When third-year football coach Sherm Blaser walked into his first team meeting for the upcoming season he asked the team what their team goal should be for the upcoming season. The first hand that went up was that of senior defensive lineman Benten Hall, who suggested a winning season would be an appropriate team goal. A winning season might not seem like a lofty goal, but it is certainly a practical one. The previous year the Kavemen did go 5-4 but finished sixth in conference play and did not make the playoffs. Benten’s sophmore and freshman years those varsity teams went a combined 7-12. In fact, since Benten and his fellow seniors on the team started the first grade eleven years ago the Kuna football teams have a combined record of forty-three wins and sixty-two losses. The football program has not won a conference championship since 1998 and has won just one playoff game this century!
Blaser was not seen as the savior of this program when he was hired two years before. Before coming to Kuna his record was 15- 21 at two previous schools. In his two previous years on the Kuna campus, his record was only 8-10. So how could this team, led by this coach, make it all the way to the state championship game?
Fortunately for me, my son Ryan, who was starting his fourth season as part of Sherm Blaser’s coaching staff and was living with me as he was finishing his master’s program in psychology, so I had a front-row seat to this amazing season.
Om författaren
Bruce Bertrand is in his mid-sixties and has been a sports fan almost his entire life, and as a sports fan, he has felt the agony of defeat more often than the thrill of victory. But in the summer of 2019, Bruce was living with his two sons, Michael, who was twenty-seven, and Ryan, twenty-three. Ryan was entering the second year of his Master’s program in psychology and his third year as part of the Kuna high school football staff, coaching the receivers and special teams. In the two previous years, Kuna had a combined record of 8-10 and missed the playoffs in both those seasons, finishing sixth in the conference the year before. The expectations were not high coming into the 2019 season. Three teams in their conference were rated in the top five in the state preseason polls, and a fourth team made it to the state semi-finals in 2018. But that is why they play the games, right? And Kuna would play thirteen games this season all the way to the state championship game.
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