By CONOR NICHOLL

cnicholl@dailynews.net

Travis Pfannenstiel defines toughness as "not really showing that you are hurt even if you are."

This past fall, Pfannenstiel showed that character for the Hays High School football team. Pfannenstiel, a linebacker and fullback, suffered a hamstring injury in Week 4 against Garden City and missed a game and a half. He was bothered by the hamstring all year and rarely practiced, but still delivered 124 tackles and earned first team all-Western Athletic Conference honors for an Indian team that finished 7-2 and won the Western Athletic Conference title with a 4-0 mark, the third WAC football title in school history.

Pfannenstiel earned an invitation to play for the West squad for the 37th annual Kansas Shrine Bowl game, to be played Saturday at Pittsburg. Game time is 7 p.m.

Pfannenstiel, the Indians' first Shrine Bowl selection since Blake Pruter in 2007 and the sixth since 1998, had to mask the pain this season "quite a few times."

"Doing what you got to do no matter what," he said. "Just always getting everything done. If coaches saw me limping, they would say, 'All right, get him out of there,' so you kind of have to hide it from coach as well as the other team."

The 5-foot-10, 185-pound Pfannenstiel helped Hays High win five games by 11 points or fewer, defeat rival Great Bend for the first time in eight years and pace a defense that permitted 16 points per contest versus conference teams. The three-win improvement from 2008 tied the biggest among Class 5A schools.

"He is not real big, he is not real fast, but he plays extremely hard," Hays High coach Ryan Cornelsen said. "He is extremely tough and I think that was the mentality that we were trying to instill in our kids, was toughness and being hitters on the field. He was a great example of that. I don't think I have coached a kid any tougher than Travis. Those type of kids is kind of what you got to mold your team around, mold your program around."

Cornelsen, formerly the coach at La Crosse, took the HHS football and track positions in January 2008. One of the first players he spoke to was Pfannenstiel, the Indians' lone first team all-WAC returning player after he collected 94 tackles his junior year. The coaches moved Pfannenstiel from weak side linebacker to strong side linebacker. He helped Hays High start 3-0 before feeling hamstring pain before halftime versus Garden City.

"It just started getting tight," he said.

Pfannenstiel stretched, iced, spent practices jogging down the sideline and received ultrasound from the trainer. At times, he lifted only two-pound weights. Cornelsen limited him to just defense for part of the season.

Pfannenstiel and junior all-WAC linebacker Casey Sedbrook missed Week 5 versus Wichita South before he returned and helped HHS upset state-ranked Dodge City and beat Great Bend for the conference crown.

"It didn't really affect me all that much," he said. "It did a couple of plays, I could feel it pulled, getting tight, I would come out, stretch, come back in and be good to go."

Pfannenstiel, though, constantly made plays. After the regular season, he stood second in the conference in tackles behind Liberal's Kendrick Eyle. His two forced fumbles tied for third.

"He had a great knack for getting to the ball," Cornelsen said. "There are times that he was out of position or not exactly where he was supposed to be, but he has such good instinct to get to the ball, we kind of let him freelance a little bit because we knew he could get to the ball. He did it game after game. Sometimes with kids like that, you don't want to overcoach them. You want to let him use their instincts and be players."