Inductees

If you ever need a Friday Night Lights football fix 1950s-style, drive to Highway 71 south of Kansas City and head west on Highway 2. There, while meandering down the curvy two-laner and cutting through scenic farm country of Cass County, you’ll find one of the state’s great football powers.

From here have risen the Midway High School Vikings. Purple and white uniforms. A stadium tucked behind the R-I school campus. And a trophy case that has run out of real estate.

“For a small school,” 1969 and 1970 quarterback Mike Lyon said, “we seem to have the right work ethic to get the job done.”

Indeed the Vikings do, whose consistent success is why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted the Midway High School Football Program with the Class of 2020.

Midway has advanced to the Class 1 state championship seven times, winning six state titles (1969, 1970, 1976, 1978, 1982 and 1996) after finishing as a state runner-up in 1968, the first year of MSHSAA’s postseason.

Additionally, the Vikings have:

• Advanced to seven other state semifinals (1977, 1981, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1992, 1997) and 24 quarterfinal games.
• Won 27 district titles. In the non-semifinal years, those seasons covered 1975, 1979, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
• Captured 22 Western Missouri Conference championships. In the non-district title years, those were 1980, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2018.
• Saw 125 players earn All-State honors, and 50 Vikings played in college. Some reached the Big 12 Conference, while many others dotted rosters of NCAA Division II and NAIA schools.

This for a program that began in 1962.

Coach Layn Phillips built the foundation. In his seven seasons (1965-1971), Midway was 52-16-3. The 1968 team averaged 28.5 points in its first nine games and beat Lockwood 6-0 in the semifinals before falling to Princeton in the state championship.

“After we lost that game,” said wide receiver and defensive end Larry Burchett (MSHOF 2020), the Vikings’ future coach, “there was only one thing that could happen – and it was that we were coming back to win.”

Midway was 30-1 combined the next two seasons, winning state both years, with the 1969 team finishing 12-0. Those Vikings teams pitched 15 shutouts and lighted up the scoreboard offensively.

“It was a great blend of farm boy athletes who were dedicated to the sport and had a great work ethic,” Lyon said. “And we had a coach who was just unbelievable, who could get us organized, teach us our jobs and get us motivated. When we took the field, we knew something good was going to happen.”

Sadly, Phillips died in a car accident in February 1972 at age 33.

Laural Hobick took over and installed the Radar defense – linemen stood – that propelled Midway to two more state titles. Hobick’s teams were 70-17 from 1972 to 1980.

The 1976 Vikings (13-0) Drexel 7-6 in the regular-season finale. Three weeks later, they beat Princeton 21-14 to win state.

The 1978 team (12-1) won its final 12 games, including a 7-0 first-round playoff victory against Appleton City and a 13-0 win against Princeton in the final.

Between 1975 and 1982, Midway was 82-10.

Gary Dercher coached from 1981 to 1983. The 1982 team (12-0) beat Gallatin 40-6 in the state final in the first high school championship game played at Arrowhead Stadium. Folks still talk about the Cherry Picker as Joel Aksamit tossed the ball to Joey Semsch for a TD. That team scored 12-6 and 14-10 regular-season wins against Archie and Adrian, respectively.

Coach John Denny was 30-11 from 1984 to 1987 before Burchett and Doug Carder led as co-head coaches from 1988 to 1992.

The 1996 Vikings (13-1) won state by beating Santa Fe 42-13 in the Trans-World Dome in St. Louis. That season, Midway had suffered a 15-0 loss to Adrian in Week 2, prompting Burchett to ask Tim Lyon to move to guard.

In a selfless decision emblematic of the entire program, Lyon agreed. They never lost again. In fact, in a late-season rematch against No. 1-ranked Adrian, the No. 2-ranked Vikings won 36-18.

“It was an honor to be part of a program that had such a long, storied history, and the expectations were high every time you stepped out on the field,” said Patrick Irvin.

Said Mike Lyon, “We’re real proud of that and proud of the teams that have come behind us and kept that up.”