Angelo State Rams' football culture leads to special season

The Angelo State football team opened the 2022 season with a daunting task.

After a breakthrough in 2021 where the Rams reached the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division II playoffs and finished 9-2 in the regular season, how could they improve?

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The answer was straightforward enough: By going 11-0 in the regular season and winning the outright Lone State Conference title for the first time since 1984.

That again leaves a high bar for next season. Surviving the quarterfinal round, where ASU lost to Colorado School of Mines for the second consecutive season, is the obvious goal and competing for a national championship is now something expected annually.

That is the challenge for a program that is rolling after coach Jeff Girsch's fifth season at the helm.

"It's been a long time since we won the Lone Star Conference outright," Girsch said. "That was one of the goals, to get back to contention for the Lone Star Conference. Last year we made it to the quarterfinals too, but we were second in the Lone Star. We wanted to take that next step and we got that accomplished.

"This program is set up for success for a long time. I told our guys, in a week — they're still down about last Saturday — but in a week they can look back at all the positives they accomplished. We had a lot of firsts at Angelo State. There's no doubt this year set this program apart from year's past and other programs throughout the country."

From an early point this season Angelo showed the potential to keep the program on its upward path. In week 2 the Rams went on the road and beat the Colorado School of Mines program that has become its bugbear. That win was in overtime, then ASU won every Lone State Conference game by double digits.

The defense emerged as the No. 1 unit in the country by total defense and quarterback Zach Bronkhorst cemented himself as a star. Soon enough Angelo State was ranked No. 2 in the country and putting distance between itself and everyone else in the LSC.

That wasn't a big surprise. While ASU came into this year with holes to fill on defense, it has developed the type of depth that makes that as easy as plugging in the next man up. For example, they replaced one set of all-conference linebackers with another. That's something they now have to do again next year.

The team came together quickly.

"When you go beat Colorado School of Mines at their place, you just kind of knew this was a special team," Girsch said. "Getting into conference play, each and every week, we saw everybody's best game. We were the team everybody wanted to knock off.

"As we continued to win games in the Lone Star Conference, I never felt comfortable until the horn blew in the fourth quarter against Midwestern State to win every game in the regular season. But I felt it was realistic because of how hard the guys work."

Ultimately, this season wasn't about some magical convalescence and putting together a charmed run; it was about a veteran program at a high level taking another step. Angelo State is losing nine key players, including Bronkhorst and all conference linebackers Weston Bauer and Micah Flowers, but this looks sustainable.

Finding another quarterback will head the spring to-do list but Girsch said he feels all the answers the team needs are on its roster right now.

"There are a lot of really good football players coming back to this program," Girsch said. "We've got to fill some holes and develop those kids. But the returners coming back, it's going to be a football team with potential to do great things.

"They are going to be hungry, it's two years in a row they've gotten to this point. Now it's time for the program to make the next step."

At one level the next step is as simple as playing better on the 13th Saturday of the season, but Girsch has built the program with an eye toward the big picture. Angelo State football has become about a standard of excellence and the goal is to keep developing that.

"Continued growth in the culture, the belief in winning, the belief in preparation to be successful," Girsch said. "I'll also refer to, the ball has to bounce your way sometimes and that part you can't dictate through preparation. But you can dictate, when you get put behind the eight-ball, are you going to rise up and do what you have to do to deal with the adversity?

"Throughout the season you're going to see holes you have to fill a little bit, making corrections there. We as coaches learned a lot as well, what worked, what didn't. All that goes into being a better team next fall."

There is only so much room to get better before Angelo State finds itself on the ultimate stage of Division II football. That is going to be the aim every year for the foreseeable future, to bring the first national title since 1978 to San Angelo.

"That needs to be the goal," Girsch said. "There have to be benchmarks along the way: get to the playoffs, win a conference championship, we've done that. This team, the message moving forward, the goals moving forward, are going to be to win a national championship at Angelo State.

"This is a capable place of doing so. We can recruit great players at Angelo State, we can continue to have great coaches here and work toward that common goal. We're going to have benchmarks, but the ultimate goal is to win a national championship and we're going to work hard to get there."

That's what's still out there for the Rams to accomplish.

Bret Bloomquist can be reached at 915-546-6359; bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Angelo State football culture leads to special season in 2022