Learning the Job

When I took this job last May, I didn't have a clue about the prep football landscape in Kansas. Absent from our state for the past decade, suddenly I was faced with putting together a preview of the 2007 season for the magazine's first issue in August. The most recent first-hand knowledge I had of local football was the West-Northwest matchup in 1993 at Carpenter Stadium. Nine years old and stuck playing soccer during fourth-grade recess, I desperately wanted to strap on a helmet and pads and hit someone. So I soaked it in that night, with hopes for my future. Entering Carpenter's gates, I craned my neck to scour the enormous north grandstand. Concession smells filling my sinuses, the drumline stiffening my neck hair, waves of fan noise bouncing back and forth across the field - it was quite a night. I sat on the south side, rooting on my home-district Grizzlies. My dad agreed to sit with me on the Northwest side, though he felt his Pioneer oats all night, taking pride in his alma mater for the first time in years, as West beat city titan Northwest 17-14. The stories he told of past West High greatness were old. You can ask Weston Schartz, coach on the Pioneer sideline that night, about the impact that win had on West High. Formerly the only Wichita high school on the other side of the river, West had had its thunder stolen when Northwest opened fifteen years earlier. You can imagine my confusion when I sat down with Schartz briefly last summer to talk about the upcoming season. Having left West High in 2002, he was about to enter his sixth season coaching at Northwest, his former rival. I was behind the times. In that conversation, we broached the topic of the Hutchinson football program. Schartz and the Grizzlies' season had ended the previous fall (2006) in a 49-21 first-round loss to Hutch in the state playoffs, the Salthawks' 20th straight win on their way to three 6A titles in a row. Schartz' opinion was that a dominant program like Hutch's is only possible in that type of community - big with one school. My father, who had moved back to the Wichita area in 2003 and just in time to watch the genesis of the Hutch juggernaut, had suggested the story I needed to tell in the magazine. "Hutch used to be the doormat before Randy Dreiling arrived," he said. "They were a basketball school; now they're a football school. That's where your story is." I wrote the story with all the facts for our premiere issue in August. I recounted the vast turnaround accomplished on Dreiling's watch - from 26 straight losses to three straight titles. I gave a voice to how the coach, administration and community had all worked together to create a football monster. But it was a small moment in October when the source of Hutch's success hit home for me. While observing the team's Thursday walk-through leading up to their home game against Goddard, I stood near Dreiling while he worked with the offensive line, a unit on which he keeps a strangle-hold. He called out one of its members for - what else - not thinking. He proceeded to tear into that kid. In his way, Dreiling pleaded with him to think about what he'd learned and to put those concepts into practice. The player wasn't doing it. So he got called out. It reminded me of the most impacting, pedagogical moment in my athletic upbringing. A mishmash of players had gathered to play pick-up ball with the state's top teacher of the game, Steve Pratt. Somehow, as a shy, scared eighth-grader, I got on the floor with some serious players - one of whom had been selected a top-five prep player in Vermont the previous season by the Burlington Free Press. I was in the half-court on offense, and suddenly Pratt stopped the game. Much like Dreiling did with his player, Pratt tore into me. "Who's the best player on the floor? Who! Are you? No, you're not," he said in choice language with a choice tone. "How many times are you going to run past the best player in the state without setting a screen? Never pass a player without setting a screen," he roared. "You want to get open? Set a screen! The screener is the most open man on the court." I proceeded to continue playing like a 14-year-old, but Pratt's outburst stuck with me. To this day, and for the rest of my life, no one from my generation will set more screens than me in pick-up basketball. Dreiling's example of persistent teaching was my favorite moment of the year. Granted, it was a small one in a season full of gaudy accomplishments for Hutch, but that one will stay with me. After all, how do you win 36 straight games over three seasons and four state football titles in a row?