Andale High School is a football powerhouse. They were a massive powerhouse in Class 4A and won three state championships in that classification before enrollment started to drop and they became one of the largest Class 3A schools in the state.
They now have a 43-game winning streak and one of the greatest football programs in Kansas high school football history. You can’t really argue against it anymore.
Recently, Andale beat Nickerson 108-0. Let that settle in for a bit. 108-0 is something that I never thought I would type in a column about modern-day prep football.
As many of you can imagine, the helicopter parents and trolls on Facebook and Twitter immediately started typing from their La-Z-Boys at home about how terrible Andale was and how they ran up the score.
“Just typical Andale. Classless team,” said one comment on a prep sports thread I follow.
“I can’t believe a coach would run up the score like that,” said another.
“They should be ashamed of themselves,” the list goes on and on and on.
I wonder if they would have made those comments — with their names attached to them on social media so proudly — if they would have gone to the game or read the coverage of the game or done really any looking into the game at all.
“It was a tough game to be a part of, it really was,” Andale coach Dylan Schmidt told The Wichita Eagle. “We thought about kneeling it, but we felt like that would have been more disrespectful. We tried to slow things down and send it in slower. Give their staff credit: they weren’t upset, and they realized we were doing everything we could have on our end.”
Here are some facts:
Andale is 3A because they have to be. They aren’t a private school, even if you might be surprised by that due to the heavy German Catholic roots and culture. They are, in fact, a public school that has to take in every kid within their district. Andale High School just happens to be made up of a bunch of small, but prosperous, farm towns in western Sedgwick County. If you look at one of their programs, you might notice — at most — 22 different last names.
There is no mercy rule in 11-man football. You can argue there should be, like in eight-man, but there simply isn’t one under the current rules.
According to the Wichita Eagle reporting, Andale led 78-0 at halftime but only ran 22 offensive plays to that point.
Andale played their JV and freshman players the whole second half, and much of the scoring in the second half came from Nickerson interceptions that were run back for touchdowns by Andale.
Finally, the last bit of context:
“Obviously, people are going to see the final score, but I thought coach Schmidt handled it as well as he could have,” Nickerson head coach Taylor Bauman said. “I have absolutely nothing against what he did. They put their young guys in early, and their young guys just executed better than our old guys. So there’s no hard feelings for what they did. Of course, it’s hard losing like that, but I have a lot of respect for coach Schmidt and their program.”
So this leads me to a much larger discussion. Given the context and the ample amount of information and quotes from both coaches on the game, what would lead people to comment so harshly about those coaches and kids from Andale?
