http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20131...RONTPAGE|p

The worst this season was the St. Xavier game. Simeon Lane lined up across from Jack James and saw blood on every down. By the second half, Jack James was pulpy.

His neck hurt. His sternum felt like Andre Smith had used it for soft landings, from six stories up. His arms were raked and bleeding. Playing an entire football game has been compared to being in a car wreck. This was sort of like that, only substitute “half-ton pickup’’ for “car’’.

“He’s landing on me the whole game,’’ James says of Lane. “I’m getting scraped off the bottom of the pile.’’

At this point, it should be stated that Jack James is Elder’s center and Simeon Lane is St. X’s nose tackle. James is a senior who is planning on retiring from football after this year, and attending a college where he can major in English. Lane is a junior, who already has a scholarship offer from Illinois and will visit UC next month, when the Bearcats host Louisville.

Oh, and Lane is 6-foot-1 and weighs 300 pounds. James is 5-10, 180.

“My mom gets a little worried sometimes,’’ James says.

Maybe we see this in games featuring Goliaths and Davids. This isn’t that. This is Goliath squared. Every week this season, James has been in front of opposing people who outweigh him by 70 or 100 pounds. On Saturday in a second-round OHSAA playoff game, it will happen again.

James will block Moeller’s 6-2, 250-pound Chalmer Frueauf. Or Elijah Taylor, who checks in at 6-3, 275. If this sounds unfair, well, it is and it isn’t. James wouldn’t be Elder’s center if he couldn’t play, against anyone. He has no illusions or complaints, only Motrin.

“I don’t look at the scale,’’ says James. That’s because he started summer camp at 200, thanks to protein shakes and lots of weight lifting. He ended two-a-days in the mid-180s, which is about where he has been all year. A little guy, pushing pianos.

This is Elder, isn’t it?

The Little School That Could. A 180-pound center, holding his own against Gulliver. There is no better definition of how Elder Nation likes to think of itself. “Kids that overcome,’’ says Jack’s dad, Jeff. “That’s what makes Elder football.’’

Jack describes his strategy as “knowing how to get run over slowly.’’ His mission is to get in the way of his man long enough to allow the runner behind him a little seam. “I’ve kind of accepted I’m not going to be knocking guys five yards off the ball,’’ he says.

James cut-blocks his man, and gets help from Elder’s guards, Ben Klenk and Brad Murphy. He’s quicker than most of the large people he blocks. He has played on the line, either offense or defense, all 12 years he has played football, so he knows what he knows. “Get low, get position, use leverage,’’ he says.

That describes the technical how-to’s. What about the sand it takes to deliver play after play, while getting pounded?

That takes an immeasurable.

For more than half a century, a James boy has played football at Elder. This, too, meets the Elder requirements. Almost all of them have been linemen, most of them undersized. Jack’s father Jeff, Class of ’86, played two years. Jeff’s brother Craig is the Panthers defensive coordinator now. He was a Panthers nose guard. Jeff’s uncles Jim and Dan played at Elder. Dan went on to Ohio State and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Dan’s sons, David and Tim, played for Elder, then at Tennessee and OSU.

And so on. Jack is the smallest of them all.

Jack growth-spurted before most of his classmates. As a basketball-playing 6th grader, he and a friend were known as the Twin Towers. Then he stopped growing. His peers did not. Jack kept playing on the line. “He was a James,’’ his father explains. “That’s what Jameses do.’’

Every week, Jack hears the same line:

“Your guy’s 280.’’

Every week Jack offers the same response:

“OK. What’s the game plan?’’

Jack James says Frueauf and Taylor are the two best linemen he has faced all year. In a Moeller win over Elder earlier in the year, Jack admits he didn’t play well. That doesn’t faze him now. Why would it?

Getting run over slowly is an apt definition for almost any offensive lineman. The difference is, not any O-lineman checks in at 180.

That guy needs a little something extra, and we don’t mean weight: A bloodline, maybe. Courage. Character. A healthy shot of Elder.

Jack allows that Simeon Lane did get a little frustrated at being cut just about every play. “He kept his composure, thankfully,’’ Jack says. Jack doesn’t want to think about an angry Lane, bull-rushing him to the bottom of every pile. “He said a few expletives. That was about it. I really appreciated it.’