High School Football Championships: 11AA Washington Plays Brandon Valley

Class 11AA Final 7:30pm Saturday

Washington (11-0) vs. Brandon Valley (11-0)

-Did not play in the regular season.

-If the Lynx win Saturday, they will have beaten all four Sioux Falls schools this season.

-Washington is averaging nearly 47 points a game, while giving up only 5.5 points an outing.

-Brandon Valley scores at a 41 point clip a game, allowing only 11 a game.

-The Warriors have won 57 of 62 games since 2008, have claimed two state titles and Saturday will their sixth consecutive appearance in the championship game.

-Both schools like quick starts. WHS has a 173-0 advantage in the first quarter and a 329-23 first half edge. BVHS on the other hand, has a 162-17 scoring edge in the first quarter and a first half scoring lead of 296-55.

These two school will join the the newly conceived five-member Metro Conference, scheduled to start in 2013-14. It will include Lincoln, O'Gorman, Roosevelt, Washington and  Brandon Valley, with future expansion likely.

"There's a lot of change coming in terms of school size and alignments. Twenty years from now, I could see the Metro Conference consisting of nine or 10 teams," O'Gorman athletic director Steve Kueter said.

Sioux Falls-area towns such as Harrisburg and Tea are growing at a rate where they soon could join the ranks of Class AA, the largest classification in the South Dakota High School Activities Association. Schools with a grade 9-11 enrollment of 450 or more are considered Class AA.

"If you look at population trends, we're going to get bigger and so are those towns - which means the whole landscape will change," Brandon Valley athletic director Randy Marso said. "There's nothing wrong with looking ahead."

"We can see in the future and it's quite a ways into the future, it's not immediate, it's 10 to 15 years, we're going to be a whole lot more like the Sioux Falls schools than the ESD schools," said Marso.

The other change coming is the number of classes of football in South Dakota. The South Dakota High School Activities Association board of directors’ 7-1 vote this spring gave the state four classes of 11-man football and seven classes total for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years.

So Saturday's championship matchup is a little bit of the past and a taste of the future. Washington and Brandon Valley will tangle much more frequently on the gridiron for conference and state championship implications.

CLASS 11 “AA” FOOTBALL -
1989 Brandon Valley 10 Yankton 7
1990 Brandon Valley 28 SF O’Gorman 7
1998 Brandon Valley 28 Brookings 21 OT
2009 SF Washington 27 Aberdeen Central 10
2010 SF Washington 33 SF O’Gorman 7

Last Year State Class "AA" 11-man Champions: Sioux Falls Roosevelt
11 MAN - CLASS “AA”
First Round
Brookings def RC Central 37-22
Mitchell def Aberdeen Central 42-14
Brandon Valley def RC Stevens 42-14
Yankton def Pierre 27-13
SF Lincoln first round bye
SF Washington first round bye
SF Roosevelt first round bye
SF O’Gorman first round bye
Quarter Finals
SF Lincoln def Brookings 61-19
SF Washington def Mitchell 24-7
SF Roosevelt def Brandon Valley 38-37
SF O’Gorman defeated Yankton 54-14
Semi Finals
SF Washington def SF Lincoln 42-7
SF Roosevelt def SF O’Gorman 23-16
Finals
SF Roosevelt def SF Washington 31-17