100-year-old high school's 1st football team winning more than games


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BICKNELL — There’s something new at Wayne High School — something the small southern Utah school hasn’t seen in its 100 years.

Football.

“We’ve made history,” coach Rick McCartney said. “We’re the first football to be played on this field at this high school.”

McCartney, who ran a business in Montana, moved to Torrey, Utah, to retire. He says he saw something missing in the fall for junior high students and, since he had experience coaching, helped start a football program.

He and some football-minded parents then tried to start a similar program at the high school but ran into serious defense.

Bicknell, and its surrounding communities, are baseball towns. In fact, Wayne High School’s baseball team — which also plays in the fall — has been the 1A state champion team for five of the past 12 years.

Some worry the area’s limited tax base and limited pool of athletes — the school has only 152 students — can’t support both programs. Baseball coach Scott Ellett spoke about the issue like the middle school science teacher he is.

“If you change an ecosystem there’s an adjustment that’s made within that ecosystem,” he said. “There’s a new species that’s been introduced — football — there’s gonna be an adjustment made. ... Who knows what it’ll look like in the future.”


Football aside, if they're successful and they pursue those three things (taking care of home, school and each other) in their life, we have success on the field.

–Coach Rich McCartney, Wayne HS football


This year, as the year the high school celebrates its centennial, McCartney and football boosters were able to find enough sponsors and donations of money and equipment to make a football team self-supporting. So, the school board approved the program.

That was welcome news for Patti Lee, whose sons, Ethan and Ryan, last season lived in a trailer in a church parking lot in Gunnison, which is 75 miles away, for three months so they could go to school there and play football.

“If they’re willing to move down here three months and live in a camper trailer, they must really want this," Lee said. "And I think that helped our school board decide, yeah, this is something our school wants."

McCartney has had to build the program from the ground up. Only five team members had ever played football.

“We started this year with the majority of our kids not quite sure what a first down was,” he said.

Going into the final game of the season, the Badgers’ record was 0-8, but winning isn’t first in McCartney’s priorities.

“We take care of home, we take care of school and we take care of each other,” he said.

At the end of a recent two-hour practice, the players, in full gear, sprinted for 20 minutes to raise money for a teammate’s father stricken with cancer.

“Who will give?” McCartney, a former U.S. Marine, bellowed. “We will!” the team shouted back.

After 20 minutes, many exhausted athletes collapsed to the ground.

“Football aside, if they’re successful and they pursue those three things in their life, we have success on the field,” McCartney said. “We’ll win our games. We’re right there.”

Sure enough, in the final game of the season, against Rich High School’s JV team, the Badgers had their first win. They beat the Rebels 18-12.

“You know they’ve worked so hard, they’ve given so much and trusted in us in a coaching staff and in this program, believed in us,” McCartney said, ”I’m just overwhelmed that they got something that they earned.”

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