you have the Mythical Days... Ii see a a 1919 Bicknell team mentioned... a 1926 8-0 Jasonville team mentioned. In 1951 the infamous unbeaten 10-0 Linton team.. and another article talks about mythical championshipd in 1907-1908 and 1909? Gotta mention the 1945 team that won the SIAC!

07/10/2026

Well... Now that we are past July 4... there's only one thing to look forward to now....and that's LINTON MINER FOOTBALL!!!!

This will be my 27th year covering Miner Football and it is something I am very proud of. This will be the start of my 4th year with Kevin and Heather Rader and Rader Media Sports LLC. bringing you high quality and professional live streamed productions from both the Roy and the road travel games (unless we are blocked from doing so).

I started this unplanned journey in 2000 as a last minute favor to friends at the Original Company in Vincennes who owned WQTY in Linton. They had a fresh from college kid doing the games who was a little overwhelmed. I had taken Radio/TV classes at VU years earlier and some of my classmates were at TOC. My love for Miner Football not only as an alumni, but as a player...as well as my Dad being AD for many years... well I wasn't about to say no.

In 2001 it was my baby. I had to tell my band (Atomic Farmboyz) that I could not do gigs on Fridays for the fall, and I had to shelve my Acoustic shows (Big D Unplugged) as well. But it was worth it to be back involved in Miner Football. To make it even more awesome, I had my Dad along as color. And colorful he was....but that last one year sadly as my Dad passed away unexpected in July of 2002. We had planned so many things to highlight the players, the coaches, the fans, the program. I still have the hand written notes, and many interviews Dad took such pride is conducting.

I am so happy that I decided (last minute) to keep doing the broadcasts in 2002. I can still see the support from parents and fans to this day in my mind when I showed up at Milan to start the season. I did that game by myself, but I needed a partner. That became JP Meurer in week 1 against.. well who else... Sullivan. We had a great run I think up to 2010. Keith Doades and Media Five then took over production, and I was fortunate to be retained to be the "Voice of Miner Football". Somewhere along the line (either 2014 or 2015) Keith contracted Darren Clayton to be the play by play man. Many of you know Darren and his Dad spent years on the sideline as Stat guys (his Dad still does!). The two of us were in the booth when Linton won their only State Championship in Football in 2016.

2020 was Darren's last year in the booth as he became Linton's Athletic Director, and I didn't meet my new radio partner until the night of the opening game of 2021 vs. Southridge! Kevin Rader had retired from WTHR in Indianapolis with a distinguished career decorated with honors from peers and news organizations. I had no idea! We didn't have Indy stations in Linton when I was growing up, but I did know he started off his career with radio broadcasts of his high school, and Jr College teams and this opportunity presented itself and he thought it would be fun. I felt like we jelled right away in the booth, and Linton won 18 straight regular season games in 2 years going 23-2 in that period.

Everything changed after the 2022 season as Kevin and Heather formed Rader Media Sports, and presented a plan to the Linton School Board, and thus became the only "official" live streaming for all things Linton High School. I made the choice to jump ship from Media Five to Rader Media Sports. It wasn't a hard decision in that I knew Kevin and Heather would be dedicated to making it the absolute best production and representation of Linton Sports possible, and I wanted to be involved in that.

I also looked forward to being part of the broadcast team for Miner Basketball, both boys and girls, Baseball, Softball and even Volleyball. I had done several Miner Basketball games, including the State Final game in March of 2023 for Media Five. I felt then, as I do now, that Streaming Video was going to be the norm going forward, and we had enjoyed a lot of viewership when Jared Albright had done live video streaming with our WQTY radio audio for several years well before GCSN. I knew Linton folks loved their Miners, and I knew there would be relatives, graduates, football alumni and friends from all over the globe who tuned into live Miner streams in the past. I knew Heather had great ideas on how to include not only sports but every aspect of the community and non-athletic events as well.

The only hesitation I had was that I felt I had built up solid following and reputation for my efforts. I took a ton of pride in presenting an abundance of information on BOTH teams. In fact, I enjoyed spotlighting the opponent as much as our own Miners, and put the bulk of my research pregame into that assembly of info. I got to know the opposing coaches year after year and felt confident that if you listened to the broadcast...you got the whole story. The history, the stats, the players. I got emails and messages every week from opponent listeners who thanked me for that work. Now, there isn't any hiding that I am a Linton Miner fan. I'm always going to be a Linton Miner. But a good play is a good play regardless of who makes it. I will always bleed Miner Red, but feel I represented both teams well beyond the normal broadcast. The good thing is that RMS has the same mindset and goes that extra mile as well.

As we begin year 4 in Rader Media Sports I am proud to be part of something that sharpens the focus on so many aspects of high school life at Linton-Stockton. The Live Streaming world is getting to be highly competitive, as well as restrictive in that schools won’t allow outside streaming. Ridiculous fees are required in some cases, or each school has their own ”official” Streaming that won’t allow RMS to Stream. This is becoming more the norm.

Credit Heather Rader for being able to weather those storms among the many she deals with in just getting all ducks in a row. Folks have no idea of the things that come up, and the many walls she has to break down being a female who co-owns a company and really is the producer of the project. She overcomes so many things that literally pop up as we are in mid show. She is often on the phone, or texting HUDL or IHSAA, or talking to a school’s tech rep as Kevin and I are bantering about Jesse Voigtschild’s incredible runs! Add to all of that with the Graphics she adds, and the short video’s that highlight players as well as students, and it looks like a network broadcast!

Kevin Rader is the heartbeat to the whole thing with an innate ability to set the scene with eloquence. From the first game in 2021 I felt we had a good ‘vibe’ and worked together well. A man of many talents, but certainly a raconteur of very high standards…without seemingly trying! I just try to do what I do, and fill in the spaces with information, enthusiasm, and a genuine love for the game.

I never thought I’d be still doing this when I agreed to help way back in 2000. I am so glad I did. I have had so many ‘projects’ I want to finish before I leave this Earth, but never enough time… or sometimes the money or means.. to accomplish them. I have whole filing cabinets full of game information in paper form. I have file upon file on hard drives of all my game info. I am trying to compile a master collections of all things Linton Miner Football. So much history I want to preserve somehow.

In the coming days I plan to take looks back at some of the great games over that span…post some of the memories. Get the football blood pumping through the veins until we see the “L” roll back out on the Roy for another year.

Go Miners!
Daniel Phillips…. Big D…. Miner Pride.

06/29/2026

It's another one of those times where we lose a tremendous group of senior athletes that brought so much success across several sports at Linton High School. In my 26 years in the broadcast/streaming booth I'd put these kids up against any of the great Miner classes over the years as one of the best. They've gone up against possibly the hardest schedule we've seen at Linton, and have 2 of the greatest wins I've witnessed (Brownstown and Lutheran). They got Linton back to Lucas Oil, the first time in 2A, and have kept Miner Football at the high level of respect state wide. It will do doubt be a task to replace these seniors, but hopefully their example of team and what it takes will have been absorbed down the classes. So great to see Jimmie and Corey out there in red and blue for another go around. and I know it was hard for Paul to not suit up and get after it. Hopefully all three of these guys will make names for themselves at each institution they will be playing football at.

Paul Oliver will undoubtedly go down as one of the best Miner Football players to ever run onto the Roy. It would be interesting to see if LInton has ever had a guy who career wise ran for over 2500 yards, caught passes for over 1600 yards and threw for over 2000 yards. Hunter Gennicks ran for over 5100 yards and threw for nearly 4200 yards but never caught a pass. Tyler Meurer ran for over 3700 yards, passed for 2700+ and did have 264 receiving yards. Paul had 1164 rush yards as a soph. He played most his junior year at SE with great success. Senior year he moved back to QB in week 4, and ended up with 977 rush yards. Safe to say he'd of reach 1,000+ with those 3 games to start the season. I think it's easy to say had he played qb all of his junior year he'd of had another 1000 yard year....so he really could have been a 3-year 1,000+ rusher... BUT...the team came first and Paul excelled anywhere he was called to be. A true team player if there ever was one.

Corey Andrews broke the record for most tackles in a season with 195 and had 127 more his senior season. Add another 85 from his Soph season, his 1st at Linton, and you have an impressive 407 total as a Miner. Include 46.5 TFL...and this kid was a menace to every opponent. He had so many memorable hits its impossible to list just one... but boy..the wallup he put on the Sullivan kid his junior year was a doozie.

Jimmie comes from a rich Miner Football family tradition. I knew with the name "Wright" we were gonna have a hitter in the field. and a lot of heart. It was crushing when he played at TH North his junior year. And I knew it was crushing for him to come visit the Roy on the sidelines while his brothers were rolling in success all the way to Lucas. Jimmie suffered a head injury that year that I'll never forget seeing the Miner Team kneel in prayer post game for their teammate an hour away. It was so awesome to see him back his senior year in Miner Red. He was another Team player guy. He played several positions on both sides of the ball.

I could go on and on of course, and just keep repeating myself.... but I did the same thing in '16 when names like Meurer, WIlliams, Mason, Gentry, Passen, Fonseca, Smith, Pope, Walker, Rayburn and Sparks graduated..and '12 with Bradbury, AK, Kaiser, K***n, Flath, Lannan, Bohnert, and Deischerr with the Kicking Game Solid... '08 with Baysinger, Coleman, Tharp, Cunningham, Tibbett, Gentry, Tosti, Meurer, Barker, Wainman, Fish and more... and '04 with Willard, Suthard, Hardisty, Hunt, Laughlin, Thomas, Murray, jOnes, Phegley, Goggins... and 2015 was one of the all-time best teams with a class that graduated names like Phegley, Trent, Jackson, Clothier, Eberhard, Pigg, Phipps, and of course Dylan Morris. Point is... we've been here before. EVery graduating class we've had contained terrific Miner players and we've had to replace all of them year after year... Time for the young kids to step up and make their own names.

06/24/2026

I finally scrounged up the rosters for each division for this Saturday's WVFCA all start game. Miners repped well with Corey Andrews and Jimmie Wright

WVFCA Black Division –

Gabe Dreher (Attica),
Landon Duncan (Cloverdale),
Atrevion Henderson (Cloverdale),
Owen McGinnin (Cumberland),
Logan Gerhardt (Cumberland),
Drake East (Cumberland),
Carter Eastham (Cumberland),
Elijah Eads (Dugger),
Byson Jones (Eastern Greene),
Jace Brown (Eastern Greene),
Trey Dobson (Greenwood Christian),
Isaiah Johnson (Greenwood Christian),
Cayden Blodgett (Greencastle),
Trevin Long (Greencastle),
Ashton Dayhoff (Greencastle),
Alex Grove (Greencastle),
Corey Andrews (Linton),
Jimmie Wright (Linton),
Oliver Stephens (Linton),
Collin Mann (Monrovia),
Noah Breeden (Monrovia),
Beckett Braeger (North Putnam),
Wes Murphy (North Putnam),
Casyn Bishop (North Daviess),
Clayton Colvin (North Daviess),
Zeb Owens (North Daviess),
Keaton Graber (North Daviess),
Andre Buchhaas (North Vermillion),
Shawn Martin (North Vermillion),
Carter Salters (Owen Valley),
Hayden Hammond (Owen Valley),
Carter Crippes (Paris), Logan Curl (Paris),
Christian Peace (South Vermillion),
Colton Rippy (South Vermillion),
Khalil Jefferson (South Putnam),
Preston Pelfrey (South Putnam),
Hunter Weddle (South Putnam),
Wyatt Speth (South Putnam),
Hayden Tincher (South Putnam),
Ryan Hescher (Terre Haute South),
TyIssac Corbin (Terre Haute South),
Sam Weihert (Terre Haute South),
Meredith Toomey (Terre Haute South),
Josial Bennett (Terre Haute South),
Harry Wetzel (Terre Haute South),
Gavin Baesler (Terre Haute South),
Chase Maxwell (Terre Haute South)

WVFCA Gold Division –

Brady Trebley (Cascade),
Toby Savini (Cascade),
Dayton Mink (Cascade),
Marcus Hobson (Cascade),
JT Roshong (Cascade),
Braxton Lewis (Cascade),
Bentley McClellan (Cascade),
Domonic Appleby (Cascade), N
iah Honselman (Casey-Westfield),
Brody Smith (Casey-Westfield),
Jack Julius (Casey-Westfield),
Noah Clement (Casey-Westfield),
Kellen Sullivan (Casey-Westfield),
Andrew Kuritz (Covington),
Carter Hayden (Edgewood),
Stephen Killion (Lawrenceville),
Zach Coffey (Lawrenceville),
Lucca Giannavola (Marshall),
Bryer Jansen (Marshall),
Gavyn Boden (Marshall),
Kaiden Sanders (Marshall),
Caden Bays (North Central),
Hunter Taylor (North Central),
Rylen Cox (North Central),
Kale Allen (Northview),
Avery Perry (Northview),
Devyn Orman (Northview),
Tristan Mackey (Northview),
Slade Fell (Northview),
Zane Scales (Northview),
Holden Jacobsen (Red Hill),
Avery Arbuckle (Red Hill),
Gavyn Cothern (Richland County),
Nolen Sears (Richland County),
Jace Paddock (Richland County),
Ian Pianfetti (Richland County),
Owen Kocher (Richland County),
Casey Thomann (Richland County),
Kolton Lanzone (Riverton Parke),
Sean Vester (Riverton Parke),
Jake Roderick (Riverton Parke),
Collett Sanders (Riverton Parke),
AJ Knoblett (Robinson),
Reese Johnson (Robinson),
Traishaun Brown (Terre Haute North),
Jackson McDonald (Terre Haute North),
Aiden Loveall-Levandoski (Tri-County),
Andrew West (Tri-County),
Ryan Cobb (West Vigo)

04/13/2026

I posted this on the Gridiron Digest... where for many years Rex..as "King Tut" and myself..as "Miner Pride" did battle for Linton respect across the state in Football... climbing the ladder yearly until winning the State Championship in 2016. Rex was well known and well respected on the Digest for his knowledge and history and love of small town sports.
here is the post:

It is with great sadness I let all know who remember Rex Tuttle from his many posts and information particularly on the Linton Football Program. King Tut was his handle, and he was born in 1931, and had an incredible memory that provided many stories from years well gone from most minds today. Rex graduated Linton in 1949, and while he didn't play football, he was in band, and the band travelled to most games. He could recollect so many iconic Linton games, good and bad, with such clear vision. I'd interviewed him a few times in my Linton radio broadcasts, in particular the Sullivan rivalry because he was really the source in so many ways. With Rader Media, Kevin had done an video stream session with him that was timeless. I begged him to get a cassette recorder and just record his memories for posterity and history sake. So many others said the same thing. I saved a lot of things he posted from his time here just because there would never be another source for such things.

He had to stop going to games in person being well in his 90's but he always checked in online in our broadcasts. He always posted about Linton sports on his page, honestly right up to Linton's loss in basketball semi-state in Late March of this year. He even posted videos of himself playing his beloved trumpet, and could still do it well. I hadn't seen Rex in person in a while, but still regarded him as a friend and of course a die-hard loyal Linton Miner fan of every sport. We lost such a great mind, and a great person. I will miss his insight and comments during the seasons...particularly football.

03/31/2026