Blue Valley Northwest football ‘stuck together’ to make history
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BVM) — Four years ago, Clint Rider endured a rough 2-7 first season as Blue Valley Northwest High School’s head football coach. But as he watched Harmony Middle School play against Oxford Middle School — the two schools that feed into Blue Valley Northwest — on what’s known as “feeder night” during that fall of 2017, he could see the promising potential of his program.
“They were both really good teams and you could see how you had all the pieces of different position groups,” Rider said. “You could see their competitive nature. … We got together on the field after that game and we talked about if we stuck together, we were going to do special things.”
Four years later, those eighth graders would make school history for Blue Valley Northwest. On Nov. 26, the Huskies captured their first-ever state title with a 41-21 victory over three-time defending state champion Derby in the Class 6A title game.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to come to a place where we didn’t dream and work toward winning championships,” Rider said. “That was definitely something we could see coming if the kids did all the right things and we didn’t mess it up as coaches.”
It required a lot of work and patience on the part of coaches and players alike for Blue Valley Northwest to finally reach its potential this year. The Huskies went 0-9 in 2018 and followed that up with another 2-7 season in 2019. But despite the team’s struggles, the relationship that the coaches had formed with this year’s senior class when they were eighth graders remained strong, and that bond helped the players and coaches make it through the tough times and remain focused on the bigger picture.
“Once this senior class became freshmen, we knew it was a matter of time, it just was keeping everybody together while things were still kind of rough,” Rider said. “One of our coaches on the staff, after my first year, he said, ‘We need to get to 2020.’ We knew this class would be juniors and have a chance to start putting some wins on the board.”
And they were right. The Huskies won four of five games on their 2020 regular season schedule which was abbreviated by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also won a first-round playoff game before losing to Blue Valley in the second round to finish the shortened season with a 5-2 record.
“It was big that we played,” Rider said. “If we didn’t play, coming into this year, we’re still 2-7. Just getting that winning season behind us, and we beat a couple of teams that we hadn’t beat in a while that year, I think it was such a confident boost for our kids. It gave them something to really look forward to coming into this year.”
This would be the year that those once promising middle schoolers would finally fulfill their potential as high school seniors. And no senior played a bigger role in the four-year process than quarterback Mikey Pauley. The Nebraska baseball commit ended his final football season by rushing for four touchdowns and throwing for another in Blue Valley Northwest’s state title game victory over Derby, but he did a lot more to get the Huskies to the point of even having the chance to compete for their first championship.
“Mikey’s been a program-first guy since he was a freshman,” Rider said. “He ended up starting a couple games as a freshman quarterback which is usually not a very good sign in our league when you’re starting a freshman quarterback, but you also saw flashes of what was to come. As a sophomore, he would come to every freshman game, every JV game, even though he was a varsity starter. … That kid means a lot to me. He’s a true competitor, he’s a gamer, he gives confidence to those on the field. I think he’s been a driving force behind us getting this thing turned around.”
With Pauley leading the way, the seniors made good on the promise that they first showed four years ago, and they reached their full potential with the help of a junior class which Rider will now be counting on to keep the program on the path to more success. At the very least, it seems as though the hardest days are now well behind the Huskies.
“It was difficult, but you always kind of knew that down the road we were eventually going to become competitive,” Rider said. “We didn’t know how good we could be, but our junior class went undefeated as freshmen and you felt like once these two classes got up there that we had a shot to make some noise. You just hope you stay healthy throughout the year and things went well for us.”
