It started 5 year ago.
Coach Lex Heathershaw was beginning his time at the helm for Wall football and found a toothbrush laying on the field.
Inspired by such a strange occurrence, Heathershaw rallied his team around the dental hygiene product, and formed a team culture based on brushing your teeth.
“So the first season I had that fall, I randomly found a toothbrush on the field, which was strange right?” Said Coach Heathershaw.
“We really didn’t have a motto so I kind of took that toothbrush and ran with it. Our motto for the last few years has been brush your teeth. Everything we do here, we are going to make it a habit, just like brushing your teeth.”
Over the next few seasons, the motto was tweaked with the first letters of each word taking on a new meaning.
B-Be a leader.
Y-You choose you attitude.
T-Take advantage of your opportunity.
The habits of the team, however, haven’t changed from that day Heathershaw found the original mystery brush.
“Day by day, [they] stay focused and do your job. We got a great coaching staff that puts together a great plan…Our guys are very confident in what we do. And our kids have bought in.”
The Eagles used that day-by-day mentality to win week-by-week, going undefeated in the regular season in 2020 and 2021. But even with that great success, Wall failed to reach the Dome in those two seasons, losing to Warner (26-0), and Howard (21-17).
This time around, however, the undefeated Eagles utilized their experience from a tough regular season schedule, transforming that hard work into playoff wins. Wall took down Stanley County (58-8) and Bon Homme (20-12) in the first two rounds of the playoffs before defeating Hamlin (26-13) in the much anticipated semifinals to finally reach Vermillion.
“One of the things that people forget to look at is, yeah we blew out some opponents in the regular season, but you know, Harding County was a semifinal team, Philip was a quarterfinal team, Kadoka was a quarterfinal team. We’re playing really good opponents.“
But even after finally breaking through the 9AA semifinals, the Wall Eagles have no desire to stop now. After all, they are trying to take advantage of every opportunity.
“Are we excited to be playing in the state championship? Absolutely we are. [It’s] huge for our program, huge for our community to finally break through.
But these seniors, these captains, they really put a goal out to win a state championship and that is focus and mindset coming in. It’s just a mentality of finishing the job.
The job’s not done.“
