Year in Review: The Leader, Charlo QB Chico Stipe

You've heard it before. That deafening silence from a crowd when their star player goes down. Some gasps from a few shocked individuals and then that general panic and "get up, get up, get up!" feeling.

When Chico Stipe went down with a knee injury in Charlo's first round football playoff game against White Sulphur Springs, things weren't going well for the Vikings.

They had sputtered on offense and were bending on defense. As Stipe limped off the field, it was like the life was being drained out of the team's season.

Then a short time later, near the bench and in front of the crowd, Stipe started taking practice snaps. He started running back and forth.

He'd be back.

"I just knew my teammates needed me," Stipe said after the game. "I had to be mentally tough."

Stipe said that the initial pain made him think he'd be out a lot longer than a few plays, but he pulled the ultimate leadership move that would have made Vince Lombardi proud.

And it wasn't like Stipe didn't trust his teammates, a squad with the composure of an NFL veteran squad, he just wanted to be out there.

Even hobbled by injury, Stipe was probably the most explosive player on the field as the Vikings overcame a 20-0 deficit in the first quarter, pulling off an incredible 36 point turnaround and defeating White Sulphur Springs 58-50 in an epic shootout.

"You don't see that very often in high school football," Krahn said of his team's comeback after the game.

While every player should get credit for the turnaround, one can't help but draw attention to the gutsy performance by Stipe. The injury also hobbled him in the next playoff game in Chinook and he was held out of the beginning of basketball practices, but he still fought on.

Against Chinook, he was knocked out of the game but kept coming back in. At one point against the eventual state champions, Stipe cramped up after a play. Normally that requires someone to come out on the field and help a player off after they get checked out.

Not Stipe, the guy crawled off the field so that his teammates could keep the momentum of the drive going.

While the Vikings would eventually fall to Chinook, the two playoff games that Charlo played this season showed just what makes up Stipe's character. It's easy to be a star player when you're blowing someone out (and there were plenty of blowouts for the Vikings during the season), but when things are not going so smoothly is when the true field generals come out to play.

Stipe's stats for the season are sickening, almost comicbook superhero-like, but he may have played his best football in the postseason when the gauntlet was thrown down.

And for the crowd that was hushed up as their quarterback limped off the field for the first time, they certainly had plenty to cheer about after that.