A week's worth of winning

One hour before kickoff

Riley Winebrenner is pacing the locker room, moving with short nervous twitches until he jumps on an exercise bike and starts pumping the nerves out of his body. “That’s the worst thing, is not doing something” says Winebrenner. “I just try to keep moving.”

One hour before kickoff

Riley Winebrenner, quarterback for the Plains-Hot Springs Savage Horsemen, is pacing the locker room, moving with short nervous twitches until he jumps on an exercise bike and starts pumping the nerves out of his body. “That’s the worst thing, is not doing something” says Winebrenner. “I just try to keep moving.”

Now, the whole team is moving, walking with quiet determined steps down the stairs, their cleats clacking against the cement. Sunlight is streaming through the open door, and as the team marches out in the Friday night air they can hear whispers of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck coming from the football field.

“Broke all the rules, played all the fools…you’ve been thunderstruck!” The team is playing in front of their home crowd under the bright lights and it’s homecoming. This is Savage Horsemen football.

4:00 p.m. Monday

The outcome of the next two hours depends on what happened four days earlier. On Monday the atmosphere is drastically different. The team, led by senior Dillon Fryxell, is jogging lazily around the school. The team’s mood is low and the sting of defeat is on everybody’s mind. The weekend before the team blew a 14 point lead heading into the fourth quarter to lose their first game of the season.

Before the players started jogging Coach Seth Pettit had showed them video of their loss and showed the players all of the glaring mistakes they made that cost them the game. “Most games are lost by the losers and not won by the winners,” Coach Pettit tells his team. Practices throughout the week were going to be hard. “If you make a mistake, be ready to pay for it,” says Pettit.

First quarter

The Savage Horsemen are galloping all over the field and all over their opponents, the Trojans. Winebrenner is no longer pacing in the locker room, but is sprinting down the field scoring on a wild 72-yard run on the team’s first play of scrimmage that electrifies the crowd and causes the linemen to literally skip back to the sidelines shouting in triumph.

The first quarter is all Savage Horsemen as they dominate both sides of the ball, scoring four touchdowns, recovering a Troy fumble and hauling in an interception. It was a perfect quarter.

4:30 p.m. Tuesday

The theme of Tuesday’s practice is mistakes. As the team practices its offense kids are doing ten up-downs for every ball that is dropped, every throw that is off target and every block that is missed. However, it is penalties that the coaches hate. On one play the coach calls the team offsides and all 12 men hit the ground to do up-downs.

“It tends to slow everything down,” says Junior Nick Warren. He explains that with so many players playing both offense and defense a penalty on one end can really wreck havoc on the flow of the game. At the end of the practice Pettit calls the game against Troy the must win of all must wins and reminds the team of last year’s 0-33 loss against the Trojans, which causes Winebrenner to grit his teeth. “Embarrassing,” mutters Winebrenner.

Second quarter

Coach Pettit is starting to lose his cool as the Savage Horsemen start to get penalty after penalty highlighted by Cody Hoff’s unsportsmanlike penalty for taunting after his 11 yard touchdown. “I don’t care if they’re punching you in the kidney,” instructs Pettit towards Hoff. “Just stand there and take it.”

It’s not only his players that are testing his cool, but Pettit is directing his anger at the refs after a mysterious personal foul call on Fryxell. “That’s not a penalty, c’mon,” yells Pettit.

With the help of the penalties Troy marches down the field and look to score their second touchdown of the quarter. After reaching the 14 yard line, Hoff huddles up his teammates and tells them to clean up their mental mistakes. “Don’t act like me,” yells Hoff. “Keep your heads.”

On the next play the Savage Horsemen stop the Trojans on a crucial fourth down and six to take over the ball. They finish the half up 37-6.

4:00 p.m. Wednesday

You can feel a fundamental change in the attitude of the team and the coaches. No longer are they looking backwards at last week's loss, but they’re looking ahead towards Troy. As Senior Bryce Benson says, the team is looking for redemption. Redemption from the 0-33 beating they took last year and the loss last week that should have never taken place.

Practices on Wednesday concentrate on defense, part of the game that focuses on intensity and morale. It’s an intensity that Benson and his teammates try to keep maintained with big hits and a lot of yelling. “We try to keep each other as pumped up as we can,” says Benson.

Halftime

At halftime there is no cheering from the Savage Horsemen, no happiness and no congratulations. The intensity remains razor sharp. The players are yelling at each other to keep working. “We don’t let up boys,” yells Hoff.

Benson answers, “Like coach said, ‘let’s have a complete game here.”

“We need to put these guys away! Everyone remembers what happened last week,” says Winebrenner.

After halftime the third quarter results in no points for either team and Plains-Hot Springs succeeds in a new strategy that saw their offense eating up nearly 10 minutes of time and acting as a very successful substitute for defense, literally stopping the Trojans without making a tackle.

4:20 Thursday

The day before, the entire team lays on their backs staring blissfully up at the sky saying together, “oh what a beautiful day.” It’s their moment of zen, where they can stretch and relax for a few moments. It’s a fun moment for the team before two hours of intensity and focus.

Fourth quarter

The Savage Horsemen are relaxed and having fun. There will be no letdown this week as Benson scores on a safety, Fryxell runs in a 48 yard touchdown and a majority of the starters sit back on the sidelines to watch the bench players run out the clock in the blowout 46-6 win.

“It feels good to get that streak going,” says Senior Brian Green who was one of the players watching the Freshmen take over the game at the end. “We needed a win like this.”

After the victory the team lines up in front of their cheering crowd, singing their school fight songs.

With every off-key note the players are drinking in every second. This is their moment, front and center under the bright lights where they can stand proud and tall as princes of Plains, heroes of Hot Springs, kings of the gridiron.