Liberal’s Luetters guides Redskins’ turnaround season

When Bryan Luetters, who had played his high school football in Dodge City, guided the Meade Buffaloes to an 8-Player Division I state championship in 2021, he figured he might just be at the small southwest Kansas school for many years.

But success in the ocaching profession has a way of changing the best-laid plans. A phone call from Liberal High School Athletic Director Kerri Miles to inquire about an interest in that school’s football coaching opening, was the catapult that moved Luetters just a little further southwest.

Now, in just his second season with the Redskins, Luetter saw a transformation that resulted a resurgence that produced an 8-2 season record, the first postseason playoff win in two decades and being voted the Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year.

The only thing missing from the Luetters accomplishment list this year was winning the WAC. The Redskins did finish at 3-1, the same record as Hays, but in the head-to-head tiebreaker, the championship went to Hays following a dramatic 48-41 double-overtime victory by the Indians in the final week of the regular season.

Still, there were many reasons to celebrate the new dawn of successful football in the Class 5A school.

Football historians and fans have to go back more than two decades to recall the glory days of Liberal when Gary Cornelsen guided the program to four state championships (all 5A) in the 1990s and three other state championship game appearances (a record seven consecutive seasons). Cornelsen had compiled a 118-17 record during his tenure, but in the intervening two decades, those six coaches posted a won-loss mark of 65-106. Luetters is now a modest 11-8 in two seasons.

“I knew that Liberal had been successful many years ago,” said Luetters, who played for Dodge’s Dick Masters back in the 1990s. “But I also knew they had not been successful for quite some time.”

Putting it mildly, the Redskins had gone through seven head coaches in 20 seasons, and those had compiled just three winning seasons, two of those back-to-back in 2004 and 2005 when Steve Warner coached the program. Warner eventually went to Buhler where he has earned legendary status.

“When I arrived, there was a lot of mental issues facing the team,” Luetters said. “First, we had to get into the weight room and get stronger. Second, we had to then use the weight room to also improve our mental toughness. We had been behind in so many games in recent years and basically just given up.

“We had to transform their thought process. Rather than saying that’s the way it’s always been, we had to teach them that it didn’t have to be that way.”

Mental reps in the weight room became the daily norm, Luetters said. Day-by-day, week-by-week from a 3-6 record in his first year of 2022, the Redskins saw incremental progress.

In the 2023 season, rather than fold the tent when falling behind early, the Redskins found ways to reverse course, and rally to win several games in the first part of the season.

“There were a lot of discipline issues we had to fix,” Luetters said. “If a kid was late to practice, or to a .meeting, there had to be consequences. Once they figured that out, things improved. We had to hold everybody to the same standards.”

Prior to the start of this year, Luetters said he had a few upperclassmen who had yet to buy into the new system and philosophy.

“It became like a cancer, so we just dismissed them and things got so much better,” Luetters recalled. “Everybody was headed in the same direction.”

Luetters took little credit for the team’s turnaround, but instead lavished praise on his assistant coaches, with all 10 of them being 26 years of age or younger.

“They all come with experience in their own positions on the team,” Luetters said. “They come up with a lot of suggestions, we discuss them and if they make sense, we . them. Everybody has a voice.”

Luetters also had positive thoughts about his remaining upperclassmen of juniors and seniors.

“We started weights at 6 a.m. because there’s just no conflicts with anything else,” Luetters said. “This group became great leaders.”

Despite losing his quarterback in WAC Player of the Year Brooks Kappelman, Luetters will have 15 starters returning for the 2024 campaign. He can’t wait to get back at it and see where the Redskins will take their next trip in this journey.

“I’m a southwest Kansas kid and it’s exciting to see these kids finally achieve a level of success,” Luetters said. “There’s still more that we can do to improve, but this was a big step.”

2023 All-Conference Football