Medicine Lodge was among multiple teams at a 2017 summer contact camp in Pratt, located 30 miles north.
The Indians were on defense, and Pratt’s Travis Theis, one of the state’s best players, ran toward Medecine Lodge’s Dakota Bayliff. Theis is 5-foot-9, 194 pounds and has set multiple weight room records. Bayliff stands at 5-4, 145 pounds.
“The whistle hadn’t blown yet, and I stopped and didn’t keep moving, so he just trucked me,” Bayliff said.
Bayliff suffered a significant left shoulder injury with ligament and nerve damage. He missed last fall and watched as the Indians installed a pass-heavy spread offense with similarities to Rossville’s high-octane attack that captured three straight Class 3A state titles from 2015-17.
Medicine Lodge’s Drew Honas earned Class 2-1A first team all-state honors at receiver with 54 catches for 1,049 yards and nine receiving scores. The Indians went 4-6 and made the playoffs before the program moved down to eight-man football for the first time. Bayliff returned for basketball and has delivered a breakout season on the gridiron this fall.
“Really excited about it, last year to play,” Bayliff said.
Bayliff, helped by returning senior starting quarterback Garrett Burden, has showcased great speed and leads the state in receiving yards. Overall, Bayliff, in the 4.6 second range in the 40-yard dash, can squat 340 pounds. He has 34 catches for 641 yards and 10 scores.
“We didn’t know if we would get him back for football ever again,” Medicine Lodge coach Josh Ybarra said. “And this summer, the doctors cleared him to go ahead and play, which is great for us, and it’s good for him. I know he missed it.”
Sophomore Josh Bowman had 28 grabs for 246 yards and five TDs. Bowman leads with 124 rushing yards, while Bayliff has 80 rushing yards and a team-best three rushing TDs. Junior Kirk Fisher has nine catches for 145 yards and a pair of scores.
“Laterally, I don’t know if there is a guy I have seen that can keep up with him,” Ybarra said of Bayliff. “And whenever he catches the ball or has it in his hands, I mean he can jump cut with the best of them, and he’s a strong kid.”
Burden has completed 75 of 118 passes for 1,076 yards with a 20/1 TD/INT ratio, the state’s top passer for all classes. When asked about ML’s strengths, South Central junior tailback/defensive end Eli Jellison immediately mentioned Bayliff.
“Really quick,” Jellison said.
Bayliff has helped Medicine Lodge, without a winning season since ’09, start 3-1. On Thursday, the Indians host one of the school’s biggest games in recent history against Coldwater-South Central (3-1).
The Eight-Man, Division I contest matches a pair of the five solid District 2 teams along with Argonia-Attica, Caldwell, and Udall. Top-four teams in each district reach the playoffs. Medicine Lodge and South Central are 1-0 in district play.
“It’s really big,” Jellison said. “Just week by week just showing everybody that we can play, and I feel like we’re a little bit underrated.”
“You want to get as many wins in as you can, especially early on,” Ybarra added. “So Thursday night is going to be extremely important for both teams, and it’s going to be a big game. There’s going to be a lot of people there.”
The contest is moved up a day because of the Peace Treaty celebration in Medicine Lodge, a significant event that draws people from throughout the surrounding area. Both teams are known for their speed and have few combined players over 200 pounds.
“They match up with us about as well as anybody has this year,” Ybarra said. “Every other team we have played has been quite a bit bigger than us in a lot of areas, and South Central is really not much bigger than us. But some of those teams that were bigger than us weren’t as fast as us. Well, they are. They are a team that can keep up with us.”
For South Central, senior center Andrew Erickson (6-0, 244) and senior guard Christian Hess (6-0, 215) are the only players above 190.
“Just our speed and our quickness,” Jellison, the team’s fourth-biggest player at 5-10, 187, said. “Just going hard for the first five yards, and then that seems to do the trick most of the time.”
Medicine Lodge has outscored teams 185-72, while South Central has a collective margin of 125-42. Each has lost to Hodgeman County; South Central by 14 and Medicine Lodge by 12.
Last year, the T-Wolves were third in scoring defense in eight-man football; they currently rank seventh in Division I this season.
“They have a really good defense,” Bayliff said. “Probably the best one we’ve played all year, so I think it comes down to defense at the end of the game.”
Last year, Cabe Lindsay led South Central by a big margin with 124 tackles and Ethan Jellison stood second with 81 stops for a program that went 9-2 for a second straight season.
With Lindsay graduated, Jellison, a senior, has emerged as the defensive leader at linebacker. He has 28 tackles, tied for fourth-most. In Week 2, South Central delivered a marquee win against Spearville in wet conditions.
“If it’s windy or if it’s raining, you can’t communicate with your boys, so defensively what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to have a leader out there on the field,” Nichols said. “And as soon as he sees the set, he gets everybody in the right spot, and I mean, he gets them in the right spot right now. That helps a lot, because we are going to see every formation under the sun this year.”
Junior Chayde Snyder, a three-year starter at quarterback, has thrown for 226 yards with a 5/1 TD/INT ratio and leads with 378 rushing yards and five scores.
“He is really stepping up and being more of a vocal leader,” Jellison said. “I’ve played with him since I was in third grade, and he’s just really coming out and being a leader this year.”
South Central has significant depth at the skill positions and has struggled some with getting everyone reps. The T-Wolves have committed 11 turnovers. The T-Wolves had 11 turnovers all last season.
Sophomore Jonny Robles, though, has impressed on both sides, and Nichols has looked to get him the ball more frequently. He has seven catches for 172 yards and four scores. At state last spring, Robles qualified in the 1A 100-meter dash and helped the 400-meter relay finish third.
“When he touches it, he is magic,” Nichols said. “He is slippery, and he is fast.”
Nichols said Robles is “one foot” faster than junior Gage Girk in the 40-yard dash. Girk, well-known for his kicking, has delivered an outstanding 49.2 punting average on six attempts. He has eight touchbacks on 12 kickoffs.
Girk stands second with 34 tackles, five behind Snyder for the team-high, and has helped create two of the team’s nine defensive turnovers. Girk and Robles each start on the outside on defense.
“The most important thing those two boys do is when you get to the playoffs, and you get in there, those two guys can make a 1-on-1 tackle with that running back on that other team,” Nichols said. “And that makes all the difference in the world, because sometimes he is the only man left out there.”
Ybarra, in his fifth season as head coach, first installed the offense in 2017. He significantly watched the 2016 Class 3A state title game, a 48-42 overtime win by Rossville over Hesston.
Ybarra had a friend who served on the Bulldawgs’ staff and followed Rossville closely during the three titles. Ybarra attended the state title game and noticed Rossville had five wide receivers with motioning. Ybarra knew the Indians had to change their offense going into last year. Normally, Medicine Lodge goes two or three wide receivers.
“We don’t have a lot of big kids,” Ybarra said. “Our offensive line averages 160 pounds maybe, and so we knew we were going to have to do some things differently. We weren’t going to be able to run the ball real successfully between the tackles, and so the pass-happy part of it just came because it’s out of necessity.
“It’s hard when you are playing a team say like Hodgeman County who outweighs you across the board quite a bit – it’s hard to just line up toe to toe and run right at them,” he added. “You’ve got to find different ways to get your athletes in space.”
While Rossville has long been known for its running quarterbacks with Tucker Horak, Jacob Bradshaw and Sheldon Hulbert, Burden is a different type of quarterback. Burden is accurate and has a good understanding for the game.
“Man, he can put it in places right where he needs to be,” Ybarra said. “For years, I don’t think he was much of a runner, and this year, he has gotten a little bit faster, and he is starting to realize that a little bit.”
For the eight-man level, Medicine Lodge spent time studying a pair of eight-man Oklahoma programs, Cherokee and Pond Creek. The offense has stayed the same. At first, Ybarra, a Ulysses graduate was “really concerned” about defensive schemes. Medicine Lodge opened the season in a 3-2. After Week 1, they went back and incorporated some 11-man tendencies.
“Our defense could be a huge weapon for us,” Ybarra said.
Junior Cason Liebst and Burden stand 1-2 in tackles with 56 and 40, respectively. Junior Grant Ricke is third with 33 stops and has recorded three fumble recoveries. Liebst also started at linebacker last year and weighed just 145 pounds. He has put on five to 10 pounds this fall, has run 4.6 seconds in the 40 and has consistently gotten the team’s first tackle every week.
“A knack for finding the ball,” Ybarra said.
Ricke moved from defensive tackle to defensive end. Offensively, Ricke plays center and Liebst is a guard. Junior Tyce Lonker has helped anchor both lines, too. All three started on the offensive line in 2017.
“Our execution is getting better, and our understanding of the eight-man game has got a lot better,” Ybarra said. “Kids just keep coming out every week hungry, and ready to play.”
Peace Treaty celebration
In 2015, Medicine Lodge faced Chaparral in Week 4. That Friday also coincided with the Peace Treaty festival, held every few years in Medicine Lodge.
The celebration, which first started in 1927, recognizes the 1867 Peace Commission of the United States Government and the five tribes of the Plains Indians, the Kiowa, Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, Arapho and Cheyenne, according to peacetreaty.org.
This year, Peace Treaty events start at 6 a.m. on Friday and lasts, with little interruption, until 6 p.m. on Sunday.
One of the notable events is the pageant/re-enactment. In ’15, Medicine Lodge decided to play the Roadrunners on Friday. However, players and families participated in Peace Treaty events. Medicine Lodge lost the game 57-0.
This season, Medicine Lodge decided to move this week’s key district home game against South Central to Thursday before the Peace Treaty starts Friday.
Medicine Lodge coach Josh Ybarra has been at the school for three peace treaties. The first time, Medicine Lodge was on the road before ’15.
“We kind of decided after (’15) that we would try and play our game on Thursday,” Ybarra said. “Peace Treaty is going to happen, so you have to basically plan around it, and last time we had Peace Treaty, we tried playing the game on that Friday, and we had a lot of kids that were involved. … By the time they got to the game, they were pretty wore out, and we were playing a really good team as well.”
Both teams are 3-1, 1-0 in Eight-Man, Division I, District 2. It is just one of three home games for the Indians. Ybarra said the game is “a build-up and lead in” to peace treaty. Medicine Lodge expects significant alumni back.
Before the South Central varsity game, Medicine Lodge will have junior high football and junior high volleyball. Athletics start at 2:30 p.m. and continue for more than six hours, a day Ybarra labeled “a great big sports fest” and “should be a really cool, really fun night.”
“With them having the pageant, they are going to have a great crowd there, and it’s going to be a battle just off the energy in the stadium, I think,” South Central coach Billy Nichols said.
Nichols, with significant coaching experience in Oklahoma and Kansas, lived in Sun City, Kan., located 28 miles from Medicine Lodge, when he was four and five years old in 1965-66. Nichols believed his parents starting their teaching career in Medicine Lodge and his dad coached basketball. Nichols’ dad, Bill, is 76 and still comes to all the South Central games.
The pageant/re-enactment takes place in a natural amphitheater, near the actual site of the council where the Medicine River and Elm Creek flow together.
“I kind of know the trail,” Nichols said of. “It hits me, too, because I want my boys to be successful.”
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