OTIS — Kevin Wissman led the Otis-Bison High School football team with 66 tackles on defense.
Offensively, Wissman was the senior quarterback that couldn’t be stopped. He rushed for 1,097 yards and 27 scores while throwing for another 457 yards and nine touchdowns.
That was 2009.
This year, Kevin is gone, but the Wissman name is still being proudly represented.
Last Friday night, the Cougars needed a running back to fill in for the team’s leading rusher, Michael Hlavaty, who sprained his ankle and was limited to playing on the defensive side as a linebacker and on special teams as the team’s kicker. Sophomore Dylan Wissman stepped in as the Cougars’ tailback as if he’d started all season.
“It’s huge,” Cougars head coach Travis Starr said of having a running back on the bench ready to play. “When you lose a top rusher like Mike Hlavaty, it’s big just to have Patrick Piper able to move to fullback, but having Dylan able to go in as a tailback and produce, that’s great.”
Wissman, a 5-foot-10, 160-pound shifty tailback, ran all over the field for the Cougars, eating up yardage and more importantly, time for Otis-Bison, which was nursing a two-score lead late in the second half.
Starr said that there might be some pressure playing with your older brother the way Dylan played with Kevin when Piper couldn’t start last season.
“There is always a little pressure playing with your older brother,” Starr said. “But you can’t compare (Kevin and Dylan). They both have completely different ways of getting things done.
“I also think (Dylan) puts pressure on himself. But he puts all that pressure aside, and he is one heck of a ball player.”
The Cougars have three running backs over 500 rushing yards in their rush-happy offense: Patrick Piper (671), Hlavaty (717) and Wissman (618).
Otis-Bison dialed up the run 63 times in Friday’s Eight-Man Division-II sub-state win against Ashland. Starr credits the offensive line for the team’s rushing success.
“We’ve had talented backs before,” Starr said, “but with bad offensive lines, those backs can’t go anywhere. Our backs in general, they know who opens the holes for them.
“The offensive lineman we have now, they have just been great.”
Wissman finished the game with 87 rushing yards and a 1-yard touchdown, but after the game, he complimented his offensive line.
“It wasn’t all me,” Wissman said. “We had our line do it. It was definitely a team effort.”
More importantly, when the team needed defensive stops in the fourth quarter, Wissman obliged from his safety position — twice.
At the 7:56 mark of the fourth quarter, the Blue Jays were driving down the field, using their passing game, which generated 105 of their 159 yards of total offense and one TD.
The drive was stopped short by Wissman, who picked off Blue Jays quarterback Austin Stebens’ overthrown pass and returned the interception to the Cougars 30-yard line.
Wissman put on a repeat performance six minutes later, intercepting a second deep pass down the center of the field. The pick gave the Cougars the ball on their own 21.
Stebens went into the game with only one interception all season. He left with three.
“That’s pretty cool,” Wissman said of tripling Stebens’ season interception total. “(The defense) played pretty good. We had some adversity. We played a good team, but we went out there and showed them.”
Keller took a knee three times to run down the clock and clinch Otis-Bison a trip to the state championship for the first time since 1987.