08/17/2026
๐ ๐๐๐ฒ ๐ข๐ง ๐
๐๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ค ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ๐ฒ
๐๐ก๐๐ง ๐
๐ซ๐ข๐๐๐ฒ ๐๐๐ฅ๐จ๐ง๐ ๐๐ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ฒ๐จ๐ง๐: ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฒ ๐จ๐ ๐
๐๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ค๐ญ๐จ๐ง ๐
๐จ๐จ๐ญ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฅ
Before the games were played on Garry Cunningham field, Friday football was played after school on a field, more dirt than grass, located right behind the old high school. It is on that field where the Faulkton Football Tradition began. The young men who stepped onto the field carried something far heavier than a leather helmet.
They carried the pride of Faulkton.
From the 1920โs to the current day, Faulkton football has been a source of pride for the community. Football has always been more than a game played by a group of high school boys. It has been a gathering place for the entire community. When the Faulkton Trojans take the field, the town comes with them.
Players throughout the storied past of Faulkton football were sons of farmers, merchants, and neighbors. They were boys who spent their days working on the farm, helping their families, and doing the everyday jobs that came with growing up in a small prairie community. Then, when practice began, they traded work clothes for football uniforms and learned the lessons that athletics have always taught, discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, and perseverance.
Among those who wore the Faulkton uniform in a previous era was Jim Kretchman, a member of the Class of 1952, who would go on to make his own mark in South Dakota football history. But his story, like so many others that came before and after, began on the hometown field, where young men learned that football was about more than individual achievement, it was about representing something bigger than themselves.
On Friday afternoons and evenings, the rhythm of Faulkton changed.
Farmers finished their chores and headed toward town. People began parking their cars on Friday morning to get the best spot to watch the game. Parents and neighbors filled the stands and bordered the sideline. Students gathered together, the band played, the cheerleaders cheered, and the excitement grew as kickoff approached. The players knew the people watching from the stands were not strangers, they were the same people who had watched them grow up.
Everyone had a connection to the team.
A tackle was cheered by a neighbor. A long run was celebrated by a classmate. A hard-fought victory belonged to the whole community.
Like those teams of the 1920โs and 1950โs, the boys of Friday nights played for the name across their jersey, for their teammates beside them, and for the people sitting in the stands who believed that something special happens in Faulkton on Friday night in the fall.
Some players carried the ball. Some opened holes for their teammates. Some made the tackles that never appeared in the newspaper. But every player mattered, because every player helped write the story of Faulkton football.
The scoreboard eventually fades. The uniforms are put away. The players move on to careers, families, and new chapters of life.
But the memories remained.
They remain in the stories told at reunions, in old photographs, and in the tradition passed down from one generation of Trojans to the next.
As another Faulkton football season begins, the young men who take the field on opening night become part of a story that started long before them. They are connected to every player who once wore the black and gold.
Because football in Faulkton has never been just about a game.
It has always been about community.
It has always been about pride.
And every fall, when the Trojans take the field, another chapter is written in a story that belongs to everyone. On Friday nights, itโs always a good day to be a Trojan!
