Battle kicking off new era, building physical brand of football

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The 2025 season will mark a new era of Battle High School's football program.

The Spartans are getting set to tackle their first season under head coach Shawn Gaines, who took over as the leader of the team in April.

Battle is striving to restore its winning culture with new leadership in the locker room. Since winning six district championships in their first seven years of postseason eligibility, the Spartans have registered a 12-29 overall record, including a one-win campaign last season. Coach Gaines is emphasizing that his student-athletes play a physical style of football to rediscover the program's winning ways.

"It's going to start with us being physical, right? We're going to have to play a different brand of football than we've ever played in the past," Gaines said. "We got to get back to our physical ways. That starts up front with our offensive and defensive lines, and everybody else has to take on that mentality that we're going to get to the football, that we're going to be physical and we're going to do our best to be as tough as we possibly can."

Furthermore, Gaines' vision for the program is his student-athletes bringing a fast, disciplined and physical style of play to the field. Along with attention-to-detail, the foundation of Battle's new culture is being built on accountability, effort, coachability and commitment.

"The first thing is accountability. We want our guys to show up and take care of business. The second thing is giving their best effort. We want to give maximum effort every time that we step on the field. The third thing is we want to be able to take coaching, be able to take all of the knowledge that our coaches are willing to give. Then, the last thing is we have to commit. We have to really buy in and do what we plan to do," Gaines said.

Coach Gaines highlighted Blayne Jungmann, Terrence Luther, Austin Walbrecht and Oliver Linss as some of the leaders that have emerged over the offseason. He said those student-athletes have helped set an example for the work ethic that he hopes the entire team will embrace.

Through that hard work, Gaines believes his team can achieve its goals for his first year at the helm.

"Just getting back to competing, making sure that we're in every game, every time that we step on the field, we're competing to the best of our ability," Gaines said. "If we can go in every game and make it close and make it competitive, then I think that it can be marked down as a successful year."

Battle kicks off a new era on Friday, Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. against North Kansas City.