Mike Hill is baseball coach, assistant principal and athletic director at Free State High School. Before working at FSHS, he was a student athlete and coach at city-rival Lawrence High School. His football helmet and Chesty Lion statue serve as reminders of his days at LHS.

Although he is athletic director, assistant principal and baseball coach at Free State High School, Mike Hill still cheers for cross-town rival Lawrence High School.

That’s because Hill graduated in 1987 from LHS, where he played football and baseball. The football team won state championships during his sophomore and senior years.

“When I was a senior, we were nationally ranked and undefeated,” Hill said.

He said his school spirit was “as big as it gets.” He went on to teach and coach the sports he played at LHS, and the football team continued to dominate. It won state championships from 1991 to 1993 while he was a coach.

“I still love Lawrence High School and a lot of great years of my life were spent in that building,” Hill said. “Athletically, I was fortunate enough to be a part of a lot of championship teams and I still love the school – but I am a Firebird.”

He’s come a long way since voting against building a second high school in town.

“I voted against the bond issue. I voted against it because, I suppose, of some affinity for Lawrence High as it was, and it wasn’t an athletically motivated decision, which a lot of people thought the anti-vote was. I just thought Lawrence High School was a unique and wonderful place and didn’t want to see that stop.

“Now that I know what I know, it certainly was the best thing,” Hill said, noting the opportunities that two high schools provide children academically and athletically.

John Oberzan, a 1965 LHS graduate, said he wasn’t too keen on building a second high school.

“I was sort of in favor of going to a four-year high school,” he said.

He liked the idea of having a building for freshmen and sophomores and another one for juniors and seniors. “When I was in school, a lot of the Shawnee Mission schools were a lot bigger than us and it seemed to work out all right.”

While Oberzan was a student at LHS, the football team went undefeated.

He and his wife, Karen, who is a 1969 LHS graduate, still attend football games and are torn about whom to root for. That’s because they have two children who graduated from FSHS and another one who will be a senior there.

“I think the first year I sat on the Lawrence High side when they played football and the rest of my family sat on the Free State side,” John Oberzan said, laughing.

Now he has a pullover FSHS jacket that he wears when rooting for the Firebirds and then he takes it off revealing a Chesty Lion sweatshirt when he moves to the other side of the field.

“I always joke with my kids: once a Lion always a Lion,” he said.

Bob Lisher, a 1977 LHS graduate, coached football at his alma mater from 1985 to 1994.

“When I was there as a coach, we played in eight state championship games in nine years and we won seven of them,” he said.

In 1997, he was hired to be the head coach for the Firebirds where two of his children have attended and one is a sophomore. Lisher said he still roots for the Chesty Lions when his team isn’t playing them.

“It’s just like with your brother,” he said. “You want to beat him but you don’t want anybody else to beat him.”