Rise Up

Are you a fan of true football or sports stories? Are you a history buff? Are inspirational tales your thing? Do you like seeing how faith can change a culture? Did you live through the COVID pandemic?

If you said 'yes' to any of these, then this book is for you!

In one of the most tumultuous times in recent American history - amid a raging pandemic, societal shutdown, economic hardship, rioting throughout the country and a heated Presidential election - a small-town 8-man football season offered hope, joy and inspiration. The height of the season shut out the chaos for a little while and ended in a totally unexpected and wild event that was magical to the winners and their community.

In some ways, the story of the 2020 Little River, Kan, high school football season began with a deep sense of unfinished business. On March 12, 2020, Covid-19 shut down the state basketball tournament, taking with it Little River's best shot in 20 years of becoming Class 1A Champions. Within days, Kansas became the first state to shut down schools - along with track, softball and baseball seasons - for the rest of the school year.

And yet, a part of the story started 50 years earlier in 1970 when a high school athlete - later a legendary coach inducted into four halls of fame - played as part of two back-to-back undefeated football championship teams. Then there's the 1956 8-man exhibition game - the first ever played in Kansas, ultimately leading to more than 100 8-man teams in the state - a game with direct ancestral ties to Little River's 2020 team.

It's impossible to separate these events. Each contributed in some way to what became an incredible football season, a record-breaking state championship game that propelled yet another coach into legendary status and the continuation of a century-long, inter-generational sports legacy in a town of fewer than 600 people just 120 miles south of the exact center of the U.S. It's a legacy that also produced a professional women's basketball player, an Olympic runner and a 91-game basketball win streak that remained the state record for nearly 20 years.

The football season lasted 86 days from the first game to the final game. For every one of those days, players, coaches, parents and community members lived with a constant sense of uncertainty and of racing the clock, fighting an opponent no one could see; an opponent that never tired and took out teams throughout the state because of Covid cases and quarantines. There was also the mounting pressure of facing opponent after opponent ranked ahead of them all season long: undefeated teams who steamrolled everyone in their path; athletic teams steeped in big, senior players. Team after team favored to win.

And in between, there were heartbreaking losses, a devastating injury and a player battling a new diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. It's no wonder their coach called them "overcomers."

To the rest of the world, Little River was not the team to beat in 2020.

Until they were.