INDIANAPOLIS — Poised, with a fearless air of confidence, Fountain Central’s 25-year old, rookie head football coach guided the Mustangs to what ended in a memorable 1983 season, complete with the program’s first-ever state championship.

At the time, Rick Malone had no idea the magnitude of what he had accomplished, and has contended frequently throughout the 2009 campaign that he was never fully able to appreciate the feat in the midst of all the hype.

“I was young and cocky, and felt like I could take on the world,” Malone said. “We always told those kids that if they stuck together and played to their potential, they would have the opportunity to play in the state finals.”

Three years removed from college, and with only three years of coaching experience (as a freshman coach) under his belt, Malone instilled a level of confidence in his players that they were virtually unstoppable.

And the end result was a nearly flawless 13-1 season.

The only blemish on the Mustangs’ record that season was a 13-7 overtime loss to North Montgomery in a game that, as Malone recalls, Fountain Central turned the ball over five times — two coming in the red zone.

“If ever a loss was a good thing for our team, that really brought our focus back,” Malone said. “We had not been challenged and it really brought their focus back that, if we don’t go out and do what we are supposed to do, we’re going to get beat.”

Twenty-six years later, Malone has had the opportunity to reminisce about the special 1983 season with two of the team’s former players, Brian Moore and John Carver, who are now working on his staff as assistant coaches.

Moore — who Malone recalls being an “intense, very focused” and “tenacious” tight end and safety — is currently the defensive coordinator for the Mustangs (14-0) who are preparing for Friday’s Class A state championship game against Lafayette Central Catholic (14-0) at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Carver, however, never got the opportunity to take the field his senior year after suffering injuries in an accident just prior to the beginning of the season that left him confined to a wheel chair.

Moore said that though he never got to take a snap with the team, Carver played a rather large role in the team’s success.

“John was a great inspiration for us,” Moore said. “That was an unfortunate situation, but we played hard. When he came to games…”

Moore paused, emotional, to reflect on the impact of Carver’s presence at the games he was able to attend.

“It wasn’t fun,” Carver said. “Coach brought the films to me every Saturday or Sunday to my hospital room and we watched the films. It made me feel more like a part of the team. If I came home on the weekend, all of the guys would come over to the house. It wasn’t great, but I still felt like part of the team.

“I was talking to coach Moore about (being a part of the Mustangs’ 2009 state championship run). I never got to go through the practices or anything like that. I know what it feels like, now, to go through the steps. And it’s fun.”

As a member of Fountain Central’s only state football title team to date, and head coach of the 2004 state champion Seeger Patriots, Moore said some of the greatest rewards of being a part of a state championship team are the lasting memories that come from the game, the season, and the journey.

“The one thing I have always told the kids is, when you win a state championship, essentially your season never ends,” Moore said. “You don’t end on a loss. It’s been special. That year that we won the state championship, as a kid, it was something that we never forgot. You’ll talk about it for years to come and we still talk about it.

“You spend all of that time working hard and preparing with your best friends and then you go out and you accomplish something. Ninety-nine percent of teams end with a loss. When you’re a senior and you win your last game, it just helps the finality of never getting to play high school football again. But the rest of your life, you’re a state champ.”

Now that Malone, Moore and Carver have all experienced winning a state championship, their primary goal is preparing this year’s squad to do the same.

“When you’re older, you put it in perspective, but you also realize how hard it is to get here,” Moore said. “As a coach, you realize how hard it is and how many breaks you have to have and how much hard work goes into getting this opportunity. As a kid, you don’t appreciate it as much as when you are older.

“When they get a chance to walk into that unbelievable facility that we are going to walk into, and they see it (Wednesday) when we go to practice, it’s going to hit them that, ‘Man, this is good.’”

And though it is a different venue, the coaches will likely be reminded of the memories they made in their 1983 state championship season.