Head coach Christien Ozores
To the untrained eye, Salina South’s football team headed into the Class 5A playoffs last week looking much like its recent predecessors.
Yes, the 1-7 regular-season record was identical to 2024, with the lone victory against winless Campus. Throw in a first-round visit to West No. 3 seed Andover, and the postseason prospects weren’t much better.
But a deeper dive into South’s performance leading up to the playoffs told a different story, and last Friday the Cougars showed why with a stunning 24-20 upset.
Now the secret is out. This is not the same South team that for the past decade has known nothing but futility.
Senior linebacker Gabe Wheelbarger
“It feels unreal,” South senior linebacker Gabe Wheelbarger said this week as the Cougars (2-7) prepared to go on the road again this Friday to face sixth-seeded Liberal (7-2) in the second round. “Obviously, I’ve never had that chance or opportunity in my high school career, and now that I’m going out there and doing it my senior year, I feel a lot more accomplished.”
Wheelbarger and South’s other 16 seniors aren’t alone. Not since the 2014 Cougar team went 10-2 and advanced to the 5A quarterfinals have they had a winning record, and the last postseason victory came against Liberal in 2017.
Senior receiver Jaxon Myers
“It felt good, just going in there having an underdog mentality like we’ve got,” said senior wide receiver Jaxon Myers. “We’ve got nothing to lose, just going there and fighting.
“The results showed, and we just battled, played our game and came up with a win.”
The signature victory could not have come at a better time for South, which had not beaten any team other than Campus since 2020. After opponents outscored the 2024 Cougars by an average margin of 46-11, they have closed that gap this year to 33-24, including single-digit losses to Maize South (38-35), Valley Center (29-23) and Goddard (34-27).
“It was definitely good,” said Myers, who leads South in receiving yards with 687 on 37 catches with seven touchdowns. “Those close losses kind of prepared us, like the end goal, like we’re right there. We’ve just got to find a way.
“We always came up short. We just had to find a way to finish. And we managed to finish on Friday.”
Even then, things did not come easy for the Cougars. As had been the case in other narrow losses, Andover was driving deep in South territory with just over a minute left when junior Maddox Girard forced a fumble and recovered it at the 5-yard line to thwart the Trojans’ potential winning score.
“The kids worked hard for it,” said second-year South coach Christien Ozores. “It’s something we’ve talked about, that we’ve just got to stay with it and keep working hard, and they believe in that, even though we lost a couple of close games.
“They’ve stayed bought in, and so we’re seeing some of those wins come through. Andover is a really good team, and we knew that we had to play well, and I thought we were more physical. Obviously, we ended up making winning plays at the end and we took care of business.”
Beating Andover served as validation of sorts both for South and Ozores, who faced a similarly daunting rebuilding task in his first head coaching job at Russell. After two years as an assistant, he compiled a two-year 10-9 records with the Broncos, including a 6-4 mark and a playoff victory in 2022.
“I think that’s kind of what really got me interested in this job was, being at Russell for four years and starting to turn around a program there,” said Ozores, who saw the Cougars snap a 30-game losing streak last year against Campus and then this year season dominate the Colts, 55-6. “We had success and won a playoff game for the first time in 40-something years, and then just wanting a new challenge.
“Wanting to do that with kids here that haven’t won so much. We were not winning as much as we probably should right now, but at least we’re competing, and we found a way to win this last one Friday night.”
For seniors such as Wheelbarger and Myers, they won’t end their high school careers with a winning record, far from it. But they can take pride in the fact that they have helped steer South in the right direction.
“I’ve noticed that we’re more excited about games now,” said Wheelbarger, who ranks second on the team with 74 tackles. “I think that’s just going back to how hard we’ve been working.
“Not that we weren’t before, but we’re putting it to use now in games and actually showing what we can do. It feels good that I’m leaving it better than when I came in.”
The fact that South is the smallest school in the rugged Ark Valley Chisholm Trail League’s top division hasn’t made the rebuilding job any easier for the Cougars.
“There are no gimme games,” Ozores said. “Everything’s a battle, and the kids know that, and they bought into that.
“We told them going into it that we’re not expecting a winning season, but we want to compete and win games and upset some people like we did. We’re ready for the playoffs because of our schedule.”
