Issue 1

page 16 / sports / the harbinger Senior Kelly Zumbehl runs free of defenders at practice. Zumbehl will start at the half-back position. photo by linda howard

running from the past Football team tries to overwrite past woes and make a mark on Sunflower League by peter goehausen They wanted to end their season. Multiple seniors on last season’s football team wanted to give up on their season. During a game. A playoff game. In the programs history, East had only beaten Olathe East once in eight tries. Their was no reason for them to believe that this game would be any different. They ended up being right as Olathe East beat them 42-14, three games away from the 6A championship and they didn’t want to be apart of it.

“They all just wanted to get the season over with,” senior half-back Kelly Zumbehl said. “ Towards the end of the season there was a lot of complaining.”

Not all of East’s football teams have ended as bad as last season, most of them have ended worse. Amidst all of the coaching changes, lack of esteem, and lack of players the East football team has only had 16 winning seasons in the 46-year school history.

Of the eight coaches East has had, only one of them has left the school a winner, William Schaake. As the first coach at East, Schaake finished 5-3-1 before starting a reappearing trend of leaving after one or two seasons.

“Staying for two or three years doesn’t help a program,” Stonner said. “You can’t develop much in that little time.”

About 21 years after Schaake, Harold Wambsgans coached at East for two seasons, and after compiling 18 losses in that time, he went to coach at West, where he won a state title four years later. Then another 20 years after Wambsgans was Todd Dain, who fled to Olathe Northwest after three seasons. Dain seemed to be on his way to rebuilding the program with back-to-back district championships, when there was only one winner and

Harmon and Wyandotte weren’t in East’s bracket. Once Dain left, so did the programs chances of rebuilding quickly. When coaches come and go quickly, there is no chance to build repetition and traditions in a football program, which is one of the main reason’s East football has always struggled.

Coaching hasn’t been the sole purpose for the struggles.

Another reason for the lack of success has been the lack of belief within the program and community.

“When peers and people in the community have a negative attitude on the team,” Stonner said, “ It is hard for the players to believe in themselves.”

In 1991, East hit rock bottom as they finished the season 0-9 under former coach Bill Stiegemeier, current South athletic director. Along with nine loses that year, East was labeled as a pushover in the Sunflower League. East has only had two winning seasons since then, and has not been able to build up the program enough to have faith in the program.

In comes the domino affect, lack of consistency in the coaching staff leads to one bad season in which the program hasn’t been able to rebuild from because of inconsistency. Lastly, when the team isn’t winning, players don’t want to be apart of a losing team when they can be take apart in one of the other activities East has to offer, which in turn leads to a lack of depth.

“The good players at East were as good as any other in the league,” former head coach Harold Wambsgan said.

“It’s just that they didn’t have as many of them.”

At East there are well over 50 extra-curricular activities to participate in, including clubs, groups, and athletics.

Whereas other Shawnee Mission schools such as North,

there aren’t even 20. Stonner believes that another struggle the program has faced is getting the depth due to the multiple activities.

In the last year alone over ten JV/V players stopped playing football due to their participation in alternate extracurricular activities and their lack of passion.

“It wasn’t worth it anymore,” junior Peter Fetterling said. “The practices were too much if you didn’t have the passion for the game.”

To fix the depth issues, Stonner’s goal is to have 140 athletes in the football program.

“There are so many activities to chose from at East,” Stonner said. “ You have to have a passion for football to chose to stick with it.”

In hopes of bringing back the passion to the East football program, Stonner has started multiple new traditions to keep the players and parents involved. Some of the traditions include; a senior canoe trip, a mother-son breakfast, and sideline passes for players parents. When kids and parents believe in the program, and are unselfish about the program, Stonner feels that there is a much better chance to succeed.

“Parents play a vital role to the program,” Stonner said.

“Everything we can do to include the family and the team will help build the program.”

With 20 returning starters, Stonner might have his best chance to help build the program with the first winning season in four years.

“If we can just put together one winning season,” Zumbehl said, “then the younger players in the program will get accustomed to winning and can build on that.”