Southern Boone’s football team takes the field this month for coach Tyler Tanner’s second season, and if you caught last year’s games, you already know what he’s building toward: something steadier than a 4-7 record.
The Eagles finished 2025 at 4-7 and went out in the second round of the Class 3 state tournament — Tanner’s first year in charge. It wasn’t a losing program by accident; Southern Boone has a real football tradition, and a first-year coach adjusting a roster to his system is a normal, unglamorous stretch. What Tanner has said publicly about this offseason is that the work has been less about scheme and more about identity. “The biggest focus has been about building our culture, improving our speed and strength, becoming a tougher team,” he told KOMU 8. It’s the kind of thing every coach says, but it’s also usually true that year two is where it either shows up on the scoreboard or it doesn’t.
Tanner has talked about measuring success beyond wins and losses — how the team plays and carries itself day to day, not just what the record says in November. That’s easy to say in August. The Eagles will find out what it means once the hitting starts for real.
There’s a real nucleus back. Junior linebacker Owen Britton earned second-team all-district honors last season and anchors the defense again. On offense and around the roster, seniors Aiden Williams, Brody Troth, Graham McKim, and Grant Hyde give Tanner some experience to lean on, alongside juniors KJ Gilstrap, Kai Morris, and Andrew Pasley.
The Eagles get their first live look on Friday, Aug. 21, at a jamboree in Jefferson City — the standard preseason tune-up where teams run a handful of series against outside competition before anything counts. The regular season opens the following Friday, Aug. 28, on the road at Kirksville.
For anyone in Rocheport or New Franklin who follows Boone County football without necessarily following Columbia’s bigger programs, Southern Boone (based in Ashland) is the closest thing to a hometown team on the south end of the county — worth keeping an eye on as Tanner’s second season gets underway.
(KOMU 8)
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