The internet is littered with tales of millionaires – even billionaires – and iconic figures who stumbled and struggled mightily on their way to success.
 
Bill Gates. Thomas Edison. Walt Disney. Steve Jobs. The list goes on and on.
 
So maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that the football coach who has won the most state titles in Kansas since KSHSAA’s playoff era began in 1969 was dismissed from his first head coaching job.
 
That was the case in 1987 after Randy Dreiling completed his second season at Battle Mountain High School in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. Dreiling, a Victoria native and son of a blue-collar owner of a brick company, headed to the Vail Valley after graduating from Benedictine College and spending three years as a high school assistant to Rich Anderson at Pratt.
 
“As you can imagine, I didn’t fit in very well, so they got rid of (me),” Dreiling said.
 
Thirty-seven years and almost 300 victories later, Dreiling’s sluggish start has become a faraway footnote to an illustrious career. It certainly was on a chilly Saturday night in late November at Emporia State’s Welch Stadium, as Dreiling and his St. Thomas Aquinas Saints celebrated a 35-13 victory over Hays in the Class 5A championship game, giving them back-to-back state titles and their third in the last seven years.
 
Aquinas’ 13-0 season also produced a state-record 10^th title for Dreiling, moving him past the late Ed Kriwiel of Kapaun Mt. Carmel, who won nine championships beginning with a Class 3A crown in 1970 and ending with a 5A title in 1987.
 
The 63-year-old Dreiling, who preceded his trio of Aquinas titles with seven state championships during a 17-year run at Hutchinson from 1997-2013, is KSHSAA Covered’s Coach of the Year.
 
“Every one of them is so individually different,” said Dreiling, who notched the fifth unbeaten season of his 35-year head coaching career. “I was lucky enough to coach my kids in state championship games. I just honestly haven’t thought about (the record) much.
 
“Everybody keeps bringing it up, and I know it’s hard to win one. I’m obviously very proud to have been part of 10 of them, so I’ll leave it at that.”
 
Eleven years after Dreiling decided to leave Hutchinson – where he pivoted a struggling program from a 26-game losing streak in the mid-1990s to powerhouse status with six straight titles and seven in eight seasons at the 6A and 5A levels – he guided Aquinas on a magical run to title No. 3. Using an air-tight run defense that yielded just 73 yards a game and a pair of 1,000-yard-plus rushers in Dreiling’s time-tested flexbone offense, the Saints navigated through a treacherous schedule a little battered but not beaten.
 
Aquinas opened its season by outdueling Blue Valley West 25-21 in a seesaw battle in which it overcame a pair of small deficits. A month later, a thrilling October began with the Saints fending off Class 4A runner-up Bishop Miege 28-24, then posting their first-ever victory over Missouri’s tradition-rich Rockhurst, 14-13, in overtime.
 
The nailbiters continued into the playoffs, where Aquinas ended frequent nemesis Mill Valley’s five-year reign in 5A with a 23-22 come-from-behind victory in the quarterfinals. The Saints’ winning drive was preserved on a desperation, fourth-and-16 halfback pass from junior Calin Arndt that floated perilously until senior Will Callahan corralled it amid a trio of Mill Valley defenders.

 
Arndt followed with a 15-yard touchdown run and two-point conversion plunge with just over a minute remaining that gave Aquinas the victory. A week later, the Saints overcame a 10-0 deficit to edge St. James Academy 24-17 in the semifinals, their second win of the season over the Thunder.
 
In contrast, Aquinas took control of the championship game in the first half, building a 21-0 lead.
 
Facing a Hays team that lost its top two quarterbacks to injuries in a semifinal victory over Eisenhower, the Saints got 154 rushing yards and two touchdowns from Arndt, and a pair of touchdown runs and a scoring pass from senior quarterback Elzie Slaughter to fuel their spirited postgame party.
 
“There just weren’t a lot of blowouts,” Dreiling said. “Our 2018 team, the first group that won a title, the starters hardly even played the second half. But these guys had to grind and grind and grind. They had to find a way, and they found a way every game.”
 
Dreiling couldn’t have forecasted this latest triumph, in part due to the Saints’ offseason uncertainty at the highest profile spot on offense. One of the seniors he had to replace after Aquinas toppled Andover Central 35-7 for the Class 4A title in 2023 was signal-caller Aiden Skinner.
 
Slaughter, a converted running back, answered the challenge this fall by running for 1,052 yards, passing for 509 yards and accounting for a combined 20 touchdowns. He was an effective complement to Arndt, a versatile junior back who finished the season with 2,000 rushing yards and 27 touchdowns.
 
“The biggest question mark was the quarterback position,” Dreiling said. “I would love to take credit as I’ve said many times, but Elzie came up and said, ‘Coach, I’d like to be the quarterback.’
 
“He’d never played quarterback before and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ But the guy is 6-3½ and 215, and even when he made mistakes, it wasn’t always a bad deal. That took a lot of pressure off Cal. Elzie was the biggest question mark and the biggest surprise to me. He provided us with that stability there that we weren’t sure we had.”

 
In turn, Slaughter ended his career with a second state title and an appreciation for Dreiling, whose raspy voice and demanding approach have been constants for the hundreds of Kansas high school players who have not only competed for him at Aquinas and Hutchinson, but also during a head coaching tenure from 1989-93 at Kingman that was sandwiched between assistant stops at Pratt and Salina South.
 
“It was amazing,” Slaughter said of playing for Dreiling. “He alone has made me a 10 times better athlete, a 10 times better person. Everything I’ve learned from him, I’m going to use for the rest of my life.”
 
In some ways, Dreiling is doing the same.
 
During his time in Colorado, he visited coaching staffs at the Air Force Academy and University of Colorado, where both programs had turned their offensive focus to the wishbone triple-option attack. The three-back set is run-oriented, much like the flexbone that Dreiling has used with great success at Hutchinson and Aquinas.
 
“A lot of the stuff that we’re doing today is from the time that I spent in Colorado,” Dreiling said. “Other than getting fired out there, it was very helpful from an educational standpoint for what we’re doing on offense right now.”
 
Dreiling returned to Kansas near his hometown at Fort Hays State, where he served as a football graduate assistant in 1988 for Tigers coach John Vincent. Vincent was Dreiling’s high school coach at Victoria, where the Knights also ran the wishbone.
 
Another grad assistant on that staff was current Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy.
 
“Back then, the only college jobs you could get paid nothing and I had a family,” Dreiling said. “I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’”
 
So Dreiling returned to the high school ranks at Kingman, where he posted a 22-23 record in five seasons. The Eagles were unable to qualify for the state playoffs in any of those years, as only one team from each district moved on to the postseason.
 
Prior to his arrival at Hutchinson, Dreiling spent three seasons as a defensive coordinator for Ken Stonebraker at Salina South. Stonebraker and Anderson – Dreiling’s first boss at Pratt – were both inducted into the Kansas Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame earlier this month.

 
Both helped shape Dreiling’s coaching style, he said. But so did his late father, Verlin, who ran Dreiling Masonry, which helped construct schools, hospitals and other structures in western Kansas. Randy and his brothers started working as mud tenders for their brick-laying dad – known as Vernie – at young ages.
 
“You learn what to do and what not to do from everybody that you’re with,” Dreiling said. “Everybody I was with had an influence on how we do things. My dad was probably my biggest coaching influence.”
 
Through the years, Dreiling has provided similar guidance and influence on former and current assistants. One of them, Mike Vernon, has led the Hutchinson program that Dreiling once oversaw since 2018.
 
“I was the grunt of grunts, the lowest man on the totem pole so to speak,” said Vernon, who served on Dreiling’s staff from 2008-11 as the Salthawks collected three state championships. “I got to see quite a bit around the program.
 
“With his attention to detail, nothing was too small. You needed to make sure that you were doing the best job you could possibly do because if you overlooked something, it’s going to be found and you’re going to have to talk about it. His greatest skillset was he could hold you greatly accountable. He expects the best out of everybody, but then he also takes care of you. He’s got a big heart that a lot of people don’t get to see, and if you’re one of his guys, he's always going to be taking care of you in some way or another.”
 
Staff continuity was a big key to Hutchinson’s success, Dreiling said, and it has played a role at Aquinas. While there has been more turnover with the Saints, it afforded Dreiling the opportunity this fall to add longtime head coach Steve Rampy, who won four state titles at Blue Valley, as his defensive coordinator.
 
“The assistant coaches that I’ve had have been so incredible,” Dreiling said. “We had our whole staff pretty much together at Hutch the entire time. It was easy there to have continuity because of those guys.
 
“I’ve had some great coaches since I’ve been here, too. I’d love to sit here and tell everybody how great I am, but it’s all about those guys. They often get overlooked.”
 
Dreiling said while the challenges of program building at Hutchinson and Aquinas have been different, the approach has essentially been the same. Like he did at Hutchinson, Dreiling made the weight room a priority for his players, and the results have followed.

 
As for himself, Dreiling has learned to alter his view of the big picture.
 
“This year, I’ve finally taken the time to enjoy the process more,” he said. “I know this is terrible, but I used to be like, ‘Let’s get to the state championship game. Let’s go.’ This year, I kind of learned to enjoy the process and with this group of players, it was pretty easy to do.”
 
With 289 career victories and enough state titles to count on both hands, some may wonder how much longer Dreiling wants to coach. Unlike the brick-laying work of his youth, Dreiling sees coaching more like a hobby and not something he’s eager to set aside.
 
That’s just fine for players like Slaughter, who viewed Dreiling as a coveted mentor and business partner.
 
“How he coaches us is what makes us successful,” Slaughter said in the celebratory moments after the 5A championship game. “He coaches us hard because he cares about us.”