Winning doesn’t just happen. You don’t just wake up one morning and decide, “Today I’m going to be great!” No, it takes hard work. It means going to workouts all summer long. It means staying up till the grim hours of the night watching game film. It means grabbing a protein bar instead of the Snickers.Winning takes work.

“I’m not gonna lie, the way we lost last year sucked. We have so much to prove,” senior linebacker Cy Sirmon said. “When a Westside school sees Wenatchee on their schedule they automatically think it’s a W. They don’t respect us.”

The Wenatchee Panthers head into the State playoffs with a 9-1 record, but “once you’re in the playoffs, anything can happen,” Sirmon said.

“It would be great to make it farther than last year just to say I’m better than my brother,” senior tight end Markus Stoll said jokingly. “We’re such an experienced group of guys. We really care about each other, we’re family, and like family we’ve experienced ups and downs.”

For the Panthers, getting to State hasn’t been too common. This is only the second time since 1978 that the football team has participated in State.

“Feels great to get another shot at it,” senior defensive end Ross Martin said. “I’m proud to say I played on two State teams, not many people can say that. It’s something I’ll always remember.”

“We need to play perfect, every team is good or else they wouldn’t be [at State],” Coach Scott Deveraux said. “But at the end of the day it comes down [to] us, we need to execute our plays and play our kind of football.”