Most times, in mentioning one's high school, divergent feelings take center stage. The love-hate relationship typifies the experiences had during the those years of a maturing life. The formation of good feelings afterward comes with success of persons and teams that trekked through the same halls and saw the some of teachers you did.

Lowell High School FOOTBALL players celebrating last week 

This weekend, the Lowell Red Devils football team took home the 4A state championship. The first time any Lowell high school team had won such an honor. The team, led by two-way players Scott Gray and Jeff Clemens, won 28-27 in a hard-fought, excitement-laden high school game. Both sides played their game. Both sides played through ups and downs. But in the end, Lowell played the 4^th quarter with defining heart, surprising determination and a fearless attitude.

OLD Lowell High School in 1920's 

But this town, defined by numerous cornfields, few stoplights, an old interstate and a recently-remodeled behemoth oddity of a high school, has always struggled for Respectability. People remember all the great high school basketball players that never went very far in the one class state tourney. People remember the failures of teams that are vaguely familiar to people outside of Lowell. People remember those chilly Novembers, cold February nights and warm May days wishing and dreaming that THIS team could do it. But it didn't happen…until today.

Respectability may never come to a 7,500 person town that is overlooked in the county and state because it doesn't attract people because of work, education or tourist reasons. Lowell has grown through the natural ebb and flow of America - the gradual tide of population movement, companies changing and current realities morphing into something else altogether. Lowellites have come to accept all things - better and worse - as the way it goes.