TRAVERSE CITY -- Rome wasn't built in a day.
Neither was the Traverse City St. Francis football program.
The Gladiators own five state championships, have made the playoffs a state record 20 consecutive years and trail Beal City's record 27 playoff appearances with 24 of their own.
St. Francis will look to add to its legacy on Saturday against Hudson in the Division 7 title game at Ford Field. The defending champion Gladiators are trying to repeat for the first time in school history.
But how did they get there?
"It's consistency," former player and head coach Josh Sellers said. "Every year, the expectations are the same. They're running the same system they've been running since the early 1970s. The coaching staff doesn't accept anything less than the best. And the kids run the system from seventh grade on up."
"It's tradition," St. Francis athletic director Tom Hardy said. "What's been going on with our football program has been going on since the day Larry Sellers started it here. For that matter, the people that coached before Larry. It's the same thing year in, year out. It's commitment, it's discipline, it's year in, year out, day in, day out, getting better."
The coaches
Since 1972, three head coaches have roamed the sidelines at St. Francis -- Larry Sellers, Josh Sellers and currently Greg Vaughan. But consistency with the coaching staff doesn't end there.
Jim Carroll is in his 49th year with the Gladiators. Five other coaches have been on staff for more than a decade.
"I look at this year's seniors and it's their 42nd game. They've had some of the best coaches in the state of Michigan coaching them in practice that entire time," Vaughan said. "That consistency of having the same guy tell you the same thing and you know what the expectations are is huge. Whether you change the guy that's head coach from Larry, to Josh, to myself, we really haven't changed what the program's all about and how we go about things."
Craig Bauer, Steve Curtis and Joe Forlenza all left St. Francis at one point in their careers and became head coaches elsewhere, but have since returned to roles as assistants.
"The success we have is our coaching staff. It really is," Carroll said. "Bar none, we have the greatest coaching staff in the state. From sixth grade right on up. It's people that are dedicated, people that know what they're doing and know the program from what the varsity does right on down to the sixth and seventh grades."
Six of the 11 coaches at St. Francis are also alums, including Vaughan.
"In the '90s when Larry was coaching, we kind of changed our thinking of coaching," Carroll said. "Instead of preparing for teams, we just prepared to get better at what we do. Every week, every day, actually."
The kids
Critics of St. Francis -- and other private schools -- claim the football programs recruit from talent at the public schools.
This year at St. Francis, that doesn't seem to be the case.
According to Hardy, of the 48 players on the Gladiators playoff roster, 40 have been enrolled at St. Francis since fourth grade -- or earlier. Seven came during middle school years and one returned to the school this year after previously attending during elementary.
"Everyone looks to pull you down when you're on top and that's a convenient argument to use," Josh Sellers said. "My dad always said 'the next kid I recruit will be my first one.'"
Sellers said when he coached St. Francis earlier this decade, his teams were like this year's squad with the majority of the players enrolled at the school from an early age.
"It's generational," he said. "It's the same names over and over again."
Having kids of former players has added to the tradition at the school.
"Our kids are great kids," Carroll said. "They come from great families and their parents do a wonderful job preparing them."
Kids first get involved with Gladiator football as early as third or fourth grade as water and ball boys on the sidelines. As they grow up, they start gaining experience on the field running the same system as the varsity.
And they also get experience in the weight room.
"When I went here it wasn't as big as it is now," Vaughan said of the weight training. "Our guys are starting young in seventh and eighth grades. It's just like we treat Pop Warner or seventh- and eighth-grade football. We're not taking them in there and expecting them to do 500 pounds. We don't go do weight lifting competitions. That's not what it's all about. It's about building the fundamentals."
Hard work in the weight room has paid off for the program and the individual players. This year's roster features seniors Matt Zakrzewski and Max Bullough, both of whom will continue their football careers at Big Ten Conference schools.
"We always tell our players big players make big plays in big games," Carroll said. "We've got a lot of big players. It's not just Max and Matt, although it's certainly nice to have those two. You can probably name 16 or 17 kids that most teams would die to have. But they didn't get there by showing up. They've worked many, many hours."
The future
There is still work to be done, but this year's team is setting itself up as one of the all-time greats at St. Francis.
"This is, by far, the best team we've ever had," Carroll said. "And, it's the most talent we've ever had. The kids are so much bigger. We're going to lose a lot of it, but we're going to have some kids coming back. We're not going to have the 12 great athletes we have now, but we will have three or four to build the program on."
The Gladiators are in their third straight state final and are currently riding a 25-game winning streak.
This year's team has already set a school record for points scored (640). They've only allowed 74 points all season.
"High school sports success is cyclical," Hardy said. "We're blessed this year with a super class. Our senior kids are fantastic, from their dedication in the weight room, to making sure that future generations of football are taken care of. They take care of those little kids. We had 40 seventh and eighth graders in our weight room this summer every single day. They were being led by our seniors, being taught right, being encouraged."
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