Leadership: Bears reach new football heights

It's not often that you have a first-year head coach in the state championship game. But, for the Box Elder Bears and co-head coach Neil Rosette Jr. that's exactly the situation they will find themselves in Saturday.

The Bears, who went 11-1 this season under the tutelage of Rosette Jr., who doubles as the school's athletic director, and Joel Rosette, who is also the head coach of the girls basketball team. Yet, just because Rosette Jr. is in his first year on the job, doesn't mean that he is in over his head. In fact, far from it.

Rosette Jr. and Rosette both had a vision when the season started. They each saw the talent and the potential that the Bears possessed. But they also saw areas where the team could improve and with each coach having personal experience playing Six-Man football for Box Elder, they thought they knew how to help the Bears get to the next level.

"Not to discredit who they had coaching them before," Rosette Jr. said. "But Joel and I have both played Six-Man football and none of their other coaches had experience doing that. We both played for the Bears, so we have a vested interest in the football program and we saw some things that we thought we could do better.

"We knew that we had the talent," He added. "We knew that back in August and we knew we had some great athletes. But, we really wanted to get back to the fundamentals - back to the basics. So that's what we did."

So with a team filled with two and three-year starters, the two co-head coaches went to work and the Bears, who had narrowly missed out on the playoffs in 2013 and 2014, went back to square one.

"We weren't really worried about big plays in the passing game or anything like that," Rosette Jr. said. "We focused on the simple things like blocking and tackling. We wanted to make sure that we did all the simple things really well and that was something we worked on and focused on all year, not just at the start of the season. We went through our basic fundamentals in each practice."

With the success that the Bears have had, it's clear the two first-year head coaches knew exactly what they were doing.

Box Elder opened its season back on Aug. 29 against defending Class C Six-Man state champion Geraldine/Highwood and in its first game, the Bears sent a message, knocking off the champs in impressive fashion, 50-6.

From there, it was more of the same. The Bears beat Sunburst 53-6, North Star 60-19, Big Sandy 72-25, Heart Butte 53-12, Westby-Grenora 80-26 and Augusta 62-0. The wins kept on coming and with it, the idea that the Bears could truly contend for the Six-Man crown.

"We knew at the start of the season that expectations would be high and that we could be good," Rosette Jr. said. "But if I told you that I thought we would be playing in the state championship game, I would by lying."

Then, came the regular-season finale and the one game that every fan of Six-Man football had waited to see; Box Elder and Denton-Geyser-Stanford. The Bearcats, who steamrolled the Bears in 2014, are the Six-Man runner-up and both teams were undefeated going into their Oct. 24 showdown.

It was a classic game like expected and it appeared as though Box Elder was going to pull it out before a late rally gave the victory to DGS 35-34. The win also gave the Bearcats the North Division championship and home field in this Saturday's rematch for the state championship.

But even with the loss, Rosette Jr. led the Bears into the first-ever home playoff game on Oct. 31 and like they did all season, the Bears delivered with a 64-32 win over Jordan.

Two more wins over Custer-Hysham and Hot Springs have taken the team farther than any other in school history.

"As we started to win, we started thinking that we had something special here," Rostette Jr. said. "And it's been incredible. If we could win, it would be a great thing for this program, for these boys and for this community."

Rosette Jr. is proud of what his team has done this season, but he deflected the credit to his players, especially his seniors such as Brandon The Boy, Jerrod Four Colors, Shane Ketchum, Bodis Duran and Elias Duran. He said he wants to keep the focus on them and that his goal as co-head coach is to build a program that is a consistent winner and he believes the success the team has had this year, will go a long way toward making that happen.

"We don't think of ourselves as great coaches," Rosette Jr. said. "We want to keep the focus on the boys because they deserve the credit. They have put in the work. I think the thing that we want to do is build something in the long-term. And I think the success that we have had this season will really help the excitement and help get more and more kids out playing football, which is what we want to see."

Box Elder will take on DGS Saturday for the Six-Man state championship. Kickoff will be at 1 p.m. in Stanford.