ST. JOSEPH | Matt Ziesel doesn&rsquo;t stray far from coach Dan McCamy on the sidelines during St. Joseph Benton High School&rsquo;s freshman football games. He likes to stay within earshot.</p><p><em>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready, Coach. &hellip; Coach, I&rsquo;m ready,&rdquo; </em>Ziesel says.McCamy says he hears it about 10 times a game, and also at practices, from Ziesel, his 5-foot-3, 110-pound running back.</p><p>So in the final stages of Benton&rsquo;s third game of the season on Monday at Maryville, McCamy decided it was time for Ziesel &mdash; a 15-year-old freshman with Down syndrome &mdash; to make his season debut.</p><p>With about 10 seconds left in the game, and Benton trailing 46-0, McCamy called his final timeout, told an assistant coach to organize the team for the &ldquo;Matt play&rdquo; and ran across the field to the Maryville defensive huddle &mdash; and to some puzzled looks from the opposing players.</p><p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got a special situation,&rdquo; McCamy remembers telling Maryville freshman defensive coach David McEnaney. &ldquo;I know you guys want to get a shutout. Most teams would want a shutout, but in this situation I want to know if maybe you can let one of my guys run in for a touchdown.&rdquo;</p><p>Several days have passed since Ziesel chugged more than 60 yards down a sideline for his first high school touchdown &mdash; but the buzz hasn&rsquo;t.</p><p>The YouTube clip McCamy posted Tuesday morning had received more than 1,500 hits as of Thursday night. The e-mails and messages of support also have been rolling in all week &mdash; to McCamy as well as the Ziesel family.</p><p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just amazing how one play can mean so much to one kid and then to a team and then to a community,&rdquo; McCamy said Thursday after practice. &ldquo;And now it&rsquo;s spread not just to the community of St. Joseph, but now it&rsquo;s spread across the region. How something so simple can impact so many &mdash; to me, that&rsquo;s the amazing part about it.&rdquo;</p><p>Mike Ziesel, Matt&rsquo;s dad, a longtime high school coach and the athletic director at Benton, was standing near the top of the bleachers Monday when a spectator told him it looked like Matt was about to enter the game. His wife, Patty, was at home. She hadn&rsquo;t planned on Matt actually getting on the field Monday.</p><p>Neither had McCamy. As he headed across the field to talk to McEnaney, McCamy wasn&rsquo;t sure what the reaction would be. He asked the players to avoid physical contact with Ziesel but to make it as real as possible for him. </p><p>&ldquo;The (Maryville) players, they didn&rsquo;t hesitate at all,&rdquo; McEnaney said. &ldquo;They jumped right on board.&rdquo;</p><p>And so Matt Ziesel ran a sweep to the right and just kept going. This time, it was McCamy making sure he was close enough to be heard &mdash; running down the sideline alongside Matt, yelling as loud as he could.</p><p>&ldquo;Come on, Matty! They&rsquo;re coming!&rdquo; McCamy yelled, making the play as real as possible for Ziesel.</p><p>Benton lost Monday&rsquo;s game 46-6, but those six points made a bigger impact than McCamy could have ever imagined.</p><p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not necessarily about winning or losing,&rdquo; said McCamy, a second-year coach who played college football at Missouri. &ldquo;Obviously up in Maryville we lost the game. The end result, we lost the game, but when we went away, we were all kind of winners.&rdquo;</p><p> After he posted the touchdown video on YouTube on Tuesday morning, McCamy sent the link to the Ziesels, so Patty could see her son&rsquo;s first high school score, and to five fellow Benton coaches.