Nov. 28—FREEMAN, S.D. — Riley Tschetter is Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy football.
And, to a large extent, Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy football is Riley Tschetter.
As a new program in 2022, the Phoenix looked to a freshman Tschetter as its Day 1 starter at quarterback. From the ashes, Tschetter helped guide a meteoric four-year rise, culminating with a blaze-of-glory exit as the Phoenix captured a state championship in their final game.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"Us seniors, we always kind of thought that this was our year," Tschetter said of FMFA's steady build toward the top. "Then, after beating Parkston and Elkton-Lake Benton early, we really felt that we were the team to beat, and if we played our best, we couldn't be beaten."
Tschetter and company were correct, as the Phoenix navigated a schedule littered with challenging opponents and brushed them aside one by one.
For his leading role in a perfect 12-0 campaign and a Class 9AA state championship, Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy senior Riley Tschetter earned the Mitchell Republic's 2025 football player of the year award. Tschetter, the Joe Robbie MVP in the state title game, also garnered postseason honors as the Class 9AA all-state quarterback and an all-Great Plains Conference performer for the conference champion Phoenix.
Tschetter passed for 2,385 yards and 29 touchdowns while adding 491 rushing yards and 14 more scores en route to the Class 9AA title. Defensively, he also contributed 75 tackles, an interception and a forced fumble. During his career, Tschetter amassed more than 7,600 yards passing, 1,300 yards rushing and accounted for 124 total touchdowns, as FMFA went 30-6 in his starts behind center. He finished as the Freeman school record holder for completions, passing yards and passing touchdowns.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementSince 1994, the Mitchell Republic football player of the year has been selected by the newspaper's sports staff, and conducted via a point-based voting system that awards five points to the top player, four points to the second player on the ballot and so on. Tschetter received all three first-place votes and 15 total points to become the first Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy player to win the award. He's the third player of the year from a program representing the Freeman community, joining Canistota/Freeman's Tyce Ortman (2020) and Freeman's Jeff Schultz (1997).
Other players receiving consideration were Wagner's Gannon Knebel, Howard's Kolt Becker, Avon's Al'Shamon Gunter, Parkston's Mason Jervik and Platte-Geddes' Jye Bailey.
Helping accentuate Tschetter's passing talents, Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy employed an offense atypical for nine-man football.
While many top teams emphasize physicality through a power run game, the Phoenix looked to spread the field and distribute the ball to playmakers. Early on, that was out of necessity, as FMFA didn't possess the personnel at that time to carve out rushing lanes or sustain blocks. The latter element also meant that Tschetter had to get rid of the ball quickly, with the Phoenix offense propelled by a crafty assortment of short throws.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut over the next three seasons, as the offensive line play and offensive playmakers on the perimeter improved, so too did Tschetter's arm talent. Adding a downfield dimension to an already capable offense, the Phoenix went from potent to explosive.
"Thank goodness (Austin Unruh, FMFA's offensive coordinator for all four seasons) didn't make us run double wing or wishbone; that would not have been very enjoyable," Riley Tschetter said with a laugh. "To be able to go out there and throw the ball 20 or 30 times a game makes it exciting, more like a backyard style of football. You just sling the rock, let players make plays and have fun."
FMFA averaged 30.4 points per game in 2022, which reached 41.6 by 2024. This season, the Phoenix torched opposing defenses to the tune of 47.9 points per contest, the top mark in Class 9AA. That while facing the most difficult schedule in all of nine-man football based on opponent winning percentage.
Powering the Phoenix's high-flying attack, Tschetter produced a 29-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio during his senior season. The lone turnover came in a mid-September contest against Alcester-Hudson, a 38-19 FMFA win. In the six games that followed, he passed for 19 touchdowns without an interception across 94 attempts.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"Watching our offense evolve to have more of a deep, vertical threat, it was his accuracy that made it possible," said Dustin Tschetter, FMFA's head coach and Riley's father. "It's pretty remarkable in nine-man, or even at any high school level, to be that accurate."
Riley Tschetter's entire passing arsenal — short throws to deep balls, pre-snap decision-making to on-the-fly play-making — was on display at the DakotaDome during FMFA's 46-22 title game triumph over Elkton-Lake Benton.
"It's cool to get the (individual) awards, but I think of them as team awards," Tschetter said. "Without my offensive line, I wouldn't have been much of anything, and when you have athletes like I did to throw to, it makes life very easy. I trust them to make plays with the ball, and that, in return, makes me look good."
On the first play from scrimmage, Tschetter flipped a short pass to Luke Peters that turned into a 73-yard catch-and-run touchdown. Tschetter added a 45-yard deep shot to David Walter and a 21-yard toss to Tate Sorensen to find the endzone on the next two first-half drives, and he later tacked on a 3-yard rushing score in the third quarter. Tschetter finished the contest with 315 passing yards, 37 rushing yards and the four total touchdowns.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementTschetter hasn't decided on his post-high school plans just yet, and continuing his football career is still an option he's weighing.
"He's got some fantastic characteristics that any offensive coordinator, any quarterbacks coach, any football coach would want to see in a quarterback," Austin Unruh said. "He's so stable, and that provided a level of consistency as he matured physically and mentally on the field. I think it all culminated there in the Dome because you saw how poised and in control he was pretty much from start to finish."
For as perfectly as Tschetter and the Phoenix's 2025 season played out, 2023 held its share of adversity.
Coming off the FMFA program's first season, during which the Phoenix posted a 7-3 record, including a first-round playoff win, excitement was heightened entering Year 2. That enthusiasm was backed with a quick 3-0 start, highlighted by a blowout win over Avon, which would go on to win the Class 9B title that year.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut during FMFA's rout of the Pirates in Freeman, Tschetter went down with an injury. Though early diagnoses were mixed, it was soon confirmed that Tschetter tore the ACL in his left knee. His sophomore season was suddenly over.
Fellow sophomore Karter Weber, normally a top target of Tschetter's in the receiving game, filled in admirably at quarterback. FMFA again went 7-3 and won another playoff game for a quarterfinal return.
By the time August 2024 rolled around, Tschetter was itching to get back on the field. But when he did, it wasn't quite smooth sailing for FMFA, which dropped two of its first three games in lopsided fashion to Parkston and Elkton-Lake Benton.
"The rehab sucked, I'm not gonna lie," Tschetter said of working back from his injury. "I was very anxious about getting back on the field, and I was very excited for the first game. Then I got on the field, and I was not ready."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementEven in the Week 2 game that the Phoenix won, Dustin Tschetter recalled discussions of making a change at quarterback. Then, Riley broke off a long touchdown run. FMFA went on to win 50-19, and the conversation shifted.
"We finally saw it all come back in that second half against Bon Homme," Dustin Tschetter remembered. "From that moment on, he was a different quarterback."
Shaking the 1-2 start, Tschetter and the Phoenix stacked up seven straight wins to reach the state semifinals. Though FMFA fell 28-22 to Parkston, it was a clear sign of progress from a 42-14 defeat in Week 1.
That semifinal shortcoming was the last loss in Tschetter's prep career, as he won 19 of his final 20 starts to finish 30-6 overall in three-plus seasons behind center.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"There's no one who's outworked him," Dustin Tschetter said of Riley.
"He earned it by doing things the right way," added Unruh. "He works hard. He learned the game. He's the strongest in the weight room, and he's the first to arrive and last to leave. He's just your athlete's athlete type of football player."
In November 2021, Riley and Dustin Tschetter were both inside the DakotaDome for the Class 9AA football state championship game.
At that time, it was relatively easy for Riley to imagine playing for and winning a state football title.
Dustin was on the sideline as an assistant coach for the Canistota/Freeman football program, and Riley, then an eighth-grader, was supporting the Pride's bid for a title — it was Canistota/Freeman's fourth consecutive championship game appearance coming off of a Class 9A three-peat — and looking forward to his own high school career, soon to begin.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut plenty changed before Riley's freshman year. Freeman and Canistota parted ways, and the Phoenix program was started with Dustin Tschetter at the helm.
"It was completely starting over. We had to build a program from scratch," Dustin Tschetter said. "On the football field, it was about being physical and trusting each other — all the things that we did really well this year (in 2025). It took time, but this group was truly a team, without a doubt."
"It was a little weird," Riley Tschetter recalled, noting that Freeman and Canistota athletes had played several youth sports together, including football and baseball, while Freeman had no such link with Marion at the time. "I think we all knew that we weren't going to be the greatest right away, and it was going to take a while. But it was kind of just exciting to look toward the future."
By Dustin's recollection, FMFA had 24 total players on its roster in 2022, and only one had any prior varsity experience. Eight players were freshmen, including Riley, but they were a group Dustin was familiar with, having previously coached Riley and his classmates in youth football. Many of them saw action right away, with Riley slotting in as the first-team quarterback, setting the foundation for FMFA to build on over the next three years.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNow that the Phoenix's decorated senior class is moving on, Dustin Tschetter, Unruh and the coaching staff know it's going to take a collective effort from the returners to replace that output — especially the void left by the departure of an all-star signal-caller.
"You just can't replace his experience, that's the No. 1 thing. The only time he hasn't been behind center is at the end of games and his sophomore year when he was injured," Unruh said. "It's little things in those tense moments or if there's a miscommunication from the sideline or situations like clocking the ball or making a change at the line of scrimmage, that come with experience. When you graduate a four-year starter, you're going to have to rebuild that chemistry."
And for Tschetter, as long and winding as the road seemed at times along the journey, the destination made it worth the wait.
"I'm actually very glad it happened. A lot of us seniors started as freshmen, so we got to feel what it was like to not be the greatest team and to have to work all the way up and finish with the title," Riley Tschetter said. "It's just a very cool feeling for it to start with us and then also end with us on top."
Here's a look at the other players who received consideration, with their vote-point totals in parentheses:
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