09/29/2024
Coming soon:
"In one of the most tumultuous times in recent American history – amid a raging pandemic, societal shutdown, economic hardship, rioting and a heated Presidential election – a small-town eight-man football season offered hope, joy and inspiration.
In some ways, the story of 2020’s Little River, Kan, high school football season began with a deep sense of unfinished business. On March 12, 2020, Covid-19 shut down the state basketball tournament, taking with it Little River’s best shot in 20 years of becoming Class 1A Champions. Within days, Kansas became the first state to shut down schools – along with track, softball and baseball seasons – for the rest of the school year.
And yet, a part of the story began 50 years ago when a high school athlete – later a legendary coach inducted into four halls of fame – played as part of two back-to-back undefeated 1A football championship teams. Then there’s the 1956 exhibition game – the first ever played in Kansas, ultimately leading to more than 100 eight-man football teams in the state – a game with direct ancestral ties to Little River's 2020 team.
It’s impossible to separate these events. Each contributed in some way to an incredible football season, a record-breaking state championship game and the continuation of a century-long, inter-generational sports legacy in a town of fewer than 600 people; a legacy that produced a professional women's basketball player, an Olympic runner and a 91-game basketball win streak.
The 2020 football season lasted 86 days from the first game to the final game. For every one of those days, players lived with a constant sense of uncertainty, of racing the clock and of fighting an invisible opponent that never tired; one that took out teams around the state through quarantine. There was also the mounting pressure of facing team after team ranked ahead of them; undefeated teams who steamrolled everyone in their path; athletic teams steeped in big, senior players.
In between, there were heartbreaking losses, a devastating injury and a player battling a new diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. It's no wonder Coach called them "overcomers." To the rest of the world, Little River was not the team to beat.
Until they were."
