From Worst to First

Matt Unrau

When you take a look at Seniors Reiley Winebrenner, Mike Holland and Dillon Fryxell, cinderellas may be the last word that comes to your mind. The three seniors have played varsity football since their Freshmen year and are three pillars of the playoff-bound team. However, success didn’t always come easy to the trio. After starting their Savage Horsemen career by seeing the team finish off a dismal 0-16 two-year streak they have learned how to win by first suffering through losing.

When entering highschool, after putting on the varsity pads for the first time, a player has an air of expectancy, a sense that he has arrived in the big leagues, with big-time players playing their hearts out and making big-time plays.

Winebrenner, Holland and Fryxell found their arrival on the varsity squad far different. After being part of a highly competitive junior high squad and a competitive JV team they saw a losing culture and a apathetic attitude on the varsity team. They describe many games when the team would routinely get down early in a game and give up on trying for the win.

“And soon as we got down in games, you could see guys, even if we were down by seven, we were done in some kids’ eyes,” says Winebrenner. “If we were down by any points we were losing.”

Routinely losing games by blowouts many of the players stopped caring about football, leaving the three Freshmen following helplessly along in the wake of the losing mentality.

“We were serious about football, but once you get in that crowd you pretty much go with the flow,” says Fryxell. “You’re pretty much the littlest guy, so you can’t really take the team anywhere.”

As for their reputation. Let’s just say contributing to an 0-16 streak doesn’t earn you any brownie points with other coaches and players.

Winebrenner describes embarrassment at football camps. “When you go to camps and you tell coaches they’re like…” “Go sit down,” finishes Fryxell.

“They know how to lose,” chimes in Holland. “That’s about it.”

Losing like they did makes it even harder to turn a program around as the three four-year players say many school athletes rejected tryouts simply because they didn’t want to lose.

“For the first couple years, for our freshman year, a lot of kids didn’t want to come out because they thought we would lose,” says Holland.

As for their conference opponents, the three say when they saw Plains-Hot Springs on the schedule they marked it down as an automatic win. “Everyone had us for their homecoming,” says Fryxell.

And, now?

“We’re the team to beat now,” says Holland. No longer does the team try to avoid losing or tries to win, but they have the winning mentality, knowing they can win and how to make it happen.

“We don’t try to win. We know how to now. Now, it’s just something we do,” says Winebrenner. “We don’t make a bunch of mistakes. We figured it out. Everyone knows what they’re doing. It’s more of a team now. We’re just flying around.”

Winebrenner says he first knew there was something special in practice by how the team worked and prepared for the games. Even the loss to Bigfork helped the team grow. Holland says the team went into the game way too lackadaisical, and brought new focus to the team during practices and games.

“We really changed since that game,” says Winebrenner. “We come to play everyday, now.”

Then, two weeks later after the miraculous comeback win against Eureka they knew they had arrived.

“We beat Eureka. That was always the team we knew we had to beat,” says Winebrenner. “Them and Thompson. Now, it’s changing and that’s good.”