It’s Nov. 18, 2006 in Cedar Falls and the UNI-Dome, the epicenter of Iowa high school state football, is blanketed with feelings of both thrill and agony.
As the game clock ticks down to its final seconds, the scene was one of defeat for Solon football. Former head coach Kevin Miller stood with his hands on top of his head while players walked off the field in disbelief.
The team had just lost to Central Lyon/ George-Little Rock, 16-7, in the 2A state title game. It had marked the third time in six years that Solon fell short in the 2A championship.
Losses affect every true competitor on a deeper level, but it’s how they respond that truly reflects their character. Consider that moment in 2006 as a turning point for the Spartans. They knew that they needed to hit the reset button and did just that.
“(Central Lyon) were really run-heavy. They were physical; they were a ground-and-pound team,” Miller said. “We knew with the type of athletes we had coming up through the system that we needed to evolve and so we really spent a lot of time researching the spread offense.”
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Building a culture
Greatness is a double-edged sword. After their loss in 2006, the Spartans would win 42 consecutive games and earned four state championships in a row.
But you can trace that culture back to the days of legendary coach Ed Hansen, who spent 28 years at the helm from 1973 to 2001. He posted 260 wins as head coach, the most in program history.
“Coach Hansen always brought out the best in everyone,” said Mark Sovers, a Solon football coach since 1995. “He was very demanding and accepted nothing but the best out of you, but at the same time you knew that he cared about you as a person first and wanted you to be the best person you could be, and that seemed to always translate into the play on the football field.”
Under Hansen, the Spartans made 13 playoff appearances with a 2A state title win over Emmetsburg in 1988, the first in program history. The quarterback in that win was Miller, who later took over the head coaching job in 2001 after Hansen’s retirement.
At the time, it was a new chapter for Solon football. For Miller, who had deep family ties to the community, it was about continuing the tradition of excellence that Hansen nailed down to its core year after year.
“Coach Hansen did a really nice job of building a reputable program and we just tried to — as a staff — inherit some of those same standards,” Miller said. “Really the first team back in 2001 did a great job of buying in to those same standards and the culture we were aspiring to accomplish.”
In time, the Miller-led Spartans would find themselves in the state championship game in 2003 and 2006, falling short to Emmetsburg and Central Lyon, respectively. Losses hurt but it only reinforced the values that Solon stood by.
Discipline. Accountability. Skill development.
Those pillars of success mirrored the culture of Solon football.
“We were all accountable to each other,” said former defensive linemen Tanner Butler. “If you missed a workout, the coaches didn’t have to say anything; we took care of it as players. That’s what we were all about. (Football) was a grind, but we loved it.”
Prior to the 2007 season, the tight-knit Solon team relied heavily on the traditional I-formation offense. Facing much bigger teams, their biggest attribute wasn’t size but athleticism. To maximize their strengths, the coaching staff fully adopted the spread offense, which was not only popular in college football but found its way onto the high school scene. College coaches like Dana Holgerson and Rich Rodriguez were popularizing the regime in the college ranks.
“We knew that we had a lot of special athletes,” Miller said. “We knew we had to transition to a different type of offense if we were going to be successful, and it really paid dividends because we were able now to strategically get the ball to playmakers in space and utilize their strengths.”
Ushering in a new brand of football can be daunting. How will the players respond? Will players even buy in? The Solon team completely embraced the change. So much so, they met two to three times a week, without coaching supervision, to shift their offense into next gear.
“We were just trying to solve the problem of what can we do to get better that year,” said former quarterback Matt Morrison. “Everyone was just bought in to what the coaching staff thought would be successful for us.
“Obviously, as time went on through the season, we got better at recognizing what things worked, what didn’t work and then by the end of the year you’re trying to play your best football, and we were able to do that.”
But what about Solon’s defense?
“As Pat McAfee says, we were a bunch of dawgs,” Butler said. “A lot of us came from broken homes; a lot of us had … been through a lot more s— in life than football, so football was easy.
“None of it was for ourselves; no one cared about how they looked or their stats, personally. It was for the guy next to them and that’s how our defense was built.”
The 2007 season didn’t just present a new style of offense for the team, it shifted the focus from one singular opponent to a day-by-day and game-by-game basis. A year prior, the Spartans were focused on defeating North Fayette — a rival that knocked them out of the playoffs in 2005. The Spartans eventually got their redemption, beating North Fayette in the 2006 quarterfinals before falling in the state title game that year.
Like tunnel vision, that focus shifted to playing their best brand of football, no matter the opponent. The newly introduced spread offense, shifted focus and same commitment to excellence proved to be a recipe for success. The Spartans earned 12 straight games in 2007, which included wins over Mediapolis, Tipton and North Fayette to earn another crack at the 2A state crown in a rematch with Central Lyon.
Once again facing a bigger Lions team, the Spartans used their athleticism to their advantage, which translated on both sides of the ball. They spread the ball well, which allowed them to make plays and put points on the board. The Spartans took a 17-0 second-quarter lead with back-to-back touchdowns by Collin Sleeper and James Morris that was followed by a 20-yard field goal by Lee Hauser. Kyler Stahle later capped off the game with a 46-yard touchdown reception.
For the first time since 1988, the Spartans won the 2A state title, beating Central Lyon, 24-7.
“Winning it for the coaches and for all the teams of the past was just super gratifying,” Morrison said. “To be able to see all the work that you put in, and the focus in the offseason with the lifting, and to be rewarded knowing that if you do work hard, you can be successful.”
Let the streak begin
Sequels are often different than the original. In this case, the 2008 season was filled with a bit of uncertainty for the Spartans. Yes, they were the defending state champions, but change was inevitable.
After graduating a loaded 2007 team, the 2008 class featured about 10 seniors. You couple that with juniors who had little to no varsity experience, and it introduces more questions than answers.
“That year more than any other year within our run was the year people were kind of wondering: Did we have the talent to reload and did the class of seniors in 2008 have the depth and the talent to repeat,” Morris, a former all-state running back and linebacker, said. “There was not a general sense that we were just going to go on and repeat; it truly was up for grabs again.”
The Spartans, like they did in previous years, relished the grind. That was the common thread at Solon: It was cool to work out and compete.
Who could win the conditioning drills? Who could work the hardest? Who could have the biggest hits or the best blocks?
That competitive drive is what differentiates great programs and went hand-in-hand with what the Spartans were all about in 2008. Despite “unlikely” odds, the young Solon team made the playoffs, defeating Sigourney-Keota, Wilton, Mid-Prairie and Roland-Story by double digits to clinch its third straight appearance in the 2A title game against Central Lyon.
It might’ve been a familiar foe, but the result was far from the same.
“It was a back-and-forth game in the first quarter,” Morrison said. “And then they just had some unfortunate turnovers that we were able to capitalize on pretty quickly. We were not expecting it to go that way at all.”
After a 26-14 halftime lead, the Spartans scored two touchdowns in the first two minutes of the third quarter to increase their advantage. They capitalized off turnovers and didn’t slow down. A 93-yard touchdown from Morrison to Stahle still stands as the longest passing touchdown in 2A state championship game history. Solon earned a 60-14 blowout over Central Lyon to finish the season with a 14-0 record and a state trophy to show for it.
Toughness and resilience
The 2009 Solon team had its own identity, and it centered around resiliency. A talented group, the Spartans were characterized as hungry and confident. That roster included Wes Sleeper, a senior who took over as starting quarterback at the start of the season.
After a 6-0 start, Sleeper tore his left ACL during a routine open-field cut in practice in early October, which forced the Spartans to move Morris to the quarterback spot. With state championship football in mind, Sleeper braced up his left knee after receiving the bad news and got back onto the field, only to tear his right ACL in a similar fashion about two to three weeks later.
But none of it mattered.
“Why give up at that point? If it’s possible − it’s the last time you’re going to play high school football in your entire life,” Sleeper said. “The season was going according to plan; we were on pace to do what we set out to do at the beginning of the year, and you kind of want to close that chapter as best you can. Leaving it short wasn’t really an option.”
Many athletes would’ve succumbed to the pain, but Sleeper wanted to see his final season through with a team that rallied around him.
“We were hurting for him when he did get injured because he was having such a great year and with him healthy on the team, we were so dangerous,” Morris said. “We were able to weather his injuries, but everyone wanted him to have that impactful senior season. While he may not have had the season he wanted, he was able to come back and have the impact that he wanted to have at the most important time.”
For Sleeper, it took about two weeks for his right ACL to be stable enough to return. After topping Mediapolis, Mid-Prairie, Iowa City Regina and North Fayette, the Spartans punched their ticket to the state title game against Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley.
Fighting through two ACL tears is no easy task. After his second injury, Sleeper, who spent time at cornerback, got the call to return to quarterback right before halftime, when Solon held a 10-7 lead. Admittedly, the Spartans didn’t play their typical brand of football in the first 24 minutes. Enter Sleeper, who helped the Spartans expand their playbook, allowing players like Harris to get on the perimeter.
Several times during the game, Sleeper felt a bit of discomfort as his joints shifted and bones collided, but pain didn’t limit his abilities.
“Pain is always shadowed by the moment,” Sleeper said. “In the moment, you’re really feeling the pressure of the situation, everything else is secondary.”
Sleeper threw for 108 yards and one touchdown on six competitions in the 38-7 state-clinching victory. His presence relieved some of the pressure off Harris, who rushed for 215 yards on 30 carries and four touchdowns. The Spartan defense played disrupter to the Nighthawk offense. They totaled five sacks and 11 tackles for loss, limiting the Nighthawks to 159 yards. The Spartan offense finished with 477 yards, with help from Sleeper.
“I knew we were all proud of him and there for him,” Morris said. “But credit to him and just his mental toughness and his willing to grind through it at the end for the good of the team. Without him doing that, maybe that state title game ends up very different.”
Solon finished with a 14-0 record. Sleeper threw for eight touchdowns and more than 700 yards and seven rushing touchdowns during an injury-riddled season in 2009. Morris finished his high school career with 6,466 rushing yards and 113 touchdowns from 2006-2009. He was inducted into the IHSAA Hall of Fame in 2023.
Coming off their third straight state title, the Spartans were faced with a new challenge. A move from 2A to 3A made the stakes even higher, which meant the workload had to be even greater in 2010.
Known as a smaller team in 2A, many doubted their chances in a larger class, especially after graduating playmakers the previous year. But Solon focused more on the details as they transitioned to 3A.
“We had to execute better,” Miller said. “We had to be more fundamentally sound in order to compete against those teams and build depth because we just didn’t have the same numbers that a lot of these larger schools had access to, so we had to find ways to develop rotations.”
Riding a 42-game unbeaten streak, the Spartans faced a rude awakening at the start of the season. Iowa City Regina pulled off a 21-15 stunner over the defending champions in Week 2. Costly turnovers and miscues broke a near four-year spotless record.
“That one hurt and I think it was a good reality check like ‘All right we’re not untouchable,'” said former kicker and two-way player Marshall Koehn. “I think the biggest thing was no one knew how we were going to respond … we never walked into that locker room and endured a loss, and then after (that loss) we showed how we could respond.”
“We’re going to have to find a new level of focus to overcome this.”
That was a message that resonated in the locker room after the game. With 3A play still ahead, the Spartans knew it was important to block out outside noise and shift back to their usual level of focus.
“We just straightened out those things that made us who we were,” Sovers said. “Our athletes did just a great job focusing on what we had to give and the gifts and talents that we had … the focus went on what we had coming back instead of missing what we had the year before.”
To name a few, players like Koehn, Derrick Loveless and JJ Hanus, helped Solon stay perfect heading into the playoffs. They defeated Central DeWitt, Grinnell, Williamsburg and Pella to clinch a spot in the 3A state title game.
Facing Bishop Heelan, the Spartans set the tone with their physicality starting with the opening kickoff.
“I think I remember the way we just smacked Bishop Heelan in the mouth,” Koehn said. “We were just so physical and had guys who would just hit hard and just not stop. I think our grit and toughness were just unmatched.”
The Spartans wreaked havoc on the defensive side, controlling the line of scrimmage and executing a great pass rush. The offense spread the ball to the perimeter and made plays while special teams also clicked. They held a 24-0 lead entering halftime, which included a 47-yard pass to Colin Stebral from Hanus. The Spartans didn’t look back and eventually earned a 45-7 win over the Crusaders. The victory gave Solon its fourth state championship in a row.
The legacy of Solon’s four-peat
It’s been over a decade since their last state title, but some things remain constant with Solon football today. The Spartans have made 19 playoff appearances in a row, dating to 2005. The tradition is deeply rooted in innovation, resilience and community. The legacy left by past teams, particularly the 2007 through 2010 state-winning teams, still carries weight today.
“Our kids take a lot of pride of carrying that tradition on,” said current Solon head coach Lucas Stanton. “We’ve tried to really stay about the same thing with how we play football and how we practice. The toughness and the pride at Solon, those are things that we don’t ever want to change.”
Solon holds the third-most consecutive postseason victories (20) in IHSAA history from 2007 to 2011. There were many elements that helped the Spartans add four state crowns to their trophy case. Many former players praised the sacrifices by the coaching staff and incorporated that principle into life outside of football.
“The time and energy that (coach Miller) put in was contagious as far as the football staff,” Sovers said. “We just developed a bond and it kind of carried over to the players, and it was so much fun doing it together. Leading by example is what we tried to do all the time.”
While the plays on the field and coaches’ strategies were vital, the support from parents, players and administration were just as valuable. Miller, who accumulated 190 wins and stepped down as head coach in 2020, said that universal support proved to be a common denominator for success.
“Football has always been a staple of the community,” Miller said. “I look back and I’m just amazed at how special all of those important pieces were and how influential they were to the success we experienced.”
Marc Ray is the high school sports reporter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He can be reached at MARay@gannett.com , and on X, formerly Twitter, at @themarcszn.
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