RAPID CITY - Hill City's Andy Coy doesn't really even know how it happened, but during a cross country meet at Executive Golf Course in Rapid City at the beginning of the season in 2006 and found himself hung up on a tree.

It was the tail end of the race and Coy and his best friend, Hudson Koel, cut inside of a tree that they were supposed to go around. A meet official warned them and they circled back around to correct the error.

"So I'm just dead tired and I turn around the tree and my shirt gets stuck in the tree," Coy said with a laugh. "The next thing I know, Hudson just comes bowling in from behind me and knocks me right out of the tree. I don't even know where he came from."

The story illustrates perfectly the bond between Koel, a senior, and Coy, a junior, best friends since almost as soon as Koel moved to town from Rock Rapids, Iowa in third grade.

"I remember we played a pick-up game of playground football," Koel said of his first meeting with Coy.

"Hudson was playing cornerback and I was playing wide receiver," Coy remembered. "We were just going at it, you know, and I didn't even know who he was but we were mad at each other."

Koel remembers the day exactly the same way.

"We had a little rivalry right from the start," Koel said.

The idea of being friends wasn't something they ever considered at first, instead focusing simply on beating each other in whatever game they happened to be playing that day.

"We were just rivals at first," Coy said. "We just wanted to be better than each other. That's how it started out."

But that rivalry grew into a bond forged through years of football and basketball games and footraces. And that bond has created an athletic force at the school.

Coy and Koel are two of the top 800-meter runners in the state this season and helped lead the Rangers to a state cross country title last fall. They were also both all-Black Hills Conference basketball selections and the top two scorers on head coach Blake Gardner's basketball team.

While Koel and Coy relish every day of their last high school season together this spring, they definitely remember the good times.

"We always wanted to win a state title," Coy said. "So he convinced me to quit football and concentrate on cross country as a sophomore and then we ended up winning the state championship last year. That was pretty special."

The duo hopes to help lead the Rangers to some more state titles this season. The Rangers have a great shot at winning the Class A 4-by-800-meter relay and, with a little luck, might even push for a team title.

"We're going to try, we're always going to try," Coy said of winning a state team title. "But the 800 is kind of our race, so we really want to win the 4-by-8 and we feel like we've got a pretty good 4-by-4 team, too."

So good that not even an obstinate tree could stop them.