The title was the end result of a four-year journey for the Pioneers

This state championship was the first in the history of the Big Sandy football program. The Pioneers had won state titles in other sports and activities before, but the first one in football will be special for the program and the community.

“We’ve won state championships in basketball, track and field, speech and drama and just about everything except football so we finally got that big trophy to put on the wall,” Big Sandy head coach Larry Jappe said. “I imagine they’ll be talking about it for a long time so I’m pretty happy for the school, I’m happy for the community, I’m happy for the players and I’m happy for everybody.”

Over the past four years, the Pioneers had contended for the state title but were never able to get past the semifinals. In their three semifinal appearances from 2019 through 2021, the Pioneers lost in the semifinals to the eventual state champions. Last year’s loss was especially disappointing as the Pioneers lost, 24-20, to Froid Lake in a game in which the Pioneers made several mistakes.

Looking to finally break through the semifinals, the Pioneers rolled through the regular season. Outside of a win by forfeit, the Pioneers won every game by at least 40 points to go 9-0 to earn the Northern No. 1 seed in the Six-Man football playoffs. While going undefeated in the regular season is tough to do, Jappe was not surprised by the Pioneers’ dominance.

“We kind of expected it to be honest. That’s why we came into the season believing in ourselves,” Jappe said. “We came into this game with the same mentality as we’ve had the whole entire season and that’s just, ‘We’re better than everybody else and let’s go out on the field and prove it,’ so I’m just glad to see it happen finally.”

Rusty Gasvoda believes that after once again losing in the semifinals, the Pioneers came out strong in every game to take control, which is what they did against Broadview-Lavina in the state championship game.

“We came out hard in the first quarter in every single game,” Gasvoda said. “We get out there, we smack a team around in the first quarter and get them tired.”

Lance Rutledge believes the senior class of players like Gasvoda, Braydon Cline and Kody Strutz and their experience led the Pioneers to success this fall.

“The guys around us are amazing,” Rutledge said about the dominance in the regular season. “We’ve been playing together since my sixth grade year and everyone has had the support of this team which just made it easy. Everyone just did their jobs and that was it.”

The Pioneers won, 61-6, over Savage to start the playoffs before holding on to win, 25-20, over Custer-Hysham-Melstone to advance to their fourth straight semifinals. But instead of losing, this time the Pioneers started strong to defeat Bridger, 40-8, to finally make it to the state title game and get that monkey off their back.

“Our goal was to break the semifinal curse and come win the state championship and we finally did so it’s awesome,” Cline said.

Not only was the win big for the program, but it was important for the community of Big Sandy that supported the Pioneers throughout the season.

“It means so much to the community and to us,” Cline said. “Our community was feeding us food just about every day and they were making us protein shakes. They were just doing everything they could to get us here to win the state championship and it was awesome. I love our community. They’re just awesome and I love them all.”

The Pioneers will lose the likes of Cline, Gasvoda, Rutledge and Strutz to graduation, but Jappe is optimistic for the future of the program. Along with the return of key players like Cooper Taylor, Wylee Snapp and Lane Demontiney, many of the younger players on the team got playing time in their blowout wins this year, so Jappe expects them to continue their success next year.

“Hopefully the younger kids see how hard the older kids worked and keep doing that,” Jappe said. “These guys are ready to play ball and we’re going to come out hard again next year and try to get another one.”