Portrait of champions

W
hat do champions look like?
The obvious answer is that they are the ones hoisting the trophy at the end of the season. They are the ones pouring Gatorade over their coach’s head. They are the ones wearing the rings and heading off to Disneyland. They are the ones with huge smiles on their faces and tears of joy streaming down their cheeks as they celebrate their final victory of the season.
Everyone knows that these things indicate who the champs are, however, last Friday the Dogies displayed the true heart of a champion.
Early in the season, no one would have expected to see what the end of the year would bring. Just a few weeks in, the team was winless and as Homecoming week rolled around, the program appeared to be broken — and I wondered if we would even continue to have a season.
With all of the challenges facing players and coaches, it might have been the easy thing to just give in and give up to the adversity which just never seemed to quit assaulting them.
Just when all seemed lost, the team, the coaches and the parents decided to commit themselves to turning things around.
In their four contests leading up to the Homecoming game against Tongue River, the Dogies had scored only once, which happened in their game against Upton/Sundance. 
But, Homecoming marked the turning point in the season for the team. 
Rather than let the disappointment of the first four weeks of the season take them over, the Dogies dug down and began to push to give themselves a chance at a playoff berth.
They got their first win
of the season on Homecoming night. The fans were elated, the players and coaches were jacked, and from there you could see the shift. You could see the change in how the players carried themselves. You could see that there was a new determination in everyone.
From there on out, each game I got to watch I could literally see the team leave their hearts on the field.
The grit and determination and “never say die” attitude they played with in every game led them to victories over Glenrock and Burns,
and though they dropped
their game against Torrington, they gave the No. 2-ranked ‘Blazers all they could
handle in order to scrape
out their win.
The success the team had in the second half of their season, coupled with other teams doing what we needed them to do, the stars aligned for the Dogies to have a shot at making the playoffs for the first time in four years. 
It all came down to last Friday’s game against Wheatland. A win meant a first round play-off berth, while a loss meant the end
of the season. 
I could not have been more proud of the team as I watched them battle the Bulldogs for every second of the 48 minutes of the game. They fought, they clawed, they made amazing plays, and despite going in as the undisputed underdog, Newcastle controlled the game right up until the end. 
I watched Slade Roberson dragging Bulldog defenders down the field, refusing to be brought down. I watched Josh Womack and Jacob Prell harass the quarterback with every snap. I watched Tanner Neilsen, Holden McConkey, Quint Perino, Hogan Tystad, Dylan McFarlin and Aidan Chick make huge plays to get their team into the end zone and on the board.
The Dogies gave it everything they had right up to the final buzzer, and then I watched as the heartbreak
set in.
There weren’t a lot of dry eyes in the stands that night, myself included, as we watched these young men suffer a loss that would not be easy to forget.
But, it was in how they played the game, how they overcame the demons from early in the season, and how they handled themselves with grace and dignity which proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are champions, no matter what the scoreboard said at the end of the night.
It was a good night to be a Dogie, and they will always be champions in my book.