“It’s only a game.” Ever heard those four words when someone thought you’d gotten a little too involved with the fate of your favorite college or pro team, not to mention your disappointment over the outcome of an afternoon spent playing pitch?
But what about high school athletics, and in particular, the game of football? Is there something about it that transcends the dynamics of competition—something intangible that will nonetheless be apparent to those attending the season opener of either county team come Friday night?
For veteran Haviland Coach Jeff Blattner, now entering his twenty-eighth year of high school coaching and twenty-second year in Kiowa County, football is unique because it’s the one event that draws people from the community to an outdoor setting on Friday evenings in the fall.
“They’ve come out to support us here in Haviland, at home or on the road, win, lose or draw,” Blattner said. “Even in years we’ve struggled they’ve been behind us, pretty much the whole community, despite what the weather is. That’s unique to football.”
Greensburg’s Clint Young, the junior coach of the county heading into his second year at the reigns of the Rangers, sees the unique appeal of the high school pigskin season a little more dramatically.
“This is a sport of gladiators,” Young said recently. “These young men of our community are our gladiators, representing us in the arena, so to speak. They compete at that level not just physically, but mentally as well. They have to trust each other and one’s another’s commitment to succeed.
“There’s also so many life lessons in this sport and it does so much for a young man’s preparation to go out into life and into the world. Those lessons are on display for people in the stands to witness. That’s what’s so great about football at this level.”
While the start of a new season typically brings a sense of anticipation to a school’s faithful, expectations for either team are especially poignant this year, and not just because they face one another in week two.
Both the Dragons and Rangers suffered through what had to be considered disappointing seasons a year ago, especially for Haviland, considering the long tradition of success Blattner’s teams have enjoyed.
After making it to the playoffs more often than not since Blattner came to town in 1987, and reaching the second round in both ’04 and ’05, the team fell to a disappointing, but respectable 4-5 in ’06, before managing only a single win over lowly Fowler last year. The anomaly is an experience Blattner and his boys want to quickly erase with a more successful 2008.
“Maybe we’ve gotten spoiled over the years,” he mused last week. “We’re so used to being on the winning side here that I think we began to take it for granted, thinking good things were going to happen just by stepping on the field. We found out differently a year ago.
“My teams have been hungry in the past, but we played like we didn’t have an appetite last year. You’ve got to play hard every down, whether it’s in practice or in a game. We didn’t do that in 2007 and afterwards the kids and I were both disappointed in how we performed. So we’re coming back to the field with a new sense of urgency this year and it starts Friday night against Cunningham. We want to show people we’re still a good football program and that when you’re playing us you can expect to be in for a fight.”
Pestered by television cameras for much of the season a year ago as his team tried to rise from the ashes of a tornado-devastated town, Young’s Rangers have avoided a similar media glare so far in 2008, a change of circumstances Young doesn’t mind. Though he doesn’t directly blame the extra attention for his team’s 3-6 finish, the second-year coach also doesn’t think the constant exposure helped his squad with its focus. Much had also been made of the team wanting to make it to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade, serving as a morale boost for the community in the immediate wake of its physical dismantling. Young quickly pushes aside any suggestion the Rangers will again be on mission to bolster the town’s mental state with a successful season.
“That’s not something I want to put on these kids’ shoulders this year,” he said. “No one expects much of them because of the past history of losing seasons here. There’s not that many excited about football around here. A lot sit around and wait for basketball season to start. But these kids have worked too hard to not have it pay off for them beginning Friday night at Rozel. It would be nice to see support build for us this fall if we can have some success, and that will probably happen. But it won’t be automatic. It won’t be from the start like it is for teams that have a history of winning. We’ve got to build that history, starting Friday night. It’s time for our kids to step up and show what they can do.”
Blattner played quarterback as a senior for the team Young will be facing Friday night in Rozel—the Pawnee Heights Tigers. Though he stood only 5’8” and weighed but 145 pounds with his pads on, Blattner thought he “was ten-feet tall and bullet proof. But I found out I wasn’t so invincible.” Blattner broke his collarbone by falling on the ball wrong when tackled in the third game of the 1974 season, ending his football career with a team that won two games that season. He did go on, however, to pitch a couple of seasons for the Barton County Community College nine.
Young, however, went from playing quarterback at Skyline at nearby Pratt to playing nose guard and fullback at Emporia State. He first got interested in the game watching his older brother C. T., who now coaches at Pretty Prairie; play at the high school level. The moment of truth for him, however, came when he finally got to take the field as a seventh grader.
“My first game I remember getting my first hit and I liked it,” he remembers. “You either like it or don’t when you get your first hit in a game situation and I loved it. I was hooked from then on. I guess growing up on a farm I was used to banging into animals and roughhousing with my brother, so hitting on a football field just felt sort of natural to me.”
As he grew older Young also wanted to emulate his older brother in another pursuit—coaching at the high school level. When he arrived at Greensburg three years ago, however, that job had already been given to Shawn Starr, leaving Young with the junior high position—an opportunity he parlayed into a 13-1 record over two years. Being given Starr’s job a year ago last spring when two-to-three win seasons remained the norm, Young was anxious to begin his high school career a year ago, even after the tornado ripped away his weight room, and a home field. He spoke with confidence of his team’s prospects before getting off to an 0-3 start.
“I learned a number of things from last season,” he said. “I learned the toughest thing is to teach a group of kids the game lasts four quarters, and that you’re never too far ahead or behind. I learned you have to teach them to expect the other team to do things right sometimes and that you don’t win every play, but that you have to win more than the other guy.
“Our upper classmen last year, the seniors a year ago never thought they could come from behind. The seniors this year understand the reason we work at conditioning so hard is that it’s never finished until the last play of the game. We need to look for victories on every play and we need to learn to come out and be a third quarter team, no matter what the score at half time is. They’re slowly picking that up and I underestimated how long it would take for them to get it.
“Do all kids buy into my approach? No, there are some that have decided they don’t want to go through what it takes to be a member of my football team and that’s okay. But for those who stay, they will eventually start demanding of themselves what I do and then they start demanding it of each other and they’re pushing each other instead of me just pushing them. Then I’m just there to facilitate it. It takes a while to get to that point. Are we there yet? No, but we’re closer than we were a year ago.”
While Young is just getting started on his high school coaching career, Blattner is likely approaching the twilight of his, though he shows no sign of slowing down. Ask if he has any idea of how much longer he might keep going and he’ll only say he’s “got a number in the back of my head.” And how will he know when it’s time to hang up his clipboard?
“As long as I keep loving to come to practice and love working with the kids I’ll be doing this,” he said. “It hasn’t diminished yet. I still have the same passion. But when it starts to wane I’ll start thinking about it.”
Blattner acknowledges players have become bigger, stronger and faster since he started coaching 27 years ago, due to advances in nutrition, conditioning and weight training. The biggest change he’s noticed, however, is in those roaming the sidelines during the game.
“The coaching has gotten so much better since I first started,” he said. “The level of eight-man coaching is phenomenal. Eleven-man coaches don’t give us a lot of respect, but over the last 10 to 15 years the level of coaching in eight-man has gotten to where it’s just as good. Clint’s a phenomenal young coach, and you look at Hokanson at Bucklin and Albin at Minneola. All those guys know their stuff. They all take a lot of pride in what they do and put a lot of time into it.”
Young couldn’t find much in Blattner’s statement he didn’t agree with, saying, “You’ve got a lot of savvy coaches across this state and a lot of them are in this part of the state. Yeah, we younger guys have our way of doing things, but there’s times we run into a problem and need another opinion how to handle it. We learn a lot from those older guys just because they’ve got the experience to give some good advice.
“Someone like Jeff is great to talk to because he’s willing to share what he knows from past years of coaching. I’ve called him several times and asked him questions and he’s been very helpful. I know we play each other, but that doesn’t keep us from being friends and helping one another out. We both want to win, but we both want to do what’s best for the kids too, and sometimes he can point out something that will help me do that.”
(Greensburg opens the season Friday night at Rozel versus Pawnee Heights while Haviland hosts Cunningham. Both games start at 7 p.m.)
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“It’s only a game.” Ever heard those four words when someone thought you’d gotten a little too involved with the fate of your favorite college or pro team, not to mention your disappointment over the outcome of an afternoon spent playing pitch?
But what about high school athletics, and in particular, the game of football? Is there something about it that transcends the dynamics of competition—something intangible that will nonetheless be apparent to those attending the season opener of either county team come Friday night?
For veteran Haviland Coach Jeff Blattner, now entering his twenty-eighth year of high school coaching and twenty-second year in Kiowa County, football is unique because it’s the one event that draws people from the community to an outdoor setting on Friday evenings in the fall.
“They’ve come out to support us here in Haviland, at home or on the road, win, lose or draw,” Blattner said. “Even in years we’ve struggled they’ve been behind us, pretty much the whole community, despite what the weather is. That’s unique to football.”
Greensburg’s Clint Young, the junior coach of the county heading into his second year at the reigns of the Rangers, sees the unique appeal of the high school pigskin season a little more dramatically.
“This is a sport of gladiators,” Young said recently. “These young men of our community are our gladiators, representing us in the arena, so to speak. They compete at that level not just physically, but mentally as well. They have to trust each other and one’s another’s commitment to succeed.
“There’s also so many life lessons in this sport and it does so much for a young man’s preparation to go out into life and into the world. Those lessons are on display for people in the stands to witness. That’s what’s so great about football at this level.”
While the start of a new season typically brings a sense of anticipation to a school’s faithful, expectations for either team are especially poignant this year, and not just because they face one another in week two.
Both the Dragons and Rangers suffered through what had to be considered disappointing seasons a year ago, especially for Haviland, considering the long tradition of success Blattner’s teams have enjoyed.
After making it to the playoffs more often than not since Blattner came to town in 1987, and reaching the second round in both ’04 and ’05, the team fell to a disappointing, but respectable 4-5 in ’06, before managing only a single win over lowly Fowler last year. The anomaly is an experience Blattner and his boys want to quickly erase with a more successful 2008.
“Maybe we’ve gotten spoiled over the years,” he mused last week. “We’re so used to being on the winning side here that I think we began to take it for granted, thinking good things were going to happen just by stepping on the field. We found out differently a year ago.
“My teams have been hungry in the past, but we played like we didn’t have an appetite last year. You’ve got to play hard every down, whether it’s in practice or in a game. We didn’t do that in 2007 and afterwards the kids and I were both disappointed in how we performed. So we’re coming back to the field with a new sense of urgency this year and it starts Friday night against Cunningham. We want to show people we’re still a good football program and that when you’re playing us you can expect to be in for a fight.”
Pestered by television cameras for much of the season a year ago as his team tried to rise from the ashes of a tornado-devastated town, Young’s Rangers have avoided a similar media glare so far in 2008, a change of circumstances Young doesn’t mind. Though he doesn’t directly blame the extra attention for his team’s 3-6 finish, the second-year coach also doesn’t think the constant exposure helped his squad with its focus. Much had also been made of the team wanting to make it to the playoffs for the first time in over a decade, serving as a morale boost for the community in the immediate wake of its physical dismantling. Young quickly pushes aside any suggestion the Rangers will again be on mission to bolster the town’s mental state with a successful season.
“That’s not something I want to put on these kids’ shoulders this year,” he said. “No one expects much of them because of the past history of losing seasons here. There’s not that many excited about football around here. A lot sit around and wait for basketball season to start. But these kids have worked too hard to not have it pay off for them beginning Friday night at Rozel. It would be nice to see support build for us this fall if we can have some success, and that will probably happen. But it won’t be automatic. It won’t be from the start like it is for teams that have a history of winning. We’ve got to build that history, starting Friday night. It’s time for our kids to step up and show what they can do.”
Blattner played quarterback as a senior for the team Young will be facing Friday night in Rozel—the Pawnee Heights Tigers. Though he stood only 5’8” and weighed but 145 pounds with his pads on, Blattner thought he “was ten-feet tall and bullet proof. But I found out I wasn’t so invincible.” Blattner broke his collarbone by falling on the ball wrong when tackled in the third game of the 1974 season, ending his football career with a team that won two games that season. He did go on, however, to pitch a couple of seasons for the Barton County Community College nine.
Young, however, went from playing quarterback at Skyline at nearby Pratt to playing nose guard and fullback at Emporia State. He first got interested in the game watching his older brother C. T., who now coaches at Pretty Prairie; play at the high school level. The moment of truth for him, however, came when he finally got to take the field as a seventh grader.
“My first game I remember getting my first hit and I liked it,” he remembers. “You either like it or don’t when you get your first hit in a game situation and I loved it. I was hooked from then on. I guess growing up on a farm I was used to banging into animals and roughhousing with my brother, so hitting on a football field just felt sort of natural to me.”
As he grew older Young also wanted to emulate his older brother in another pursuit—coaching at the high school level. When he arrived at Greensburg three years ago, however, that job had already been given to Shawn Starr, leaving Young with the junior high position—an opportunity he parlayed into a 13-1 record over two years. Being given Starr’s job a year ago last spring when two-to-three win seasons remained the norm, Young was anxious to begin his high school career a year ago, even after the tornado ripped away his weight room, and a home field. He spoke with confidence of his team’s prospects before getting off to an 0-3 start.
“I learned a number of things from last season,” he said. “I learned the toughest thing is to teach a group of kids the game lasts four quarters, and that you’re never too far ahead or behind. I learned you have to teach them to expect the other team to do things right sometimes and that you don’t win every play, but that you have to win more than the other guy.
“Our upper classmen last year, the seniors a year ago never thought they could come from behind. The seniors this year understand the reason we work at conditioning so hard is that it’s never finished until the last play of the game. We need to look for victories on every play and we need to learn to come out and be a third quarter team, no matter what the score at half time is. They’re slowly picking that up and I underestimated how long it would take for them to get it.
“Do all kids buy into my approach? No, there are some that have decided they don’t want to go through what it takes to be a member of my football team and that’s okay. But for those who stay, they will eventually start demanding of themselves what I do and then they start demanding it of each other and they’re pushing each other instead of me just pushing them. Then I’m just there to facilitate it. It takes a while to get to that point. Are we there yet? No, but we’re closer than we were a year ago.”
While Young is just getting started on his high school coaching career, Blattner is likely approaching the twilight of his, though he shows no sign of slowing down. Ask if he has any idea of how much longer he might keep going and he’ll only say he’s “got a number in the back of my head.” And how will he know when it’s time to hang up his clipboard?
“As long as I keep loving to come to practice and love working with the kids I’ll be doing this,” he said. “It hasn’t diminished yet. I still have the same passion. But when it starts to wane I’ll start thinking about it.”
Blattner acknowledges players have become bigger, stronger and faster since he started coaching 27 years ago, due to advances in nutrition, conditioning and weight training. The biggest change he’s noticed, however, is in those roaming the sidelines during the game.
“The coaching has gotten so much better since I first started,” he said. “The level of eight-man coaching is phenomenal. Eleven-man coaches don’t give us a lot of respect, but over the last 10 to 15 years the level of coaching in eight-man has gotten to where it’s just as good. Clint’s a phenomenal young coach, and you look at Hokanson at Bucklin and Albin at Minneola. All those guys know their stuff. They all take a lot of pride in what they do and put a lot of time into it.”
Young couldn’t find much in Blattner’s statement he didn’t agree with, saying, “You’ve got a lot of savvy coaches across this state and a lot of them are in this part of the state. Yeah, we younger guys have our way of doing things, but there’s times we run into a problem and need another opinion how to handle it. We learn a lot from those older guys just because they’ve got the experience to give some good advice.
“Someone like Jeff is great to talk to because he’s willing to share what he knows from past years of coaching. I’ve called him several times and asked him questions and he’s been very helpful. I know we play each other, but that doesn’t keep us from being friends and helping one another out. We both want to win, but we both want to do what’s best for the kids too, and sometimes he can point out something that will help me do that.”
(Greensburg opens the season Friday night at Rozel versus Pawnee Heights while Haviland hosts Cunningham. Both games start at 7 p.m.)
