Ernie Kovatch: A Hoosier Hero Who Beat the Irish

South Bend Riley graduate was the captain for Indiana's football team the last time they beat Notre Dame

BY BILL MOOR // POSTED DECEMBER 12, 2024

Scott Kovatch expects to be working his job as a monitor at the Notre Dame Basilica Friday right up until kickoff for the much ballyhooed playoff game between the host Irish and Indiana University.

He will not kneel in this holy venue and say a prayer for his favorite team. That would be sacrilegious. He is an IU fan, after all.

Scott has good reason for that. He and four of his siblings are Indiana grads and their father, Ernie Kovatch, was the captain of the last Hoosier team to beat Notre Dame. That was in 1950 — 74 years ago — when Ernie, a 1945 South Bend Riley graduate, was a lanky tackle and team leader in that 20-7 victory.

“My dad (who died in 2008 at age 81) always led his life with humility but he enjoyed remembering that game,” said Scott, the youngest of Ernie and Mary Lou Kovatch's six kids. “It was one of the reasons we became an IU family.”

Ironically, Ernie had wanted to go to Notre Dame after earning all-state honors in both football and basketball at Riley. The Irish were his boyhood heroes.

And one of those heroes was his older brother John who played from 1939 to 1941 as an end for Irish coaches Elmer Layden and Frank Leahy. Ernie had even enrolled at Notre Dame after graduating from Riley but his brother George was serving during World War II and Ernie decided to join, too. The war ended soon after and he served stateside.

According to Scott, his dad planned to return to Notre Dame after he was discharged but the coaching staff said he wouldn't be able to go home on the weekends and so he chose to go to Indiana.

Good for Ernie. Bad for Notre Dame. At least during that 1950 season.

“That was quite a victory for IU,” Ernie told me in a 1978 interview. “I read (recently) where one of the Michigan players said if you can't go to Notre Dame, it's great to beat them. I think that was the feeling down in Bloomington.”

Ernie went on to become the Balfour Award recipient for that season, signifying the team's outstanding scholar-athlete. (His brother-in-law, Howard “Gooner” Brown, had been the MVP of the Hoosiers' 1945 undefeated team.)

“Dad had wanted to play both basketball and football but he broke his leg against Purdue his freshman season in football and the basketball coach (Branch McCracken) said he had to pick one or the other,” Scott said. “So he picked football.”

He loved all sports — both as a player and a spectator — and took the lessons he learned on the playing fields with him into the Korean War as an Army second lieutenant. During one battle, he suffered a bullet wound to his back and was taken prisoner after his forward observer outpost was overrun by Communist forces.

“That's when your whole life flashes by you,” he recalled in 1978. “Of course, you think of your family first but I certainly relived many of the athletic events I participated in.”

Ernie was a POW for 11 months and received the Purple Heart for his wounds. He was mistreated and became malnourished but never gave the enemy any information during his many interrogations.

He thought his sports background helped get him through this ordeal. “Maybe even unconsciously it helped, but I think it was there,” he said. “You learn to be able to take it' in sports and live up to adverse situations.”

 

 

When Ernie was released, he went home to his wife Mary Lou, raised his family and spent 37 years as a teacher and counselor in the South Bend school system. After Korea, everything else was gravy to him.

“He was both a humble and strong man. You wouldn't know what he had accomplished by talking to him,” son Scott said. “But he always enjoyed talking about sports.”

His children figure he is up in heaven smiling away about the IU - Notre Dame contest. “When the game was announced on December 8, it was the 16th anniversary of Dad's death,” Scott continued. “We thought that was pretty neat.”

Ernie Kovatch was a man in full — and he was full of love for both Notre Dame and Indiana. But he loved Indiana a little more.

“That's why we will be rooting for Indiana,” Scott said.

While thinking about their dad.

Bill Moor wrote for the South Bend Tribune for 48 years, mainly as sports editor and human-interest columnist. He and his wife, Margaret, have three children and eight grandchildren.