Closing in on elite

I remember one of the very first conversations I head with Pioneer head football coach Jeremy Gold.
He made an effort to drive one point home, and that point was that he wanted to lead the Pioneer football program to a new level. He wanted the program to be great. He wanted the program to be elite.
"We want to be one of the elite teams in the state of Michigan," he told me.
That quote stuck with me in a funny way.
It stuck with me in a kind of Those-who-stay-will-be-champions kind of way.
I thought that it could be the kind of mantra that makes or breaks a coach, depending on what happened on the field.
For now, it looks like the Pioneers are going to make it work. It looks like they could one day be one of those elite teams whose pedigree is coveted so dearly.
After four games, the Pioneers are undefeated, and the team shows no signs of slowing down.
And their wins have come in all sorts of different ways.
In Week 1 they went to a neutral sight as an underdog, and defeated Inkster.
In Week 2 they played a feisty Dexter team and did what good teams do against inferior opponents, they crushed them. They refused slip into the common pitfall of playing down to a less talented counterpart.
In Week 3 they downed conference rival Saline without problem, and then, most recently, on Thursday they took on Saginaw Arthur Hill.
The Pioneers trailed the Arthur Hill at halftime by 10 points, and then, faced with that adversity, how did they respond?
They put up 48 unanswered points to seal the win.
The team may not be elite yet, but I think they are on their way.