Varsity Kansas - The Blog

It’s been a while since I posted, so what did everybody think about State championship Saturday? Not many surprises as far as winners go, but maybe a few things we didn’t expect to see. I’ll give my observations class by class.

6A: Hutchinson wins its fourth straight — I talked to Salt Hawks coach Randy Dreiling yesterday regarding all-state selections, and even he seemed in awe about how loaded his team was this season, even in relation to previous years. The Salt Hawks have an unbelievable offense, and its defense showed it was just as good with a goal-line stand in the final seconds. Romero Cotton, who signed to wrestle at Nebraska, is one of the most powerful high school running backs I’ve seen. Add that to the speed of Deveon Dinwiddie, Gage McKinnis and defenders like Jordan Fee and Grant Dreiling, and Hutch was pretty much unstoppable. They’ll be good for a while longer, too.

5A: BV West over Bishop Carroll — The suspensions of four key players may have rattled the Eagles, as they got off to a slow start and couldn’t rally in time. Brett Steven threw two interceptions after throwing none the previous 12 games, and Carroll uncharacteristically made several mistakes. West’s QB-WR tandem of Mike Besler and Aaron Ashley might be the best in the state.

4A: Andale wins second straight — The Indians may be establishing a dynasty. They lost their top offensive player, Jason Robben, to graduation after last season, but they showed no ill effects with a second straight undefeated season. Speaking of great QB-WR tandems, Andale’s duo, Brett Macari and Ethan Ungles, was great this season, and the Indians had a strong defense led by linebacker Matt Fairchild.

3A: Garden Plain has an easy time with Silver Lake — Did anyone expect this? Garden Plain winning was no surprise, but the fact that the Owls blew out a team that was appearing in its sixth straight title game was somewhat stunning. It probably shouldn’t have been, though — Garden Plain hadn’t played a close game all season and features arguably the state’s best player in Logan Dold.

2-1A: Smith Center, of course: The Redmen had their shutout streak ended in the 2-1A semis, but two streaks kept going with their big win over Pittsburg Colgan. Smith Center has won four straight state titles and 54 consecutive games. I got to see a couple of their players in person the other day at our all state luncheon, and it’s easy to see why the Redmen ran over all their opponents this season — those dudes are mammoth. And you have to feel somewhat bad for Colgan — the school won four straight titles recently, but they have been just another Smith Center victim the last few years.

What were your thoughts on Championship Saturday?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 4:11 p.m. and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.