Given the same situation, Dirk Wedd wouldn’t change a thing.

In fact, when the Lawrence High football team was trailing Olathe East, 21-19, in last Friday’s Class 6A quarterfinals, the Lions’ coach couldn’t have asked for a better situation.

LHS had just scored on a 1-yard plunge from senior Brandon McAnderson with less than two minutes left. They needed a two-point conversion to tie the game. Run McAnderson, the senior with 165 yards that night and 1,789 on the season, right?

Nope.

LHS ran a play-action pass to tight end Josh Lawrence, which failed when the Hawks intercepted quarterback Tommy Mangino’s pass in the end zone.

“The funny thing is, that play was something we’d worked on for two weeks,” Wedd said. “The kids knew it’d be a game-winning or two-point conversion play.”

The play was designed to have the entire Olathe East defense flow to the right as Mangino rolled left. Lawrence, blocking on the right side, fell on purpose, then scooted along the back of the end zone. The timing seemed right, but the execution wasn’t exact.

“We didn’t when we’d use it,” Wedd said. “We didn’t get a chance to use it against Blue Valley North. We had our shot in the Olathe East game.”

Besides, Wedd wasn’t about to let one play take away from the Lions’ season.

Lawrence won eight games for the first time in six years, and won its first playoff game since 1995. The offense, which led the Sunflower League in scoring at nearly 33 points a game, had more than 4,000 total yards of offense for the first time in school history, and was 60 yards shy of the 1991 state championship team’s school record of 3,607 rushing yards.

Though Wedd was quick to point out a distinction between those teams.

“That’s not a true indication,” Wedd said. “We had our number ones in a lot more in the second half than those state-championship teams did.”

What the Lions did have was the first season with two running backs to gain more than 1,000 yards – McAnderson and senior Chris Fulton, who finished with 1,340 yards – though it was McAnderson that fueled the Lions’ season. He joined 1992 graduate Michael Cosey as the only other LHS running backs to rush for more than 3,000 yards in a career.

“It’d be hard to find a better football player in the state of Kansas,” Wedd said. “Brandon, in that Olathe East game, was an indication of what we needed from him.

“We might’ve spelled him some, but for him to make that big of an impact on offense and defense is just amazing. But we knew that when he was a sophomore. We knew what we had.”

But Wedd’s best indicator of a successful season was the foundation his team laid for future seasons. With a sophomore team that finished 7-2 and plenty of incoming freshmen from undefeated South Junior High and Southwest, which lost one game, Lawrence’s future looks bright.

“Next year, hopefully it’ll be easier,” Wedd said. “Since the split, people don’t realize that this can’t be turned around as quickly as they want it, or as I want it.

“Now we’re working back toward that.”