The Westgate High School football team celebrated its Class 4A state championship on Tuesday with a ceremony honoring the team, coaches, administration, and volunteers that made it all possible.

Those in attendance were shown a documentary by AB Films on the team’s final week leading up to the championship game, as well as a video where players thanked everyone for their support throughout the season.

Assistant head coach Oliver Winston spoke on the evolution of the football program at Westgate, detailing how the team went from success to failure and back again in the pursuit of a system that builds exemplary young men, not just good football players.

“When he was one of the assistant coaches, me and him used to always talk, and one of the things he used to always ask me about was how to change the culture and how people look at us,” Winston said of his early discussions with head coach Ryan Antoine. “I told him that the number one thing was to put a good product out there and teach our kids to have no fear.”

Winston then explained how the program began to find success in the first years of Antoine’s tenure, though the coaches weren’t happy with what the success was building towards.

“When he came back as a head coach, we had a good two years, but we weren’t happy as coaches,” Winston said. “People don’t understand that you can win, but if you’re not winning to create a program, you’re just winning to win. You’re not trying to build character, you’re not trying to build young men to be successful. We wanted to create an environment where that was the culture.”

The change of culture came in 2016, though not everyone was on board with the painful process of reinventing the team’s philosophy.

“In 2016, we dismantled our program,” Winston said. “A lot of people don’t understand that we wanted to have certain expectations, and if you didn’t want to meet those expectations, then you needed to go ahead and get out of our fieldhouse. We lost 24 or 25 seniors. We were the best 0-10 team in the state, I promise you that we were. We were the happiest coaches of an 0-10 team in the state. So when we were challenged and they wanted to fire us, we didn’t have any problems with that, because we had a bigger vision.”

Head coach Ryan Antoine also talked about the kind of program he envisioned for Westgate, and how a football team can play a bigger role in the community.

“We look at the football championships, but at the end of the day, we’re just trying to save our boys,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about, giving our guys a chance and giving them the ability to dream.”

Antine also talked about how he eventually had to learn to trust in his coaches and in the overall plan, letting go of trying to do it all by himself.

“In the 0-10 year, I was trying to do it all by myself,” Antoine said. “Nothing special happened, I just got the hell out of the way and let God do his job. We just let people do what they needed to do and built it up the right way and let it take over.”

The evening concluded with an award presentation for volunteers and members of the community who supported the team, followed by the distribution of the championship rings to the coaching staff, school administration, and players.