By Rich Winter

605 Sports

VERMILLION — Lower Brule put the exclamation point on a perfect season with Friday’s 60-8 win over White River, earning a third consecutive All-Nations Football Conference Class 9B championship. 

Behind five touchdowns from 2024 All-Nations Jim Thorpe award winner Nate Middletent the Sioux dominated the trenches, earning a 30th consecutive win. 

“We have a lot of seniors on this team and I wanted to help end the season on a good note,” Middletent said. “To win three in a row feels amazing because no one in Lower Brule has ever done anything like this.”

The Sioux became the first team in the five-year history of the All-Nations Football Conference to win three consecutive titles. Lower Brule coach Charlie LaRoche called Friday’s historic win a community effort giving credit to assistant coaches Dillon Dejong, Jesse Bien and administrators Lance Witte and Tom Cameron.

“We have a group of guys that get the kids ready to play and we have a group of kids that do a good job of showing up,” LaRoche said. “The parents do a good job of getting their kids to the game. It is a community effort and we couldn’t do it without everyone pitching in to help.” 

White River earned the first possession of the game and started well with a pair of completions from sophomore quarterback Cooper Baxter. After a defensive stop, the Sioux took the lead when Middletent scored on an 11-yard touchdown run. 

Baxter was forced to leave the game because of concussion protocol and the Sioux took a 14-0 lead after a Kristian Antelope interception led to an eight-yard touchdown run from Middletent. 

A dominant Sioux defense that gave up just 26 points all season, led by 2024 All-Nations Class 9B defensive player of the game Elliot LaRoche, stymied White River all night holding the Tigers to 51 rushing yards and 42 passing yards.

“Defensively we’ve got good players at all three levels. We have a really good defensive line, really good linebackers, we’ve got really good [defensive backs], and they work together,” Charlie LaRoche said. “And that’s the big thing about defense. When you get a group of guys that understand their assignments, they work together, that’s when you get a really really good defense. We’ve had a lot of guys step up throughout the year, and our defense really evolved as the year went on. This is kind of where we ended up, and we ended up being a pretty good defense.”

When the season started Lower Brule quarterback Ethan Thigh hadn’t played football for several years. At game's end Thigh was named the 2024 offensive player of the game. Thigh completed 8-of-14 passes for yards and three touchdowns. LaRoche, Nicolas Flute and Rocco Estes each hauled in touchdown passes from Thigh. 

Lower Brule led 46-0 at halftime and took a 60-0 lead before White River scored in the game's final minutes on a five-yard touchdown run from Teagan Bouman.