'Nanooks of the North' go for back-to-back titles

DECORAH - It's about geography. They know that.

"Yeah, it'd be nice to get a little more exposure for what we've done, but we're kind of up here in no-man's land," head coach Bill Post said. "We're the Nanooks of the North. No one really knows about us, but that's OK, too. We just tell the guys to play football."

Which the Decorah Vikings do at a consistently high level. They host DeWitt Central (4-5) in a Class 3A playoff opener Wednesday night after finishing off an unbeaten regular season.

Make that another unbeaten regular season. Decorah ran the table in 2012, winning all 14 of its games en route to its fifth state football championships, its first since 1989.

Do the math, and that's a win streak of 23. Not quite Iowa City Regina's 51 in a row, but still mighty impressive.

Even if few people realize it.

"We have a good thing going," said Decorah lineman Austin Ashbacher. "Obviously what Regina is doing is amazing. It'd be nice to get a little more publicity, but we still get a decent amount. I'm not one who seeks that anyway. We're kind of flying under the radar, and that's all right."

Decorah also advanced to the 3A title game in 2011, so this has been quite a three-year run. Quite a six-year run if you really study it, since that's how many years in a row the Vikings have made it to the postseason.

They were quarterfinalists in 2009 and 2010 and made it to the finals in 2008."We've been on a pretty good run," Post said.

This season's success is all the more impressive considering Decorah had only two returning starters. The Vikings survived Waverly-Shell Rock in their opener, 17-14, but it has been pretty much nothing but blowouts since then.

"I think a lot of it has been the playing time we got last year because we were winning big in games," said quarterback Bryce Pierce. "That was a big help for us. Then I think another huge thing is that outside of football, we're all good friends. We hang out together on weekends with each other. We knew what we were capable of, but I don't think a lot of people knew we could do this. We've exceeded a lot of people's expectations, but not ours."

Holt Johansen is Decorah's leading rusher with "just" 729 yards, and Pierce has thrown for 637, which isn't an inordinate amount. But these guys play good defense, are physical and fundamentally sound as always.

The scouting report is that they're not quite as big as last year but a little quicker. Bottom line is they just win.

There's something to be said about that."Yeah, there is a little bit of pressure on us, but we want to get back to the Dome," Ashbacher said. "In the backs of our minds we knew this was not going to be easy. But we really wanted to show everyone that if we worked hard, we could get back to the level we were at last year."