Trojan football season ranks among all-time best
By RYAN RICHTER
Sports writer
Thanksgiving has passed and one thing I really had to be thankful for was the Trojan football season.
Through 11 years of writing, I've followed some great teams through some great seasons.
The 1998 Hillsboro football season; the 1999 Trojan basketball team; Tabor's football team from 2003 to 2005; Trojan track and field; and Phil Oelke's state baseball teams.
I can't forget the runs that Rusty Allen has had with the Lady Bluejays basketball program either.
Don Brubacher and the Bluejay men were exciting, too.
But the 2006 Trojan football season ranks right up there with the best times I've ever had.
At the start of the season, Trojan seniors Lucas Hamm and Troy Frick assured me the Trojans were not going to settle for anything less than playing in November. That's something that hadn't been done in three years.
Hamm, Frick, and the Trojans kept their promise, making history and shocking the state with a deep run into the playoffs.
That's something the coaches, players, and the community should be proud of.
No matter what happened in the end, the 2006 season belongs as much to the Trojans as the state champion Silver Lake Eagles.
C.J. Hamilton's Eagles have been in the title game four years straight and finally got the job done, trouncing Garden Plain, 49-21.
Like KWCH's sports commentator Bruce Haertl said, Hillsboro was perhaps the biggest surprise in the state football playoffs.
After failing to compete at Collegiate in their first real test of the year, the Trojans then dropped two heartbreakers to the Smoky Valley Vikings, and the Hesston Swathers.
Had Hillsboro opened the season as it ended it, I'd venture to say the Trojans would've gone into the playoffs unbeaten, as they peaked at the right time.
One of the things that's hindered Hillsboro from playing for a football title has been having to compete in the much tougher bottom half of the bracket seven of the last eight times it qualified.
Since 1998, seven of the last 3A champions have come from the same side as Hillsboro.
Five of the last eight have all been from the Central Plains league. That league posts state title contenders every year and Cheney, Conway Springs, Medicine Lodge, and Garden Plain were all highly ranked in 3A this season.
The teams the Trojans left in their path of destruction, Halstead, Cheney, and Sacred Heart were good teams, but none prepared Hillsboro for a team like Garden Plain, though.
The closest the Trojans came to seeing teams like the Owls were the Swathers, and former coach Dustin McEwen's Cheney Cardinals.
Garden Plain pounded Cheney during the regular season, 42-14, and knocked out Hesston 21-14 in the second round.
The Trojans have something they can hang their hats on, though, playing the Owls to within five, 31-26.
Taking away the Silver Lake wipeout, only Jeff Hubka and the Medicine Lodge Indians played the Owls closer, dethroning them as 3A's top team with a 21-20 ambush.
Much like Smith Center with Jeff Simoneau 20 years ago, the last time Hillsboro made it that far, the Owls had a player that could also take over a game — Logan Dold.
Dold is the only Kansan listed on the "Top 50 Juniors to Watch" list in this year's edition of Street and Smith's college football annual.
Dold's likely to be a first-team all-state all-class this season after being named to the second team a year ago by both the Wichita Eagle and the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Silver Lake did something few teams could do to Dold, holding him to 90 yards while the Eagles passing picked apart the Owls' defense.
Being a team that handled adversity well all season, you can only wonder what the outcome might have been had the Trojans had a little more time against the Owls.
With Spencer Brown, the Trojans have a quarterback who is a real threat. Hillsboro got a real feather in its cap with him transferring from Minneapolis.
I'd go out on a limb to say Brown probably enjoyed the run in Hillsboro more than he would have had he stayed put. Minneapolis (3-6) fell in the second round to Smith Center, 83-8.
It was good to see how well the Trojans handled the loss to the Owls. I didn't see many heads held low.
They had no reason to; who would've ever expected Hillsboro to come within a game of playing for a football title?
And now that the helmets are put away, most of the same Hillsboro athletes are looking forward to a great season in basketball.
