Staying on top

Hanson High School football coach Jim Haskamp admits it was a long wait for his first state championship.

Haskamp — who took the head coaching job for the Beavers in 1988 — finally won a state title in 2005, making it a 17-year drought until title No. 1.

Avon coach Tom Culver didn’t have to be quite as patient.

He took over as Pirates head coach in 1999. Three years later, he led his team to a state championship.

Ever since Haskamp and Culver each picked up their first titles, they’ve kept their teams reigning atop 9-man football in South Dakota.

When many other 9-man teams suffer peaks and valleys through the years, Hanson and Avon buck the trend.

“It’s a combination of two things,” Culver said when asked the secrect to the longterm success. “You have to have good athletes and they have to be willing to work. We’ve all seen those teams that have some pretty good athletes, but they underachieve because they’re not hard workers in the offseason or during the season.

“We’ve been fortunate enough — and I’m sure (Haskamp) would tell you the same thing — that we’ve had kids that just like to work hard throughout the year.”

In the past 10 years, the two schools have combined for 13 conference championships, 11 region titles and hoisted seven state championship trophies.

Nearly another entire football season has passed, and with only four teams remaining in each class, both Haskamp’s and Culver’s teams are, with no surprise, still playing.

At 7 tonight in Alexandria, they matchup with one another in a Class 9A semifinal game. The winner gets a spot in another state championship game.

“The last 10 years, those have been kind of the two powerhouses of 9-man football in South Dakota,” said Hanson High School graduate and current Dakota Wesleyan football player Jordan Gau, who was on Haskamp’s initial state title team in 2004. “It’s always Hanson and Avon you think about in the dome or making a deep run in the playoffs.”

So what is it that makes these two teams more constant than most others?

It’s partially the luck of the athletes that come through, both coaches say. But it’s also a couple of key factors that have built their football programs into dynasties.

Success breeds success

In the last 10 years, neither Avon nor Hanson has had back-to-back losing records.

Unlike teams such as Scotland and Colome — which each won state titles in 2007 and haven’t been back to the state semifinals since — Hanson and Avon are remaining consistent.

Avon has six region championships since 2002, while Hanson has five.

Haskamp points to the 2002 and 2004 seasons in which his team lost in the state semifinals, but got to — and won — the state title in 2005.

“Being in big-game situations is a big deal,” said Haskamp, whose team won the 9A state championship in 2005 and 2009 and the 9B title in 2008. “We lost in 2002 and 2004, but from that point on, all the kids could think about was getting past that and get to the dome. ... If the kids get a taste of that, they want to keep it around.”

Culver said ever since the standard of getting to the DakotaDome in Vermillion was set, it’s been a goal each year that his team sets before the season even starts.

His team’s accomplished it many times in the last decade and won the title four times.

Culver led his team to 9A state championships in 2002, 2004 and 2008 and won the 9B title in 2005.

Another top goal Culver sets each year is winning the Great Plains Conference. The only time in the past decade that hasn’t happened was in 2006.

“Kids see the success when they’re younger and they want to be a part of that,” Culver said. “Kids see that, get a taste of that and want to be a part of that, and the biggest thing is they see the example of the older kids on what they’ve done to get to that point.”

Putting egos aside

Earv Archambeau was a large percentage of Avon’s offense in 2008.

It was a season where the Pirates won the 9A state championship and Archambeau — who now plays for USD — had 1,472 yards and 22 touchdowns. Avon’s second biggest offensive threat that year was Ryan Hauck, whose season amassed to less than half of Archambeau’s at 637 yards and eight touchdowns.

Culver said it’s happened many years where one or two players will carry the bulk of the offense on his team, yet the rest of the players continue to do their jobs.

“Kids have to put aside their own feelings, and sometimes that’s pretty hard because they’ll go home and maybe their brother, sister, girlfriend or mom or dad will tell them they should get the ball more,” he said. “I tell them that the team is the most important thing.”

Besides having high-quality athletes, the team concept is extremely important to Haskamp.

To have a team that’s successful for a long stretch of time, Haskamp said it’s crucial to get the players to always buy into being unselfish and worrying about “the big picture.”

In recent years, that’s been a constant at Hanson.

“They can’t be worried about: How many carries did I get? How many tackles did I get? Who got the interception? Who had a better game this week?” Haskamp said. “You have to have kids that believe in the team concept.”

‘Seeing the tradition carry on’

Gau said he does his best to make it to as many Hanson games as he can.

He first remembers watching games as an elementary student, when he would go to the varsity game Friday night to play a pick-up game of football with his classmates outside of the end zone.

Then when he got older and started playing for the Beavers on Friday evenings, Gau witnessed other kids throwing the ball around during the games he started, pulling memories from his younger days.

“When I was a senior, I saw the younger kids that are playing today,” said Gau, who recollected seeing his first cousins Pierce and Reid Smith while he was playing in his final years at Hanson.

For both Hanson and Avon to continue their successes, it’s been a necessity for the upperclassmen to set examples and pave the way for the newcomers each year.

Haskamp said each year he stresses the magnitude of having strong senior leadership. He added when the seniors from one class set standards of winning championships, it’s hard for the next generations not to follow the same path.

“Kids want to see the tradition carry on,” Haskamp said. “It’s not only their goal to do well, but they want the younger kids below them to do well. They don’t want to see the Hanson football team or their school get beat.

“So they’re not only working hard to make themselves better, but they want things to continue on and make the younger kids better.”

Just like Gau, Avon junior Nick Poppe remembers going to games as a youngster.

Last year, Poppe started on the defensive side of the ball but took over as the starting quarterback this year.

He said he feels it’s his duty to keep the winning tradition alive in Avon.

“It’s an honor to play for Avon with all the tradition we’ve had in the past,” Poppe said. “Growing up, all I’ve seen and watched is Avon football be successful. You want to keep that going.”

The showdown

Tonight’s game was almost expected, both Culver and Haskamp said.

Before the season started, many South Dakota high school football enthusiasts picked Avon and Hanson to match up in Class 9A state championship, which would have been a rematch of last year’s 9A state title. Hanson won that game 20-16 and upset Avon’s previously unbeaten season.

This year, the teams met in the second week of the regular season with Hanson winning 30-6.

“We’re a lot different team than that first week,” Culver said. “We had quite a few kids playing new positions and a few kids starting varsity for the first time. Now with the experience we’ve gotten, I think that’s helped us grow a lot as a team.”

That game was the fifth time Haskamp and Culver coached against one another at their current schools. Haskamp leads the head-to-head series 3-2, but he figured Culver would get a shot at evening the matchup this year sometime.

“Down the road, we figured we’d play Avon again,” Haskamp said. “We just didn’t know if it’d be in the semifinals or the championship or whenever. But we knew there was a really good possibility we’d meet them again.

“Just like us, Avon expects to do well. You have to expect to do well and you have to go out there and believe that. I think that’s what makes both of our football teams have some success recently.”

Tags: high school football, sports, alexandria, avon, hanson