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I was shocked Friday.
Not because the Leavenworth football team, 1-6, won its first football game. Honestly, I sort of expected it since Wyandotte’s two early season wins came against lesser competition and the Pioneers have been harden by a meat-grinding schedule.
Not because the Pioneers utterly dominated the Bulldogs in every phase of the contest. Leavenworth has had many moments this season where it looked like a legit 6A football team. Those moments however, were always followed by mistakes (sometimes a lot of mistakes) thus hiding the team’s progress.
No, I was shocked because of the passion I saw from the team throughout — before, during and at the end of the night especially. This team is hungry. They want to win so badly, you can see it through their body language, words, faces and actions. They are playing for something, or I should say someone.
This Leavenworth football team is playing for head coach Kevin Kopecky.
The group is absolutely enthralled with their leader and that impact cannot be more obvious. Kopecky has a team that could have easily given up such a long time ago and yet here they are, 1-0 in districts and playing the best football they have in a long time.
The team wants to win and not for themselves, but for the coach that is teaching them how to play the game of football. They want to make Kopecky proud and that is pushing them to improvement.
A moment from Friday stuck with me. After the handshake lines were completed, the Leavenworth players raced to the 20-yard line where they simply jumped up and down, shouting in joy and excitement.
Before Kopecky could even settle them down to speak, he was showered in Gatorade. Then the Pioneers took their coach, raised him up on their shoulders and pushed him as high they could.
The screams crescendo, smiles blazed and for what seemed like a lifetime, they lifted him higher and higher and higher.
A spontaneous celebration that showed what they all truly wanted. They weren’t thinking of themselves, but of the man who helped them win. The man who made them better.
The whole thing just solidified the fact that the Leavenworth football team has a leader they care about, and for that reason, I think someday this team will be successful.
Brent Lager joined the Leavenworth Times in 2010 after a year and a half of covering high school sports for the Platte County Citizen. Before that, he previously worked for the Columbia Missourian as well as Cumulus Broadcasting in Columbia, Mo.
