On the MaxPreps website, the unofficial attendance Friday night in Sand Springs was listed as “at least 1,000,” which is a polite way of saying Memorial Stadium was filling fast and half the town was still stuck in orangebarrel- induced traffic.
They came to see not only a district title game — Charles Page and Sapulpa knotted at the top of 6A-II-2 with one last chance to sort it out under the lights — they came to see a rivalry, as evidenced by the also-packed visitor stands.
When the dust settled, the Sandites had done what they have done for the better part of the 2025 season: take a punch, shake it off, and then methodically take control of the match. The final was 35–18 Sandites. The post-game math is simple enough: eighth straight win, a spotless 7–0 run through the district, an 8–2 regular season, a first-round bye in the 6A-II playoffs, and home field advantage when the playoffs begin on Nov. 21 against either Piedmont or Bartlesville.
That time last week between opening kick and final horn was intense. It’s the way things have to be if you are going to win a district title game in this class.
All week long, Charles Page head coach Bobby Klinck kept the message to his team about as simple as a coach can make it.
“I really told our guys that if we play up to our potential and don’t make any dumb penalties or turn the ball over, that we should win the game,” he said afterward. It sounds like something you’d hear in any locker room in Oklahoma on a Friday afternoon. But for the Sandites, it wasn’t just blah, blah, coachspeak. It was a checklist.
For a few minutes, though, it looked like the checklist had been left in the other pair of pants.
Charles Page opened with a promising drive that fizzled on a turnover on downs at Sapulpa’s 44. The Chieftains answered with a march that bled all the way to the Sandites’ 6-yard line. A timeout here, a stuff there, a little wobble on the goal line, and then Sapulpa slipped a 6-yard touchdown pass past the defense to go up 6–0 after a missed PAT.
On the scoreboard, that’s just two lines of text and two numbers. On the home sideline, it was a kick in the pants reminder that district titles aren’t handed out on a silver platter, even at home, even when you’ve won seven in a row. For the Sandites, it became a chance to show how much they’ve grown since August.
That growth is easiest to see in the kid who touches the ball every play — Easton Webb.
“Easton’s gotten better at not trying to win the game all by himself,” Klinck said. “He takes what the defense gives him.”
There was a time, earlier in his high school career — maybe even this season, when quarterback Easton Webb might have looked at a 6–0 deficit and felt the weight of the whole season settle on his shoulders. This most recent version of Webb took the next possession and did something that actually endangered the Sapulpa defense — he took what they offered.
Webb nudged the Sandites out from their own 23, found a rhythm with his receivers, and then, with the ball resting on Sapulpa’s 23-yard line, dropped in a pass to Kayden Worthington that turned the stadium from anxious to loud in a single snap. Worthington hauled in the 23-yard score, Tanner Copeland added the extra point, and Sand Springs had their first lead of the night at 7–6. It felt like someone had shut off the Play Station, then turned it back on — reset.
By the end of the first quarter, the Sandites were on the move again, chewing up yards and clock. Early in the second, Webb cashed in with a 12-yard strike to Alex Dudley, who snuck into the end zone like he’d been out after curfew. Copeland, whose right leg spent most of the night booting extra points, made it 14–6, and the Sandites were looking like the group that’s been hanging crooked numbers on scoreboards all season.
Webb was the headline, but not without the help of the offensive line who made the whole story possible. Klinck doesn’t hesitate when he talks about that group, and for a line coach, that kind of praise doesn’t come cheaply.
“The offensive line has become a strength for us,” he said. “We’ve been able to run the ball which has certainly helped when teams try to take away the pass.”
That’s coach-ese for, “Try and stop the pass, and our O-line will punch holes in your D and drive running backs through them.”
Midway through the second quarter, the defense got their own chance to party.
Sapulpa, down 14-6 were still very much alive and moving the ball downhill. Their QB dropped back to throw, but the wrong set of hands came from out of nowhere. Defensive back Gage Gunn jumped a Chieftain route and came down with the rock near the Chieftains’ 34. It wasn’t yet a knockout punch, but it was a hard jab and jabs set up KO’s.
That Sandite defense, the one Klinck has quietly been bragging on for weeks, showed up all over the stat book. Sophomore defensive lineman Devin McColloch knifed into the backfield for a sack that pinned Sapulpa behind the chains. Later, linebacker Grady Harris buried the quarterback, and Waylon Jeffers added another sack for good measure.
Klinck knew he had two firebrands up front; what excites him now, are the kids who’ve grown into their jobs around them.
“I think our defensive front is becoming a big-time strength for us,” he said. “We knew two of our guys would be big time players, but our two underclassmen who are first-year starters are coming up big. Our goal is always to stop the run and control the pass. Up to this point we have been fairly successful.”
Those words were kind of a mission statement. On Friday, they became a highlight reel.
The play that blew the game open came with about four minutes left in the half. Standing near midfield with a two-score lead within reach, Webb took the snap, set his feet, and let one fly that seemed to hang in the air long enough for the whole stadium to take a deep breath. At the other end of it was a streaking Dominic Forbes, behind the coverage on a 58-yard strike that will live in the memory of anyone who was there. The ball dropped into his hands — in stride — Forbes found the promised land, and suddenly it was 21–6, Copeland true with the PAT.
Halftime arrived not a moment too soon for Sapulpa, who was starting to sulk. For Sand Springs, it was just the intermission halfway through a performance that had only just found its rhythm.
If there was any doubt about the second half, the third quarter kicked those aside. Sapulpa’s first possession was stopped in four. The Sandites took over at the Chieftains’ 38 and drove steadily inside the 10. From six yards out, Webb went to Forbes, and the two wrote another footnote into the story of their district title run. Copeland, now on autopilot, turned it into a 28–6 game.
Then came the moment that might define this team to anyone wondering what separates a good season from a great one.
Up 22 points in the third quarter of a game that would decide everything they’d spent months working for, the Sandites lined up to kick off. Conventional wisdom says you boot it deep, make someone else go the long way. Conventional wisdom, apparently, did not have a seat in Bobby Klinck’s noggin’ Friday. The Chieftains were caught completely on the blindside. The ball trickled maybe ten yards and a swarm of Sandites fell on it.
It’s one thing to be aggressive when you’re chasing. It’s another to be bold when you’re already ahead. But this is a group that has been winning when it needs to win, and there’s a certain freedom in that. Besides, Sapulpa wasn’t the runner-up in District 6A-II-2 because they didn’t win key ball games. They were there because they are a volatile scoring machine and Klinck was taking no chances.
Given that gift of field position, the Sandites did what they do. They marched, leaning on that hole-punching offensive line and the legs of running back Chaves Williams, who slipped in from eight yards out to push the lead to 35–6 after yet another Copeland PAT. At that point, the only real drama left was how long was Klinck going to keep the starting units on the field.
Sapulpa didn’t quit. Quarterback Braddox Broughton hit Landon Barber for a 29-yard touchdown early in the fourth, and the Chieftains added another late to trim the margin to 35–18. With the score just a little tighter, the Sandites’ watched the clock — and their regular season — tick down to 00:00 and members of the Sand Springs staff started thinking less about early morning drills and more about Icy Hot, ice bags and film study. Because now comes the part of the season where the margin for error narrows and the stories get bigger.
But the Sandites earned a bye in the first round of the state tournament. A massive advantage for Klinck.
“Taking advantage of the bye week is huge,” Klinck said. “Getting our guys healed up around this time of year is crucial, especially while our next opponent will be playing. We’ll certainly take advantage while working on a few things.”
There was a hint of satisfaction in his voice when he said it, but not much complacency. Sand Springs isn’t a program that seems surprised by where it stands. The Sandites haven’t stumbled into this thing. They’ve built it, one win at a time, eight in a row — so far, with a quarterback who no longer feels compelled to shoulder the world, an offensive line that’s quietly become the backbone of the offense, a defensive front full of kids who didn’t know they were supposed to be this good, and a head coach who started the night with a simple request — don’t beat yourselves.
On a fair, dry night in Sand Springs, with “at least 1,000” of their closest friends watching, they did far better than that. They beat Sapulpa. They took a district title. They bought themselves a week to heal. And as the lights cooled and the stands emptied, it was hard not to feel like the best parts of this Sandite story might still be waiting, just beyond the bye, under the next set of Friday night lights.