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WINNER, S.D. — Backed by years of sustained success, Winner High School is a blue blood in the world of small-town football in South Dakota.
Located in rural Tripp County, Winner boasts nine state championships in its storied history, including six since 2009. The Warriors haven’t lost a regular season game since 2018.
Winner’s ability to consistently win is rooted in a devotion to the sport that extends from the players all the way up to the coaching staff.
Look no further than the “Godfather” of the program, Harvey Naasz.
It was Naasz who picked the program off the grounds of mediocrity as head coach during the 1970s and turned it into a three-time state winner through the 1980s.
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After his retirement, he maintained his commitment to the team by diligently mowing the grass at Warrior Field each summer and fall all the way through the 2023 season. Naasz passed away on Dec. 10, 2023, surrounded by his family in his home in Winner. However, the passion and consistency he infused into the program lives on.
It’s on full display each fall Friday when fans pack the north bleachers or gather on the top of the grassy hill along the stadium’s south side, usually to watch the Warriors thrash an over-matched opponent.
But more importantly, the same passion is visible at 6:30 a.m. on an ordinary Tuesday in June, when 34 dreary-eyed high schoolers make their way to the facility Naasz so delicately cared for to put in the work necessary to maintain the program’s legacy.
“It always pushes you,” senior August Bartels said. “You know what’s expected of you.”
Considered one of the most physically imposing football teams not just in Class 11B but in the entire state, Winner football’s hard-nosed running game and suffocating defense isn’t a credit to any special sauce.
The formula is simple: Show up to practices day-by-day, year-by-year, and you’ll steadily become stronger and more athletic.
During the summer, that means attending three optional training programs per week available to boys participating in all sports, the majority of whom play football in the fall, followed by a combination of wrestling or basketball in the winter and track and field or baseball in the spring.
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The team goes out to the stadium to do agility drills, then heads to the weight room, working on different muscle groups depending on the day.
“Weightlifting and those agility drills is not something that you get better at within a week,” head coach Trent Olson said. “It takes a summer, it takes time. It takes years for that kind of development, but we want to be a developmental program where kids take steps every year and get better and better.
“When they’re freshmen, they don’t look all that impressive, but after four years, when they’re seniors, they become really good players,” he added. “They’re the guys that make the program keep going.”
Assistant coach Chris Aid and athletic director Brett Gardner have retooled the weightlifting program in recent years to focus less on strictly building muscle and more on increasing all-around strength and flexibility.
The goal is to build up endurance and power, so when fall camp officially kicks off the second week of August, the team isn’t focusing on conditioning, but on playing the game.
How things play out each morning is simple.
Olson, and whichever assistants are there, are mostly hands off, letting the team’s leaders run the workout. On this particular Tuesday morning, Olson’s only around because it rained on his alfalfa fields overnight, so he isn’t able to bale them. He stands with a Coca-Cola in hand and a Minnesota Twins cap on head, offering instruction only when necessary.
When the group migrates into the weight room, Olson doesn’t need to follow them in. The team, led by the seniors, already knows what to do.
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“I’d say most of us have been doing it since we were in sixth, seventh grade, so it hasn’t really changed,” senior Karson Keiser said. “It’s just the same things. Getting better at it, getting quicker.
“We have a huge team, and we always push each other to get better, no matter what it is, just workouts, open gyms, just going to play catch on the field,” Keiser continued. “We’re all close, and we all try to push each other and make sure we get everybody there as much as we can.”
There isn’t anything flashy about the athletic infrastructure Winner has to offer. When the new field was established 30 years ago, the school loaded the yellow grandstand from the old stadium on a truck and plopped it right where it stands today.
Arguably the most important aspect of any athletic facility, the school’s weight room, has been in the same spot for several decades, wedged into a room off to the side of the armory basketball court. It’s about as wide as a hallway with a low ceiling and equipment packed in like a can of sardines. It’s used by every team.
A recent plan was formulated to move wrestling and cheer and dance into a brand-new building, then move the weight room into the wrestling room — a change that would have tripled the weight room’s size.
However, the original estimated cost of just over $1 million more than doubled when construction prices “went through the roof,” Olson said, forcing the school to scrap the project.
Fortunately for the program, a lack of new amenities hasn’t impacted the participation numbers. The biggest advantage Winner football has recourse-wise, in fact, is its manpower.
Enrollment plays a factor. The Warriors had an male average daily membership (ADM) in the fall of 2023 of 100 for classes 9-11, well above the 56.0001 minimum male ADM required to play 11-man football. But enrollment alone isn’t a clear advantage compared to other top teams in the classification. In 2023, Class 11B champion Hot Springs had a male ADM of 96 for grades 9-11.
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The key is getting a high participation rate. Last year’s team had 52 players listed on the roster, among the largest roster sizes in Class 11B.
“It’s about making it enjoyable. Winning makes things enjoyable. Let’s not kid ourselves,” Olson said. “ … Numbers are huge to have, especially in football. Depth, for practice, all those kinds of things, it’s important. But the biggest thing is, you want kids to have an enjoyable experience. When you keep getting more and more kids out every year, we don’t have a huge school, but the majority of boys are out for football, that’s important, because it tells you that the kids are enjoying it.”
Developing a program that wins constantly is no small feat. The kids know what they’re working towards, and want to be a part of it. And when they’re playing at Warrior Field on Friday nights in the fall, a place where winning has become the standard for decades, it makes everything worth it.
“I’d say it’s unbelievable,” Keiser said. “The stands are usually always filled. When you look up at the hill and you see all these cars and everyone’s sitting on the hill, I’d say it’s the best feeling you can feel on a Friday night with the lights on.”
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