The Emporia Gazette

February 12, 2012

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Drive through Olpe on Kansas Highway 99, take a deep breath, and the chances will be good that by the time you exhale, you’re already out of town.

You’ll see the BP gas station, the famous Chicken House, some people-houses, and suddenly you’re outside city limits again. Sizing up what you can see of the town on either side, you might wonder how even the modest population of 500-ish fits in such a fleeting geographical space.

In a lot of places like Olpe, the high school football team struggles to field good numbers, goes 1-8 or 0-9 and earns little more than the loving applause of its parents for giving maximum effort. Instead, the Olpe Eagles are a consistent winner and this year have one of the most dominant teams in the state, a team that’s crushed opponents all year long and is one win away from the school’s first state title.

Standing in the way of that, though, is a Kansas football juggernaut. Smith Center has won four state championships in a row, a state record-tying 66 games in a row and last year made national news. The Redmen have seven state titles in coach Roger Barta’s 31 years.

Olpe has 12 wins a row, all this season, and hasn’t made an appearance in a title game since 1976. In essence, the Eagles enter Saturday’s Class 2-1A state championship matchup as the ultimate underdog. No one will expect them to be the team that ends Smith Center’s streak.

If they can, though, the state title would mean everything to a community that loves its Eagle football and would transform Eagles such as Cole Krueger, Matt Redeker, Josh Klumpe and Josh Lambert into local legends.

“I think for the most part, Olpe’s kind of known (for other sports) and the Chicken House,” Olpe Mayor Jerry Templemeyer said. “But I think if they win state, one, it’ll shock everybody, because I’m sure with Smith Center’s record and what they’ve accomplished in the past four years or so, that if our boys’ll come in there and shock the state, (it’ll be an) ‘Olpe, they just beat Smith Center’ type thing. But yeah, I think it’ll be a big boost for not only the school, but the community.”

The town’s support

OHS students who want to go to Saturday’s 12:30 p.m. game can do so with a Pep Pass, which is free for any student who wants to go. Plenty of parents will be making the drive as well, and Templemeyer and his wife will be among those at the game. Lyon County Commissioner Bob Davis feels as if the whole town is ripe to make the three-and-a-half-hour drive.

“I just wish them well,” Davis said. “It’s going to be one helluva game.”

How much the Eagles mean to their town was on full display last Friday, when an overflow crowd came out on an extremely cold night to see them dispose of perennial powerhouse Pittsburg-Colgan 20-0 in the semifinals.

“It’s definitely one of the first things talked about,” Templemeyer said, “especially the day after or the day before, and it’s definitely one of the main conversations in a small community like ours.”

The ’08 team, led by second-year coach Chris Schmidt, certainly won’t hurt for support as it tries to take the final step that the ’76 team could not.

“I mean, we’re already proud of the accomplishments that the students have done over the years, with the track and basketball,” Templemeyer said. “But to actually win one, I think would be great for the community and the kids, specifically. Because that’s quite an accomplishment to even get to state. But to win state, that’s definitely something to hold your head up high for, and we’ll definitely recognize it.”

The opponent

When Smith Center (population around 1,600) scored an absurd 72 first-quarter points in an 83-0 rout of Plainville in the first round of last year’s playoffs, ESPN.com came calling, featuring the Redmen’s national-record feat in a subsequent column. Soon after that, the New York Times did a story on the Smith Center program’s success.

Barta went out of his way to tell ESPN that the Redmen weren’t trying to run up the score against Plainville — things just worked out that way. Smith Center’s power-option offense ran 15 plays in the first quarter, 14 of them runs, and scored eight touchdowns. The defense intercepted a pass, returned it for a TD and also recovered five fumbles — again, all in the first quarter. Barta’s first-team offense was out of the game midway through the quarter, and his first-string defense was out after halftime. He ordered his players to go down at the 5-yard line if they were about to score a touchdown.

“We’re not here to embarrass kids,” Barta told ESPN. “We’re not here to run up the score. We want our kids to play hard and get ready for the next round of the playoffs. This just sort of happened. And once it started, I didn’t know what to do.”

Nothing that staggering has happened with this year’s Redmen, but they’ve still topped 60 points five times and ran off five straight shutouts. They’ve averaged 479 rushing yards per game and have two 1,000-yard rushers, with Colt Rogers leading the way with 1,715 yards. A win on Saturday, and Smith Center not only wins its fifth straight state title, it establishes a new state standard with its 67th straight win. Right now, the Redmen are tied with Colgan — which they beat to begin the current streak.

Festivities?

There haven’t been many discussions about how the 2008 state champion Olpe Eagles would be honored should they pull off the big upset on Saturday. Templeton said the city would talk with the school and work hand in hand with them to honor the Eagles.

“We do plan on getting a sign ordered once it’s done, and place it as you enter the city of Olpe,” he said. “We’ve been working on that, too, getting one that states all the times that the high school’s been at state, like the track and field.

“We’re just trying to get all that information together, so we can get that posted. But that’s our goal, is to recognize all the years that they’ve went to state and won, and all the sports that they’ve been involved in. ...

“Because that’d be quite an accomplishment, if they could get ’er done and win state.”