STURGIS -- Heading into the 2006 football season, Adolph Shepardson was looking for that first win.

This year, he set his sights higher: He wanted his 2007 Scoopers to be the best West River football team in Class AA.

In his third year as head coach at Sturgis Brown High School, Shepardson wasn't exactly shooting for the stars. West River AA football overall has fallen on hard times. But it was nonetheless ambitious for a football program that less than a year earlier had finally ended its painful, state-record losing string at 79 games.

And now, after their fourth win of the season - a 31-25 win over the Lincoln High School Patriots on Monday at Howard Wood Field in Sioux Falls - the Scoopers are the only AA team west of the Missouri River left standing in the state playoffs.

Admittedly, Lincoln High School football is considered the weakest of the four Sioux Falls AA schools. But it's a revived solid program that now competes well statewide.

And a few days after the win, Shepardson said the victory was the next big step his program needed to take on its own march back to respectability.

"Psychologically, it was a huge hurdle," Shepardson said. "I didn't know if we could win, but I knew if we played well, competed well, it would bode well for the future."

The victory was especially important because it came in Sioux Falls, where West River teams has been consistently beaten and often pummeled, especially during the last five years.

"It gets the kids over that barrier that we've always gotten our butts kicked when we went over there," Shepardson said. "Hopefully, that's something they won't worry about anymore."

They won't have time to worry about Sioux Falls this week. Their next stop is Watertown, where they will face this year's version of a consistently formidable Arrows football team in an odd venue for Sturgis: the second round of the state playoffs.

"I think it's going to be a good game, a close game," Shepardson said.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com