Before 2025, the Devils Lake football team had made it to the state championship game four times.
All four ended in losses.
The two most recent ones, in 2009 and 2010, were each decided by one score. Then, from 2012 through 2023, Devils Lake only recorded one winning season. After coming so close but failing to bring home a title on the gridiron, the Firebirds’ football program went through a period of mediocrity.
All of that made the 2025 season just a little more special.
Competing in Division AA, the second-highest level of high school football in North Dakota, the Firebirds got off the schneid and grabbed their first championship last fall. They went 10-2, avenging regular-season losses to Kindred and Minot North in the semifinals and championship, respectively.
Senior quarterback Mason Palmer threw for 2,700 yards and was named Division AA Senior Athlete of the Year. Senior running back Bryar Exner ran for 1,726 yards and had another 400 receiving yards, en route to joining Palmer on the all-state first team.
Receiver Will Heilman and center Casey Brown made the all-state second team. Heilman had a team-high 634 receiving yards after putting up 168 in the championship game.
Head coach Todd Lambrecht, in his fifth year coaching the Firebirds, was named the Division AA Coach of the Year.
“It’s so surreal,” Devils Lake receiver Max Palmer said in a Nov. 15 story. “I mean, I cannot believe it. If you had told me at the start of the year we were gonna win the whole dang thing, I would have called you crazy. But I’m so happy.”
With Devils Lake perhaps known as more of a basketball school, the 2025 football team left an undeniable imprint on the town’s history. Minot North, the team Devils Lake beat in the title game, was ranked No. 1 in the state by the media all season. The Firebirds put their names on the football map, so to speak, by getting past some formidable teams and doing something no squad from Devils Lake had ever done before.