TRAVERSE CITY -- For St. Francis, the wake-up call came early.
Aug. 23 to be exact.
That's when Suttons Bay marched into Thirlby Field and shocked the Gladiators 38-20 on the opening night of the high school football season.
And it wasn't even that close.
"Whenever I tell people about that game I always remind them that Suttons Bay had two touchdowns called back," St. Francis coach Josh Sellers said. "By rights, it should have been 50-something to 20. Actually, 38-20 wasn't indicative of how the game went."
Just like that, four quarters into the football season, fans and players alike were wondering what type of team the Gladiators had, especially with a trip to perennial power Saginaw Nouvel looming the following week. Nouvel was coming off a perfect 13-0 state championship season in 2006.
"It was a long bus trip to Saginaw that next week," Sellers said. "We didn't really know what was going to happen. It wasn't necessarily about whether we won or lost that game, but how we played (against Nouvel) that was going to set the tone for the season."
The Gladiators alleviated some concerns by responding with an impressive 35-14 victory -- the start of a 12-game win streak that didn't end until St. Francis reached the Division 7 state finals at Ford Field.
The journey ranks as our No. 10 local story of the year.
And it all started after that disastrous game with Suttons Bay.
"I think the kids really believed that the first game wasn't who they were going to be," Sellers said. "That (loss) got their attention.
"There's never a good loss, but it focused our kids and got them ready to go."
The defense, riddled by the Norsemen in the opener, started to assert itself against Nouvel. The offense, which coughed up the ball four times in week one, settled down.
"We went from giving it away four times (against Suttons Bay) to taking it away five (against Nouvel)," Sellers said. "Our defense was gun shy after that first week, but the Nouvel game gave them confidence and you could see them grow as the season progressed."
Still, Sellers wasn't quite convinced.
"It was still a coin flip as far as which team was going to show up the (third) week," Sellers said. "Was it going to be the week one team or the week two team?
"Turns out, it was kind of a mix against Charlevoix. We didn't play great, but we played well enough to win. I think we started to turn the corner that fourth week against Boyne City."
The Gladiators beat the Ramblers on the road 34-20 and never looked back. They finished 7-0 in the Lake Michigan Conference and rolled past their first four playoff opponents by a combined score of 188-8.
"I thought we played some good teams along the way, too," Sellers said. "Our kids just played well at the right time."
Well, at least up until the state championship game. The Gladiators could not get untracked in a 20-0 loss to Mendon.
"The worst part of that is the fact that for many people this was their only chance to see us play all year," Sellers said. "And that's what they're going to have in their heads as the image of this team. And that (game) was so uncharacteristic. We just happened to bookend the season with a couple ugly games.
"The kids were disappointed, but in time they'll remember this as a very, very successful season."
The immediate future bodes well, too.
"We have a pretty good mix back," Sellers said. "We'll have holes to fill, but there's going to be a lot of continuity. We have a lot of athletic kids coming back"
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