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THEY'VE BEEN GIVEN a title generally reserved for 300-pound behemoths.

They are the Gridiron Gladiators.

One might assume that’s a nickname for a rough-and-tumble pro team, but they are just a bunch of kids.

And Randy Dreiling is deeply indebted to them and their coaches.

The Gridiron Gladiators, you see, are the players who comprise the youth football league in Hutchinson, Kansas. And over the years, they have blossomed into talent that has transformed the local high school team into a powerhouse.

The Hutchinson Salthawks have won four consecutive state championships under Dreiling despite the fact that they represent the smallest Class 6A school in Kansas. In fact, the dwindling school population will force Hutchinson to drop down to Class 5A beginning in 2008. But the Gridiron Gladiators continue to stock the high school program with players who have become accustomed to winning titles.

“We run our youth program through the YMCA,” explains Dreiling, whose team has won 36 consecutive games and back-to-back Chisholm Trail/Ark Valley League crowns. “When I first got here (in 1996) it was just for fifth and sixth graders, but we’ve added third and fourth grade as well.

“We run one padded camp and one non-padded camp in the summer and the kids learn our base offensive package. The coaches run our base plays in the little league and they do a great job. All of the kids are exposed to what we do at the high school level at an early age.”

It’s working. Hutchinson was at its most dominant in 2007, sweeping through the regular season unbeaten and outscoring its four playoff opponents by a combined score of 189-61. The Salthawks ended the blitz with a 37-14 thumping of Olathe-South in the finals.

Dreiling cites the freedom provided by the school administration to hire a quality coaching staff and the voters for passing a bond issue that paid for a new stadium, which opened two years ago, as primary reasons for the program’s success. He also believes a thriving weight program has played a pivotal role.

The Salthawks have thrived offensively with a triple option and power running game with an occasional play-action pass mixed in. Among the beneficiaries has been running back Romero Cotton, who rushed for more than 1,000 yards in 2007 despite missing half the regular season games with an injury.

Cotton is also the top-ranked wrestler in the country according to one poll, having won three consecutive state championships, but he’s hoping to continue his football career at the college level.

The premier Hutchinson quarterback during its championship run was Wes Kimmel, who guided the team to titles in all three of his seasons as a starter. Kimmel rushed and threw for more than 1,000 yards in earning all-state status his senior year and broke the school record for career touchdown passes.

Dreiling also cites running back Kerry Gamble, who gained 1,700 yards on the ground in 2004, two-way lineman Shawn Smith, right tackle Tyler Graves and strong safety Gage McKinnis as tremendously talented players who played leading roles in the Salthawks’ dominance. But he also admits that his team hasn’t been blessed with tremendous athletic talent.

“We haven’t had a lot of big-time players,” he says. “We play a lot of kids. We start 22 different kids and we’re able to keep a lot of seniors around who want to start at least one year. That’s very important.”

More important is what the success of the Salthawks has meant to the town of Hutchinson, which boasts about 45,000 people.

“I think what we’ve accomplished has been very important to the community,” Dreiling says. “Our school has had a lot of success in a lot of different sports, but this run has been something special.”

And he can thank the Gridiron Gladiators for that.

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Story courtesy of Red Line Editorial, Inc.