Great read on a small town football program

The last line

"How big is the football family? The high school enrollment of 102 includes 68 boys, and 50 of them play football. "

Wow...

Stephen-Argyle: America's most extraordinary football team


Stephen-Argyle football players held hands while running sprints during a recent predawn practice. The Storm is three victories from breaking the state record for consecutive victories.

The Stephen-Argyle Storm practices winning football games before the sun comes up. It must work, considering the team has won nearly 60 in a row. And the early rise is only the beginning of the story.

There’s no dogging it at Stephen-Argyle predawn football practices, despite the above evidence. This pooch merely wanted to join some of the Storm players recently in a fumble drill. The team has won 58 games in a row and the past four Nine-man championships.


STEPHEN, MINN. — The Stephen-Argyle football team was running sprints, 100 yards at a crack, during practice last week. The players had completed one down-and-back circuit when coach Mark Kroulik hollered in a joyful voice, "It's a beautiful day!"

The hard-breathing players, some with hands on knees, responded in unison, "Beautiful day!"

"Yes, it is," said the coach before blowing his whistle and sending the boys on another length-of-the-field conditioning journey.

Actually, it was going to be a beautiful day ... once the sun came up.

The sprints took place at 6:15 a.m., under the lights as the world waited for sunrise. The team was on the field at 5:45 and worked out until 7:45. The players then showered, had breakfast and were ready for school to begin at 8:30.

It was just another day for the most extraordinary football team in America.

The Stephen-Argyle Storm:

• Plays Nine-man football.

• Has won the past four Nine-man championships, a state-record title run.

• Owns a 58-game winning streak and is closing in on the state record of 60 games without a loss.

• Follows a playbook that contains no plays.

• Has a three-year starting lineman with a prosthetic leg.

• Has been practicing under the early-morning lights since the 1960s.

Back then, many football players had farm chores after school. So practice was moved to the morning and has stayed that way ever since, even though farming is no longer the reason. At Stephen-Argyle, that's just the way it is.

"We like having practice in the morning," said 6-1, 235-pound senior guard Kolby Gruhot, who lost his left leg below the knee in a farm accident when he was 3 years old. "Then we have lots of time after school for homework or whatever's going on."

That also means early bedtimes, with players and coaches hitting the sack as soon as 9 p.m. Student manager Johnny Cleem is usually the first one awake, rising as early as 3:15 a.m. He watches ESPN's "SportsCenter" ("The guys always ask me what happened in sports last night") before arriving at school and turning on the field lights between 4:45 and 5 a.m.

• • •

Stephen (population 708) and Argyle (656) are nine miles apart on Hwy. 75 in far northwestern Minnesota. From here -- where wheat, sugar beets and football are king, the nearest Big Mac is 45 miles away and the earth is flatter than a cheap clarinet -- it's one-third of the distance to drive to Winnipeg, Manitoba (120 miles) than Minneapolis (360).

But the November destination for everybody in these two villages is Minneapolis, the Metrodome and the Prep Bowl.

Before the schools in Argyle and Stephen merged in 1996, Argyle won Nine-man titles in 1981 and 1986 and Stephen was the champ in 1992. Stephen-Argyle has been to the state playoffs every year since 1996, winning its first post-merger championship in 1999.

If the Storm wins another title this season, it will match Mahnomen's record of six overall championships. Eden Prairie, Totino-Grace and Burnsville also own five titles.

Stephen-Argyle's last loss came in the 2002 state semifinals, when Nicollet thumped the Storm 38-16 at the Metrodome. The Minnesota record for consecutive football games without a defeat is 60; Minneapolis Washburn went 58-0-2 between 1966 and 1972.

If Stephen-Argyle keeps winning, it will tie that record on Oct. 5 against Kittson County Central and break it in the Oct. 16 regular-season finale against Northern Freeze at Newfolden.

But the record is not a big topic of conversation here, at least on the football team. "We don't talk about the streak," Kroulik said. "We're on a 4-0 streak this year. [The record is] an elephant, and it's not a bad elephant. But it's going to end and you don't want that elephant falling on high school kids."

As senior quarterback Kip Thorstenson said: "This team is a family. It's not so much about the wins, but about being out there together."

How big is the football family? The high school enrollment of 102 includes 68 boys, and 50 of them play football.

The Stephen-Argyle playbook is not a playbook at all. It is 16 pages and a staple, filled with goals, rules, expectations, guidelines and quotes from a couple of philosophers:

• "Football is like life ... it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority."

• "First say to yourself what you would be. Then do what you have to do."

The first quote is from Vince Lombardi. The second -- printed on the cover of the playbook -- is from the Greek philosopher Epictetus, who certainly knew more about motivation than he did about Nine-man football.

Football parents receive a similar playbook. But nobody -- players, coaches, parents -- ever sees a play diagrammed on paper. The Storm has only eight basic running plays and a couple of pass plays in their Wing-T offense. They are mastered through on-field repetition instead of book learning.

"We started running this offense in 1984," said Kroulik, who was then an assistant at Argyle. "Most of the kids from that 1984 team could still run the plays."

Almost all the top football players also play basketball. Assistant football coaches Bryce Lingen and Jamie Lunsetter are the head coaches for boys' and girls' basketball. The other sports offered at Stephen-Argyle are volleyball, track and golf.

Most of the football players lift weights three days a week in the summer. And if they don't show up in the weight room, everybody knows about it. One of the gathering spots for the locals is the Cenex gas station in Argyle.

"The farmers sit around and talk football," said senior running back Kyle Gratzek. "If you aren't in the weight room, people talk about it."

• • •

The Storm has won four games this season by scores of 46-19, 41-14, 41-7 and 58-14. On Friday they will play host to Clearbrook-Gonvick (coached by Kroulik's son, Casey). Stephen-Argyle's biggest rival in the Top of the State Conference is Kittson County Central. They will meet a week from Friday; the Storm will go for No. 60 in the streak in that game if it wins this week.

Kittson County Central's Terry Ogorek is in his 28th year of coaching, so he knows all about Stephen-Argyle.

"We've got a file on them that's two, three times as thick as on any other team," Ogorek said. "We prepare harder for them than anybody. They're the program that everybody looks up to. If you want to model yourself after anybody, model yourself after the best."

And wake up early.

Great story.

There in the band ;D