Members from both the 1969 and 2008 Junction City High School State Championship Football teams were honored Friday night at JCHS.

The teams met before the game for dinner and a brief ceremony in the cafeteria of JCHS. They were then recognized during halftime of the Blue Jay football game and a reception followed the game back inside the high school.

Paul Poole was a senior on the 1969 team and he told JCpost.com that the team had decided that summer that they were going to win the state title,”We were perennial state champs in the newspapers. This was the first year, in 1969, that it was going to be proven on the field. The first playoff championship. We had decided as a team that we were going to make sure that we were going to prove that we deserved all of the accolades that we had gotten prior to the first playoff year.”

The ’69 squad captured the Class Four-A state title in the first year of postseason playoffs in Kansas high school football with only one loss during the season to a team from Ponca City, Oklahoma. The Blue Jays defeated Bishop Carroll 20-8 in the state championship game.

One of the seniors from the 2008 state team, Ty Zimmerman also was in attendance. When asked about the state championship game he called it a story book ending, “Just having my dad as the coach, senior year and going undefeated, you just couldn’t write it up any better.”

The 2008 squad wrapped up it’s perfect season with a 19-14 win over Lawrence Free-State in the Class 6A State Championship game played in Topeka.