RAPID CITY - They've come a long way, those Cavaliers, since the dusty days of duct tape.

With an undefeated season behind them and Thursday afternoon's Class 11A championship game glittering like a star in the east, it's easy to view the St. Thomas More High School football team though the lens of success.

But Catholic school system Superintendent Barb Honeycutt recalled the school's more scuffed-up sports past on Wednesday morning as she joined in a pep rally to send off the Cavaliers toward an East River date with gridiron destiny.

In a packed gymnasium where bright banners trace a steady rise in all-sports strength, Honeycutt recalled the days of shoestring budgets and regular defeats, when a coach as new as his program held things together with hard work, hope and duct tape.

"Mr. Sullivan used duct tape to hold together the helmets, to keep the spikes on the football shoes, to hold the uniforms together," Honeycutt said. "Not only did Mr. Sullivan order duct tape by the boxful, I believe he also ordered tweezers."

In those days, Honeycutt said, coach Wayne Sullivan and his staff might well have needed tweezers to extract pebbles and weed fragments - and possibly a cactus spike here and there - from football team members who had to practice and play on turf as rough as a cow pasture, Honeycutt said.

"Even so, it was the beginning of what we have today," she said. "We've come a long way."

What the Cavaliers football program has today under now-veteran coach Sullivan is yet another unblemished regular season, yet another Black Hills Conference Championship and an impressive playoff performance that sends them indoors to the perfect green fields of the DakotaDome in Vermillion.

They have more than a passing acquaintance with the place. They have a running acquaintance there, too. Even so, it hasn't been quite enough - yet.

After finishing as runners-up at the Dome three times in Class 11B, the Cavaliers make their first Class 11A championship appearance against what has long been the dominant program in South Dakota high school football: the Trojans of West Central High School in Hartford, a bedroom community along Interstate 90 northwest of Sioux Falls.

Some past West Central teams have seemed positively indestructible as they ripped through the Class A ranks. But this year's Trojans have escaped with near-miss victories in the challenging East River football world.

Cavaliers athletic director Craig Nowotny knows the Trojans are formidable. But he believes the Cavaliers faced a tougher team last year in losing to their northern South Dakota Catholic-school counterpart, Aberdeen Roncalli, in a bruising Class 11B final.

This year's Cavaliers are ready to take it all, Nowotny said.

"Last year, I said this would be the best football team we've had in the last four years. And I still believe that," he said.

He said the team would prove it today at 2:30.

The Catholic school faithful were hoping and praying for exactly that during a send-off that included group prayer as well as group cheers. The Rev. Steve Biegler, pastor at St. Thomas More, aimed the groups' spiritual wishes toward safe play for the athletes and safe travel for all those heading east.

Sullivan bowed his head in prayer, before offering energetic high-fives and an increasingly familiar chant:

"We're going to the Dome. We're going to the Dome."

And he's taking a lot more than duct tape.

On the Net

Watch for live gameday updates on rapidcityjournal.com

On TV

What: St. Thomas More vs. West Central

When: 1:30 p.m. MST Thursday

Where: Channel 5 KBHE (PBS) on PrairieWave and Midcontinent Communications

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