When Knights Were Kings

A.J. Scarborough remembers it clearly.

It was a September road game at Essex and teammate Nate Meier returned to the huddle angry and frustrated.
Was Meier injured? Did a Knight miss a block? A defender take a cheap shot?

“He was mad he got tackled,” said Scarborough, the former Fremont-Mills quarterback, recalling Meier, the all-state running back who was at the time averaging a mere 14 yards per carry on the season, was upset he was tackled before the end zone.
Scarborough said the laughs in the huddle that night raised even the coaches’ eyebrows.

“I told him, ‘Nate, it’s football man, you’re going to get tackled, it’s OK,’” Scarborough said. “That sticks out to me. It wasn’t enough we had a big play. We got to the point we were at such a high level, we expected to be great on every play.”

During that 2011 season, the Knights were great. Perhaps not on every play but on enough that a decade later, that 13-0 Fremont-Mills team – the one that averaged 68 points per game, won by an average margin of 50 points per game and defeated Murray 81-0 in the state championship game – is still largely considered the best Eight-person football team in Iowa history.

On Friday night, Fremont-Mills will celebrate the 10 year anniversary of that 2011 team at Homecoming in Tabor.

A decade on and the coaches and players that were a part of that historic team can hardly believe it’s been that long. All agree, however, they were a part of something special that to this day remains an indelible moment for the town of Tabor, the school and the record books of Eight-player football in the state.

And it started with lightning.

* * *

The clouds rolled in dark and ominous on the opening night of the 2011 football season. Rain was in the forecast alright, but that didn’t preemptively end Fremont-Mills football home opener against Lenox that night. It was the lightning strikes crackling across the sky. The Knights would not play in week one.

The game would not be made up and Fremont-Mills, ranked No. 3 in the state, would have to wait a week.
Meier, the running back, didn’t waste the night off.

“I took my pads off and went in the weight room and worked out,” said Meier said, who went on to play football at Iowa and now works in fiber optics for Verizon.

The Knights would make their debut the following week, routing East Union 56-8.

But the weight room would feature prominently in that season – and in the preceding off-season – as the Knights processed their season-ending semifinal loss the year before and set their sights on getting back to the UNI-Dome.

“We felt like we were in a good spot coming back,” said Fremont-Mills head coach Jeremy Christiansen. “We lost a good senior class the year before and they did a great job being leaders and getting us to where we were. But we definitely felt very confident in our situation and personnel going into 2011.”

Scarborough feels like the 2011 season actually began in 2010 – moments after their 45-34 loss to eventual champion Armstrong-Ringsted.

“It left this burning desire in us to come back,” said Scarborough, who is now a surgical resident at Creighton University. “Just knowing we could do it, to get there was big. F-M had never been to the semifinals or the finals or anywhere near it. To get there and being so close and losing gave us the confidence that we needed that next year. There was no other option than winning a state title.”

The weight room is where the Knights would take their first steps toward the 2011 state title. Scarborough doubts there were many 3A and 4A teams that worked as hard as that Knights’ team that off-season.

“We’d have 20 guys in the weight room or in the gym or on the football field every single morning from the end of the football season leading up into the fall of 2011,” he said. “Our effort and our desire to win a state title was crazy. Everyone was on the same page and everyone completely bought in.”

Christiansen and his assistants saw it too.

“That group of kids, you didn’t have to remind them where the weight room was,” he said. “If there were conversations or expectations it was ‘This is the playbook to get where we want to be.’ They did a very good job understanding that. I don’t recall looking for guys on those weightlifting mornings. Virtually everyone was there. They took it upon themselves to plan and prepare. They competed against each other that summer.”

The off-season workout program was focused on individual improvement but it was just as much about teamwork, accountability and unity, Meier said.

“You could count on one hand how many guys missed (workouts),” Meier said. “That’s the difference between that team and the other teams we played. It was more of a ‘We’re going to go get this, it’s not going to come to us.’ We had to go get it.”

Following that delayed season-opening rout, the Knights rattled off seven wins in a row by scores like 88-8, 69-6 and 65-12 and were largely unchallenged.

But another team, just 15 miles down the road, would pose the biggest challenge to Fremont-Mills’ efforts to win a state title.

East Mills was fast, athletic and well-coached. The Wolverines were ranked in the top 5 when the then No. 2 ranked Knights came to Malvern on a chilly late October night.

Christiansen, his assistant coaches, the players and the then estimated crowd of more than 2,000 in attendance all knew the Wolverines posed the greatest threat.

“They were undefeated and very good,” Christiansen said of the Wolverines. “They were the polar opposite of us offensively.

Defensively they were physical and fast. We knew it was going to be a collision of two very different offenses. That game was definitely marked on our schedule.”

The Knights jumped out to an early 21-0 lead with its ground and pound offense led by Meier. It looked like they’d cruise to just another easy win but the Wolverines battled back.

“They could score very quickly,” Christiansen recalled of East Mills trimming the lead to one score in the second quarter.

The Knights led 50-34 at the half. A defensive adjustment and a heavy dose of Meier in the second half allowed the Knights to pull away for the 80-49 win.

The two teams combined for 1,136 yards and 129 points. The Wolverines’ 467 yards and 49 points were both season-highs against the Knight defense.

East Mills coach Kevin Schafer felt like his 2011 team was one of his best in his three decades on the sideline. He also felt like they matched up well with F-M talent-wise – save for one player.

“Nate Meier,” Schafer said. “Obviously, they had many good players, don’t get me wrong. But he was such a difference-maker.”

Difference-maker would certainly describe Meier’s night against the Wolverines. He ran for a then state-record 500 yards and scored 10 touchdowns.

Schafer called Meier the “most dominant player he’s seen on both sides of the ball.”

“He had a drive,” Schafer said. “He was a FOOTBALL PLAYER. He played angry.”

Meier played just two series in the fourth quarter before leaving the game.

“I felt like I ran for a lot but not 500,” he said. “When it came out that I did, I was like ‘Holy cow.’ And 10 touchdowns, man. But that first game against East Mills had so much hype and we were prepared and we got what we were expecting: a dog fight until the end.”
Fremont-Mills and East Mills would rematch in the state quarterfinals two weeks later. The Knights would prevail in that one 58-22.

“We took a few more shots on the edge a little bit more knowing they were going to be sucked up defensively,” Christiansen said.
“The second time we played them, it was a mismatch,” Schafer said. “We knew it was going to be tough for us to stop their ground and pound with Meier. We felt when they ran sideways we were OK. But when they ran straight at us with him, it was tough. If you didn’t hit him by the line of scrimmage it was going to be a big gain every time.”

Looking back on that season and the two victories over East Mills, Logan Wood, a starting middle linebacker on that Knight’s team, said the consensus was they had essentially already played a de facto state championship game.

“The final score may not have shown it, but they kept coming back at us every punch we’d throw,” Wood, who works as an athletic trainer for the Regional Clarinda Health Center at Clarinda High School. “That was one of the most fun games I’ve ever played in. They were a really good team. I’d say they were the best team we played that year, that makes them the second best team in the state.”

The Knights would rematch with top ranked and defending champion Armstrong-Ringsted once again in the semifinals.
Christiansen never discussed revenge in the rematch. Never mentioned the previous year’s results or the fact his team was the underdog

Then again, the coach didn’t have to mention any of that. His team already knew it.

“We always talked about ‘pursuing for continuous improvement,’ that was our motto that year,” Christiansen said. “We knew they’d be a gage for us. We felt the year before that yes, they won the game but there could have been a different outcome. I think we did have a chip on our shoulders and we wanted to check that box and get on to the championship game.”

There would be no slow start or nerves this time around. Fremont-Mills jumped out to a big lead early and never looked back. Final score: 69-26.

The Knights would play for a state title.

*    *    *

81-0

In football terms, that’s a scoring explosion.

On Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, it was the worst blow out in Iowa high school football state championship game history.

Fremont-Mills 81, Murray 0.

Christiansen liked his team’s focus, their intensity and their confidence heading into the championship game but not even he saw coming what happened on the field against Murray.

The score was 34-0 after a quarter. Midway through the second quarter, leading 61-0, Christiansen gave every senior a rushing attempt. And the coach went into halftime confident and relaxed.

“We kind of new a little before half we had it wrapped up and just needed to get to the end,” he said.
Wood, the former linebacker, and his Knight teammates didn’t take Murray lightly before the game. They fought through the same gauntlet of post-season games the Knights did and he was nervous.

That unease lasted about half a quarter.

“We were confident but I don’t feel we were an arrogant team,” Wood said. “We felt confident going into but it’s a state championship game. They were a good team for getting there. Once we redeemed ourselves against Armstrong-Ringsted though we did feel like it was our state championship. We weren’t overconfident. We went out and performed and did what we were supposed to and had fun doing it.”

Prior to the championship game, Scarborough recalls seeing the Murray players lined up in the tunnel and thinking about his teammates, the guys he’d grown up playing with and lifting with for so long and thinking to himself: “There’s no way you’re going to take this state title from us. We’re going to dominate you.”

“It probably sounded cocky but we had this feeling they weren’t getting in the way of what we played for,” Scarborough said. “We let them have it pretty good.”

Let them have it pretty good is an understatement.

The Knights devastated Murray.

The 81 point margin of victory is still a state championship game record – in any class. The Knights ran just 28 offensive plays and eight resulted in touchdowns. They also intercepted a state championship game record five passes, returning three for touchdowns – two by Wood and another by Scarborough.

Meier, who ran for 218 yards and five touchdowns in the championship game, and the starters watched the final minutes from the sideline as the freshman took over.

“It was a cool feeling standing on the sideline and looking up, knowing we were about to be state champions,” he said.
Following the game, Murray coach Keith Shields told THE OPINION-TRIBUNE the “matchups today were not good for us…they were just bigger, stronger and faster than us all the way around today.”

In a story in the CRESTON NEWS ADVERTISER for a story celebrating the five-year anniversary of that 2011 Murray team, the coach was more effusive. “We lost to the best Eight-man team I have seen in Fremont-Mills,” Shields was quoted as saying. “They had the depth that I think they could have competed in the Class A, 1A and maybe even 2A playoffs.”

That was a popular sentiment among the Knights that season: could they have played with the state’s best 11-man teams?

Wood, Meier and Scarborough all agree: yes.

“We always had that thought,” Scarborough said. “We would have loved to have played any A or 1A team in the state just to see how we’d do. More than anything, we were competitive guys and we were always looking for the next challenge. It’s hard to say how we would have done at the A or 1A level but it would have been awesome to have that opportunity. We’ll never know.”

Were those Knights the best Eight-player team ever?

Christiansen said it’s hard to argue with that team being among if not the best Knight football team to ever suit up – “It’s hard to say no they’re not because they lifted a championship,” he said – but he stops short of any “best ever” in the state conversations.

The state title did signal a transformation of Fremont-Mills into a perennial power in Eight-player. Since 2010, the Knights have gone 109-20 and reached the playoffs every season. Twice since 2011 they’ve played for a state title – including last season – coming up short both times.

Meier has no such qualms about who he thinks is the best Eight-player team in state history.

“I believe it,” he said. “It’s tough to say but I do truly believe it. More teams will come along and they’ll be good ones but I don’t think you’ll see another team like us. The special thing about us was most of us had been playing together since we were 8-years-old. That comradely, playing together, and working out together, that was a big deal.”