How Blue Valley Northwest went from high school football afterthought to state champion

Stepping out into the hallway outside of the weight room, Clint Rider apologized profusely to Blue Valley Northwest principal Amy Pressly.

Rider had just finished his second year as coach of the BV Northwest Huskies’ football program and his team had concluded the 2018 season with an 0-9 record. The year before, the Huskies finished 2-7 when Rider took over from 12-year head coach Mike Zegunis.

“We talked about this plan,” Rider recalls Pressly saying. “It’s going to be a five-year process.”

Five years is all Rider would need.

After another 2-7 season in 2019, Rider and his pack of Huskies managed to turn the tide for Blue Valley Northwest. No longer is it just a basketball school. As of this past Saturday afternoon, Blue Valley Norhtwest is a football school, too.

Rider led the Huskies to their first state title in football on the final Saturday of November, defeating three-time defending state champion Derby 41-21 in Emporia.

“Saturday was a phenomenal day for our school, for our kids, for our coaches who have put so much into this thing,” Rider said.

“I don’t know that it’s sunk in yet, it’s been such a whirlwind since that day.”

The state championship was only partly about having a good head coach, though. It was also about Blue Valley Northwest bringing in a head coach capable of teaching teenagers more than just the X’s and O’s of football.

Rider changed the culture of a program that had grown accustomed to telling opponents “just wait until basketball season.”

Building a winning reputation

Kansas City scared Rider.

He’d grown up in rural Kansas, he’d attended school in rural Kansas, and he’d coached football solely in rural Kansas.

In his words, he’s a “country bumpkin.”

But at the same time, he’d always dreamed of coaching at a big school.

When the Blue Valley Northwest job opened up after the 2016 season, he was one of 44 candidates to throw his hat in the ring. Applications came from as far away as Nebraska and Oklahoma and Arizona.

Rider had an edge with his proven ability to turn around a program and sustain success. In 2008, just three years after graduating from Southeast High in Cherokee, Kansas, Rider was asked by former head coach Bryan Burdette to join his alma mater as an assistant coach.

Rider became the Lancers’ head coach a couple of years later and went 1-8 in his first season. But one year later, Southeast went 6-1 before losing its final two games and narrowly missing the playoffs.

Rider made the jump to Hesston High, just north of Wichita, in 2012 and created a culture of success that culminated in a 3A state title runner-up finish in 2016. That magical run ended at the hands of Rossville, the same team Rider painfully remembers ending his own high school career in 2004 in the state quarterfinals.

“They’ve been a part of probably the two most painful losses in my life,” he said.

Luckily for Rider, he’d soon no longer have to worry about Rossville. He’d be working to revive a 6A Blue Valley Northwest football program that finished the 2016 season 2-8 and had just three winning seasons since 2010.

“It’s a tough job to do. He’d come into a program that had not been known to win football games,” BV Northwest senior captain Zach Yates said.

The turning point

Lined up on the goal line on fourth-and-1, down 14 points with just two minutes left, the Huskies got stuffed and looked primed to lose to Missouri Class 4 school Harrisonville and start the season 0-2.

Rider felt dead in the water. He thought the game is over. But in the team huddle immediately following the turnover on downs, one of his seniors asked the group, “What’s our response?”

“One of my kids still believes, even more than me at that point,” Rider said.

That attitude embodied everything Rider had been working to instill. The Huskies went on to tie the game in the final minute and defeat Harrisonville in overtime.

“If you could stamp a turning point, it was definitely that game,” Rider said.

Senior quarterback Mikey Pauley, selected as the MaxPreps Kansas Player of the Year on Wednesday, was the Huskies’ starting quarterback for that game and has been part of Rider’s teams since the 0-9 season in 2017.

“We believed him and what he was saying and really attacked what his game plan was,” Pauley said. “Especially in the weight room, and we really just put together a great program starting with my class.”

Pauley first met Rider during the former’s eighth-grade year, when Rider attended a game between Oxford and Harmony middle schools — the two feeder schools into Blue Valley Northwest.

Ingraining a new culture into Husky football started that young for Rider. Not only would the freshman and junior-varsity squads run Rider’s scheme, so too would Oxford and Harmony middle schools.

A five-year plan indeed. And by the time the likes of Pauley and Yates arrived at the varsity level, Rider had developed a winning culture.

“He talked to us even before Northwest, when we were eighth-graders,” Yates said. “He thought that this class was the class that was going to change the program, and he’s been preaching that since our freshman year.

“He’s always said to stay focused, stay ready, because you never know when your moment is, when you’re going to be called on.”

Pauley started the last couple of games during his freshman year, when Northwest finished 0-9. He was one of this year’s seniors who played on that 2017 team.

“It was hard on our staff and our kids, and I think that’s where I give a lot of credit to our players and our coaches,” Rider said. “When you go 0-9, and even on that 0-9 team, those guys never wavered in their commitment to do things the right way, even going through that season.”

The Huskies won two games in 2019 and made their goal for 2020 to finish above .500. They did that, going 5-2 in last season’s COVID-shortened campaign.

Rider can’t promise another state title in 2022. He’s losing 31 seniors to graduation. But he certainly doesn’t expect the standard to drop.

“Complacency is a dirty word, and that’s the one thing we’re not going to allow in our program. We’ll never become complacent,” Rider said. “The expectations have been set, the foundation has been laid.”

This story was originally published December 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.