Spartans tackle Elko and years of dominance by north schools

Spencer Patterson

Thursday, Nov. 19, 1998 | 10:41 a.m.

When Cimarron-Memorial takes the field Friday for Nevada's 4A football championship, the Spartans won't just have Elko to contend with.

The locals also will be battling recent history, which has seen the northern representative dominate the large-school matchup since 1984.

In the last 14 state title games, northern teams have come out on top 10 times. The only exceptions have been Rancho in 1988, Eldorado in 1991, Clark in 1993 and Western in 1996.

Statistically, Southern Nevada holds considerable advantages in number of 4A schools (17 to 13) and average 4A enrollment (2,487 to 1,672). The numbers would indicate southern dominance.

Yet the Las Vegas area's recent population boom hasn't done much to reverse the trend.

Opinions vary about why the North has had so much success in Nevada's biggest prep football game.

Some say high school football gets more support there. Others say basketball's prominence here has a negative effect on football. And some say success is contagious and the north has the winning bug.

But most everyone agrees on one thing. When Elko, a rural school of 1,345 students arrives to take on Cimarron, the state's second-largest high school with 3,301 students, Indian fans will show up at Sam Boyd Stadium expecting history to be more than enough to carry their club through.

Only game in town

In large part, the north's recent dominance can be traced to the overwhelming importance placed on high school football in towns like Reno, Carson, Douglas and Elko.

"That's what you do there on Friday nights," said Joe Sellers, who retired last week after 23 years as Wooster's head coach. "In any rural area or one high school town, all the support is going to go to one team."

Spartans coach Greg Spencer noticed a difference last year when his team traveled to Reno to take on Hug High School, a team that perennially finishes in the northern zone cellar.

"The stands were full," Spencer said. "It's just an importance put on football up there. These kids grow up looking forward to playing high school football, and the community and the schools are involved in it."

With one public high school apiece in Douglas, Fallon, Lowry, South Tahoe, Elko and Carson, two in Sparks (Reed and Sparks) and only five in Reno (Wooster, Hug, Reno, Galena and McQueen), northern coaches also don't have to deal with ever-changing zone boundaries like their southern counterparts.

"It's hard for a program to get going when in eight years, we have our zone changed twice," Spencer said. "It's like starting over again."

It's also hard for coaches to build their programs when basketball and baseball are the sport of choice for so many of Las Vegas' top athletes.

"Up there, you have a true winter, so kids aren't outside throwing a baseball year round," Cheyenne coach George Perry said. "They're probably inside, lifting weights."

Wooster and McQueen

In some ways, the north's success can be traced directly to Sellers' arrival at Wooster in 1976.

"When you look at it, he kind of turned things around," Nevada Interscholastic Activities Director Jerry Hughes said. "He's been responsible for how they play football in the north."

From 1964 until 1983, the south routinely dominated the state's large-school football championship, taking 17 of 20 titles during that span.

But starting with Sellers' first year, the north began closing the gap between the two areas, keeping scores closer and closer in the season's finale.

"We started to be able to play with them," Sellers said. "There were some good games, but it seemed like the south always came out on top."

To prepare his club for the annual state championship, Sellers began scheduling games against top out-of-state opponents early each season. He encouraged his players to get into the weight room during the off-season, long before it was en vogue to do so.

But it wasn't until Sellers' school developed a rivalry with nearby McQueen that the north took its stranglehold on the large-school state title.

With Ken Dalton's arrival as Lancers' football coach in 1979, the two Reno high schools started each season knowing it would come down to Wooster and McQueen for the northern zone title.

"That rivalry really has something to do with the way they've dominated," Hughes said. "They both prepare well and teach physical football."

The desire to defeat one-another fueled the Colts and Lancers to new heights throughout the 1980s and early '90s, with one of the two schools reaching the state finals in every year but one between 1985 and 1997.

And considering what the two programs went through just to overcome one another and get to the championship all those years, it's little wonder they rarely had trouble with their southern foe in the finale.

"Wooster and McQueen have been powerhouses for years," said Perry, whose club lost to the Colts in the 1995 title game. "The kids hear a lot about them, and sometimes they're probably intimidated."

This year, that won't be a concern for the Spartans, who fell to McQueen by a touchdown in last year's championship. The Indians haven't been in a state championship since 1985, when they captured the 2A crown.

Even so, the ever-cautious Spencer isn't taking anything for granted. After all, he knows his opponents have history on their side.