VERMILLION — It was a bittersweet ending to the 2025 football season for Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy.

Thursday’s 46-22 win in the Class 9AA state championship game over Elkton-Lake Benton marked the final game of existence for F/M/FA.

Marion will join with Parker next season for all sports, dissolving the football co-op formed in 2022.

But the journey since the Phoenix rose from the ashes has been linear, ending it atop the Class 9AA mountain.

“It was very emotional on the bus ride over here, knowing that it was our last game of the co-op, knowing it’s Riley’s (Tschetter) last game,” said FMFA head coach Dustin Tschetter, Riley’s father. “ It was a tough ride over for me, I faced forward, I did not want the boys to see me pretty much crying the whole way here. I wish nothing but the best for Marion, we’ll see what happens with us, but this has been four really good years and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Dustin has coached the Phoenix in all four years of existence, starting with a bare bones 2022 season, having just one player on the roster with prior varsity football experience.

“Those first two years we were basic, running plays, just trying to put an offense in,” Dustin said. “We had nine freshmen and it was more like 15 or 16 when you consider most of the kids hadn’t played before. The last two years it’s been more fundamentals, getting after ourselves at practice.”

Last season, F/M/FA reached the 9AA semifinals before falling to Parkston, but always felt like 2025 was the year of the Phoenix.

“We’ve always kind of had this year listed as the year we could do it and I feel like every year we’ve gotten so much better from the last,” Riley said, the game’s Joe Robbie MVP. “Especially this year, we took a huge jump being able to beat those physical teams that we struggled with in the past and just be a more powerful, bigger team. We had a lot of athletes this year so that helped.”

Riley started all four seasons for the Phoenix (12-0), capping it off with one of his best performances of his career. The senior quarterback completed 15-of-22 passes for 315 yards and three touchdowns, adding a touchdown run on the ground as well.

Riley said it was an odd feeling knowing it was the final game of the Phoenix co-op heading into the DakotaDome Thursday, but the team had one goal in mind.

“It felt weird, but we all just had the same goal of going out with a championship, that’s the way it should end,” Riley said. “We came together with a goal of winning the championship so it’s just kind of poetic the way it ended.”

Luke Peters, a senior running back and the game’s outstanding back of the game, is another cornerstone player of the Phoenix era. Peters ended the game with 16 rush attempts for 65 yards and two touchdowns, adding a 73-yard touchdown reception as well.

“The relationship I feel I grew with these guys, getting to know the Marion guys so much better,” Peters said of the co-op. “I look back to it and I feel like at first I was a little disappointed like ‘Oh, we got to go with Marion,’ but it has grown and I just absolutely love it and I’m just so happy that God has blessed me with those Marion boys. It’s awesome having them.”

But this state championship was a long time coming for this senior class, who won a junior football title six years ago in this same building, and are leaving Vermillion once again champions with a different group of players.

“We were here six years ago, won a junior football title with these seniors,” Dustin said. “Luke, Tate (Sorensen), Riley, and I told them right there in the middle of that field we’re coming back in six years to finish this journey. To come back and get it done is remarkable and we did it with a different group of boys. We weren’t with Marion back then, we were with Canistota. This is really special and I couldn’t be prouder of how hard they worked all season long.”

The Phoenix went 34-9 in four seasons of the football co-op, but saved the most important win for last.

“It means pretty much everything (to me),” Riley said. “We came together four years ago and a lot of us seniors, we had to start as freshmen. To battle back from that, cause we weren’t the greatest that year, to come back and finish it off with a championship and finish the co-op with a championship is incredible.”