BY MIKE ECKERT
Editor's Note: As we count down the top 10 sports stories of 2009, read them as they're published at record-eagle.com/top10sports.
TRAVERSE CITY -- The motto for the 2009 Traverse City St. Francis football team was "Iron Sharpens Iron."
Equally appropriate would have been "Taking Care of Business."
That's exactly what the Gladiators did in 2009 in successfully defending their Division 7 championship. That feat earned the No. 3 spot on this year's Top 10 sports stories.
"Coming into the season there were a lot of expectations, and that was great," St. Francis coach Greg Vaughan said after winning the state title. "It's an awesome thing to be around kids that you can put a lot on. And they were up to the challenge.
"We were not an up-and-down team this season. We were a business-like team. We were hungry. We were driven. The expectations we had for ourselves were probably higher than those (put on us) by anyone else."
It was a perfect year for the Gladiators. At no point in the season did St. Francis ever trail and the mercy rule was put into effect 10 times.
St. Francis rolled to its second 14-0 campaign in school history. And like the first time it happened in 2003, it ended with a win over Hudson in the Division 7 state championship.
This year, the Glads won 42-8 at Ford Field.
Expectations were high for St. Francis throughout the year. After winning the 2008 state title with a 41-13 victory over Ubly, the Gladiators brought back 13 seniors and a couple of juniors who had started the year before.
"What we tend to do is give the guys about a month off (after the season ends)," Vaughan said. "Then the seniors and myself get together for some leadership workshops. That's when we really started talking, after break, about if this is something we really wanted to go after, and what it was going to take."
The reality, though, was winning a state title in 2009 was something in the works for even longer than the calendar year. No St. Francis team had ever repeated as state champions, and that was something Vaughan put on the table when he was hired before the 2008 campaign.
"It was mentioned when I first got hired," Vaughan said. "It was something we talked about, if we wanted to try to achieve it, we had to win it that first year. Those seniors those first year were awesome leaders, which led into this year. To be honest, these kids have been working since seventh grade. Physically, it started a long time ago."
The years of preparation showed.
St. Francis rolled to a 9-0 finish in the regular season. The playoff opened with lopsided home wins over Inland Lakes (54-0) and Rudyard (54-8) to send St. Francis to the regional final in Marquette against Ishpeming.
After battling the flu during the week, the Gladiators found themselves in a dogfight for the first time all season. In fact, the Hematites had a chance to win the game with a two-point conversion in the final 15 seconds, but the St. Francis defense held strong and eventually got the 28-20 win in overtime.
And it was all gravy from there.
An upset-minded Ravenna team returned to the state semifinals at Ferris State, but the Gladiators put the Bulldogs away with a 34-7 win. And after 28 unanswered points in the first half of the state title game against Hudson, the Division 7 title was virtually never in doubt.
For the year, St. Francis averaged nearly 49 points a content. Defensively the numbers were even stronger as the Glads shutout five opponents and only gave up 82 points in the 14-game season.
As for 2010, the Gladiators will lose a lot of starters on both sides of the ball, but the cupboard won't be bare for Vaughan. He'll have quarterback Riley Bullough back for his junior year, as well as two of the 2009 team's top running backs in Joe Kerridge and John Zakrzewski.
