If Salina Central players were looking for a fire and brimstone speech from head coach Mark Sandbo at halftime of last month’s Class 5A football championship game, they may have been disappointed.
 
With the Mustangs facing a four-point deficit against Basehor-Linwood at Emporia State’s Welch Stadium, Sandbo tapped into a more Zen-like approach focused on gratitude.
 
“His biggest thing was saying back on August 1, if someone told us we’d be down 14-10 at halftime of a state championship game, would we have taken it?” said Cooper Reves, Central’s senior standout running back. “And everybody would have. It was about being grateful for where we were at.”
 
Perhaps that level-headedness came from Sandbo’s late father, Gary, a former offensive coordinator at Bethany College and head coach at Smoky Valley High School, which he led to its lone state football title in 1988. After all, in the younger Sandbo’s time on his dad’s sideline, he never recalled Gary raising his voice with an official.
 
That’s not to say competitive fires haven’t burned bright in the Sandbo coaching family. And when Mark’s Mustangs recovered a muffed second-half kickoff and used it to launch a 41-point blitz over the final two quarters toward a 51-34 victory over Basehor-Linwood, the youngest of Gary’s three boys was fully energized.
 
“I love this game because of how much I was around him,” said the 41-year-old Sandbo, KSHSAA Covered’s Coach of the Year. “My babysitter was a tackling dummy growing up. I skipped a lot of piano lessons that my dad knew about when I was at his practices. I told him later I wish I would have gone and I wish I knew how to play the piano.

 
“He was like, ‘I kind of enjoyed having you up there.’”
 
That bond continues two years after Gary Sandbo passed away at age 77. By leading Salina Central to its first 5A title in 20 years, Mark joined Gary as one of three father-son duos to win state football championships since KSHSAA’s championship era began in 1969.
 
The Sandbos joined Roger and Brooks Barta, and Larry and Michael Glatczak in accomplishing the feat. The late Roger Barta led Smith Center to eight titles while Brooks has collected three at Holton. Larry Glatczak guided Centralia to four state titles, while Michael won his third with a Class 2A victory over Southeast of Saline on Nov. 29.
 
“I’ve been pulled over in a small town asking for directions, and I’ve dropped my name and they go, ‘Are you Gary Sandbo’s son?’” Sandbo said. “I go, ‘Yes,’ and then it turns into a 15-minute conversation about my dad. He was extremely humble and that’s probably something I’ve taken from him.
 
“He didn’t talk about himself and he definitely didn’t give himself any credit, or as much credit as he could have.”
 
Mark harbors similar humility, saying his oldest brother, Matt, an assistant at McPherson under Jace Pavlovich, may have the best offensive mind of the Sandbo boys. But after guiding Salina Central over the peaks – and one valley – in its 12-1 season, Sandbo certainly can define his eighth season with the Mustangs as a rousing success.
 
“I just appreciate him always being an honest guy,” said senior tackle Kaden Snyder, who, like Reves, was a KSHSAA Covered Top 11 selection. “He always told us if what we were doing was good enough or wasn’t good enough. From the beginning of the year, he said you guys are the one who can do this. He just instilled that belief in us.”
 
The Mustangs entered the season a bit under the radar after posting a 4-5 record in 2024. It was just the second sub-.500 mark in Sandbo’s tenure, which began in 2018 after he spent seven seasons as an assistant at Dodge City.
 
But Sandbo believed the challenges of a schedule that included Class 4A champion Andover Central and 5A semifinalist Eisenhower made the record a slight aberration. And with 18 seniors returning, including Reves, a Northern Iowa wrestling signee, and Snyder, a Kansas football signee, the Mustangs had a chance to prove it.
 
“I think those seniors felt like their standard wasn’t upheld,” Sandbo said. “That wasn’t going to be the case this year and they were vocal about it. We’ve had a couple teams that have talked about being the representative from the west (in the state championship). I’m usually the first one to tell them, ‘Hey, put a sock in it. We don’t need any bulletin-board material out there. We haven’t done anything yet.’
 
“But the 2023 team talked about it and this was another group that did, and good on them. It takes that type of belief across the board to be able to do what we accomplished.”
 
Sandbo’s own confidence stems from a Mustang coaching staff that possesses experience and continuity. The group includes Richard Brake, Tony Chesney, Austin Kingsbury, Derryl Hill, Brian Kavanagh, Josh Anguiano, Mark Vaughn, Mike Kilgore and Tad Remy.
 
Five of his assistants have been with Sandbo since he started his first head coaching job eight seasons ago. The current staff has been intact for three consecutive seasons.
 
“I say it all the time at our banquet,” Sandbo said. “We have coaches who could do it at any level and that’s the truth. I’m thankful that they chose this profession at the high school level. They’ve made our program extremely good and a positive experience for our kids.”
 
The Mustangs rolled to a 6-0 start, defeating crosstown rival Salina South 31-21 to win the Mayor’s Cup. Each of the victories during the streak came by double digits, including a 23-13 victory over Andover Central that set up a showdown with Andover that ultimately decided the Ark Valley-Chisholm Trail II title.
 
It didn’t go well for the Mustangs.
 
Andover scored touchdowns on all seven of its drives in a 48-21 victory. Reves, who ran for 2,817 yards and 32 touchdowns during the season, was limited to 13 carries and 103 yards.
 
“I think it was one of the biggest reasons we won state,” Reves said. “We had some success early on and it put it in our minds that we didn’t think we could be beat. We got pretty down after that game. Defensively, we got dominated and offensively we didn’t do too much.
 
“Coach Sandbo lifted us up and he told us we’re still a good team. We were just getting too big of heads.”
 
After rebounding to end the regular season with a 35-28 victory over Goddard, Salina Central inched closer to a November to remember. The Mustangs rolled up 68 and 62 points in postseason victories over Topeka West and Goddard to set up a rematch with Salina South, which launched a Cinderella run with road upsets of Andover and Liberal.
 
It was the first playoff meeting between Central and South since 2004. The Mustangs took it 49-24.
 
“It was just awesome for our kids,” Sandbo said. “We don’t root for South very often in anything, I don’t care if it’s water polo. But we were rooting for them against Liberal, and the reason was we felt like they deserved it and our kids deserved to play in a big stakes game like that in front of what we anticipated would be a huge crowd, and it was. It felt like the entire community of Salina was out for that one.”
 
If the win over Basehor-Linwood was Central’s most coveted, a 30-28 semifinal thriller over previously unbeaten Great Bend may have been the signature victory.
 
Sandbo knew it would take an aggressive mindset – “Maybe super-aggressive,” he said – to knock off the Panthers, and Central delivered. The Mustangs ran a fake punt that led to a field goal in the first half, then scored on a fake field goal in the third quarter to push their lead to 23-6.
 
The Mustangs closed in on the title game with a touchdown pass from quarterback Griffin Hall to linebacker-turned-tight end Jesus Delgado. It was Delgado’s first career reception.
 
“He wanted us going into that game thinking we were the better team,” Snyder said. “He was telling us to remember they weren’t unstoppable. And Coach Sandbo, what a job of coaching he did. Without him, we wouldn’t have been able to pull it off like we did.”

 
Sandbo said the euphoria of that victory lasted a little longer than normal. But he was proud of how his coaches and players handled what came next.
 
“We were on Cloud Nine,” Sandbo said. “We as a staff usually enjoy it for an evening and then we start honing in probably early morning, early afternoon for the next game. We enjoyed that one for a full 36 hours.
 
“Then our kids did a great job of responding because again that’s a tough high. There’s an emotional high and how are you going to respond to that? In the state game, to be able to do what we did with five turnovers and 41 points in the second half, I would say their response was textbook.”
 
Salina Central’s championship stirred memories of a dominant era of Salina football, when Central won six 5A championships under Marvin Diener from 1993 to 2005, and South claimed 5A titles under Ken Stonebraker in 2000 and 2004. Sandbo spent part of that era playing quarterback for his dad at nearby Smoky Valley before going off to play at Fort Hays State.
 
Even though two ensuing decades produced a Salina title drought, Sandbo said the desire for one has been strong.
 
“It’s a football community for sure,” Sandbo said. “There’s always been a buzz. There’s a pressure at Salina Central when you wear that maroon and white to win games, to win big football games. One of our goals is to win games in November and that’s an expectation here.
 
“This year, the buzz was the same, it just started crescendoing as the games got bigger. On state championship Friday, that crescendo was loud in Emporia, and our kids were definitely energized by it.”