Limon – The spiraling bull’s-eye cut into Travis Sandersfeld’s head was just a haircut gone wrong to the Limon senior.
It just so happened to be very fitting for the quarterback of the team everyone in Class 1A football has been trying to catch over the years.
Behind two touchdowns from Sandersfeld, who had tried to shave himself a flattop like his teammates’, the Badgers stayed perfect on a day when they were far from it against Sanford.
The 24-13 victory was Limon’s 49th in succession, breaking a 10-year-old state record and adding another pillar to a gridiron tradition that reaches back proudly more than 110 years.
Saturday’s victory couldn’t have come at a better place – on the field named after legendary coach Lloyd E. Gaskill and in front of several generations of a colorful community that bleeds only black and white.
“I think this is everybody’s,” said Limon coach and 1980 graduate Mike O’Dwyer. “Anybody that has anything to do with Limon High School and Limon football. All the students and all the parents, the whole community, anybody that supports our program, this is theirs. We don’t accomplish anything without the whole package.”
Since O’Dwyer’s second season, the Badgers have been nothing but complete. Brushing off a 5-5 finish in 2002, the fast, physical and precise Badgers haven’t lost since Nov. 2, 2002.
Losing was never a tradition for this school of 170 students, but it has become something of an unknown for senior lineman Zach Jones, who played varsity as a sophomore and has never tasted defeat.
Setting the record, which will travel next weekend to Hayden for the state quarterfinals, was a relief for the Badgers. When the horn sounded Saturday, the fans applauded much like all the other times, the teams shook hands and the Badger rang the ceremonial bell at the end of the field.
Besides a quick announcement and a small “49-0” sign propped against one of the goalposts, there was little fanfare.
“It hasn’t really set in yet, but I don’t know if it will for a few years,” Jones said, before almost reassuring himself. “I haven’t even lost a game or anything, so I don’t know what it’s like.”
There are plenty of people around town who can tell him what it’s like.
“You really try to win”
Jack Clanin ran the ball out of Gaskill’s single wing and helped put an exclamation point on Limon’s 1959 season with an 85-0 drubbing of Pagosa Springs in the state championship game.
Clanin doesn’t miss many Limon games these days, especially after the 42-game unbeaten streak he helped forge was broken by this current group.
The kids today are a little bigger and faster than those he remembers, but little else has changed.
“To me, it’s do your best and try to win. If you don’t win, you know …” Clanin said with a long pause, before breaking into a grandfatherly smile. “You really try to win.”
Gaskill, who coached off and on from 1938-75 compiling a mark of 222-51-8, led the Badgers to 10 of their 17 football state titles.
Under Gaskill, Clanin remembers, the players used to sit in quiet concentration for long stretches of time before kickoff. The Lord’s Prayer was the last thing anyone heard before they rushed onto the field.
After watching his team come out flat in some games, O’Dwyer brought that tradition back. Rick Sandersfeld, who played for another Limon coaching legend, Warren Mitchell, and is the father of the current quarterback, calls it a two-hour ritual.
“You don’t show up, get dressed and go out on the field,” he said. “You’re prepared.”
On Saturday, the Badgers received the opening kickoff and needed three plays to turn it into a touchdown on Sandersfeld’s 46-yard run.
That gave the Badgers and their fans some early breathing room, but Sanford would rally to take a 7-6 lead into halftime.
Nervous? Longtime fan Jean Stone, 84, was there to watch her grandson, Joe. At halftime, sitting in her car parked along the fence, she admitted to some butterflies but was confident there was a lot of time left for her Badgers – a team she’s accustomed to seeing dominate since her sons played in the 1960s – to reemerge.
And besides, all the good-luck charms and superstitions had been appeased beforehand.
Longtime statistician Mike Kelly was wearing his lucky black underwear. Kelly’s wife had to wash them Saturday morning, since he had worn them the previous day to bring good luck to the Limon volleyball team.
Baseball coach and maintenance man Les Layton had painted the lines on the field Thursday starting on the north side, while Tom Head started on the south – just like always. If the goalposts at Gaskill Field don’t look fresh, that’s because Layton stopped painting them when the winning streak began.
Sure enough, the Badgers scored the next 18 points to take a 24-7 lead with 6:21 remaining.
“Everyone talks football”
When asked Thursday about the more recent additions to Limon’s immense football foundation, O’Dwyer can’t forget Casey Herron.
Herron was a senior when the streak began, posting the first of what would become three more 13-0 seasons. He was one of the seniors who helped revive the hard work and unity of the past, from getting religious with the weight room to encouraging his teammates to shave their heads for the playoffs.
At the Southside Bar and Grill off Main Street, where the stuffed heads of two alligators watch over the long bar, O’Dwyer recalled a playoff game in which Herron was a wreck at halftime after fumbling the ball. O’Dwyer grabbed the senior by the shirt and told him, in so many words, to be the leader he was and go win the football game.
So they did, 28-12 over rival Akron. The next year, O’Dwyer said, there were five or six players like Herron. The next year, even more.
As the streak continued, Herron played football at Boise State before transferring to Northern Colorado, where he is a redshirt sophomore linebacker.
“I think it’s great to see Limon, where I came from and grew up at, excel, and my favorite coach ever do his thing,” Herron said by telephone from Greeley. “I wouldn’t be where I was today if it wasn’t for him. I’m just so proud of him and what he did.”
Tom Anderson never played a day of Limon football, but since moving to the community in 1974, he has become immersed. The Badgers’ flag flies outside Anderson Motors.
“Everyone in town talks about football,” Anderson said. “In a regular business day, nearly everyone that comes in my door, we end up talking about football. That’s the big difference I think you see in a little town like this as opposed to Denver, for instance. You go to BestBuy and you’re probably not going to have a conversation about the football game Friday night.”
And the conversation is always the same, from the school to the post office. The winning streak has been special, as Limon scores 40 points a game and gives up no more than eight on average. They’ve been behind at halftime only about four or five times. The closest score in 49 wins? It was 33-25 against Byers just a few weeks ago.
This current group of Badgers is good, make no mistake, but everyone knows they aren’t as richly blessed with the deep talent they’ve had in the past.
Of course, that only makes Saturday’s achievement all the more remarkable.
“I’ll always remember this year,” said O’Dwyer, who replaced 18 seniors from last season. “They’re maybe not the most athletic group all the way around, but these kids have really had to play together and are maybe the best resemblance of what ‘team’ means.”
And that, really, is what Limon football has always been about.
