By CONOR NICHOLL

cnicholl@dailynews.net

CAWKER CITY -- Second-year coach Curt Christians arrives for the first day of practice with pads for the Downs-Lakeside football team. Christians is constantly joking and talking while he fixes pads, compliments senior wideout Connor Shoemaker for being the first one ready, organizes the squad for a team photo and asks if players have combed their hair and powdered their noses.

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During a kickoff return/coverage drill, Christians keeps up the chatter. He instructs kickers where to boot the ball and provides advice after nearly every kick. The grizzled, affable Christians says he always tries "to look on the light side of things," and keep everything fun.

"He is still a kid at heart," Shoemaker said. "He still jokes around with everybody and builds a relationship with pretty much everybody on the field."

"At times, it is kind of a silly game, you run at each other," Christians said. "But it's a learning experience for the kids as far as work ethic, teamwork, taking some bumps along the way, getting back up."

Before Lakeside, Christians was the St. John's-Beloit coach for 16 years and coached one of the most memorable eight-man teams in Kansas history. In 1996, his squad, with an 11-player roster, finished as state runner-up to Rolla. The team couldn't scrimmage in practices, so the players had to work left side, then right side for plays; misdirection was rarely practiced. The team, known as the "Energized Eleven," finished 10-3, still the best football postseason finish in school history.

Overall, Christians posted a 76-72 record before he assisted at Downs-Lakeside in 2007 and '08. After 2008, John Hutson stepped aside as the Knights' coach. Christians was asked if he wanted the job, but was uncertain. He had lost his wife in a car accident and liked the low-stress environment of an assistant. The deciding factor came when Cory Beangher and Kyle Beisner said they would be assistants.

Christians took over a team that just went 0-8 and had produced a 14-46 record since the Lake Waconda school district consolidated Downs and Cawker City into Lakeside High School before 2003.

"I think we needed to step up our competitive level just a little bit and our work ethic a whole bunch as far as weight room work and practice work," Christians said. "After that second year, knew we had to get in the weight room, started coming in a couple mornings a week before school and then that built into the summer program a year ago."

The football team, made up of three towns (Downs, Cawker City, Glen Elder) was fractured. Christians brought the team together and led the Knights to a 4-5 season.

"We used to consider ourselves three separate towns and you could distinguish who came from each town, but now it's just one theme," Shoemaker said. "It's just really been unified in these last couple years. When he came, it just really started to meld together."

Among the 49 Eight-Man, Division I schools, Lakeside tied for the third-biggest win improvement. Offensively, the Knights scored 296 points, 200 more than they tallied in '08 -- the second-largest jump in Division I. Christians spread the field, the offensive line had a solid season and Lakeside threw it effectively with Joel Cushing (13 TD passes).

"He likes to mess with us, but he is also very serious when it comes to getting stuff done," senior Coe Weis said. "He makes us work very hard for everything that we get."

This year, junior Alex Renken, the former junior varsity quarterback, steps in for the graduated Cushing. He has a variety of weapons, including junior Miles Thomas (775 total yards) and seniors Connor Storer (11 catches), Shoemaker (348 receiving yards), and junior Tracey Darnell and Weis (602 yards), considered the most talent since the schools consolidated. It could yield the first winning season and first playoff berth since Lakeside formed -- and another jump under the light-hearted Christians.