State of the State: Issue Two

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⛳️⛳️ A Golf Story Conundrum

We often hear that when we write a story, there is a “Chapman Jinx.” We write about said team, said team loses or does something weird. Chapman Jinx is in full effect. It seems appropriate that mom was a big believer in the Sports Illustrated jinx when we were growing up.

So, you’ll not be surprised to know this. On Monday, the Newsletter chatted with Omaha Marian girls golf coach Robert Davis ahead of the Metro Conference tournament at Elmwood Park in Omaha on Tuesday.

There was a story set to go here about Marian being one of the best teams of all-time — certainly one of the deepest, there closest competition most of the season had been their second team — heading into the home stretch of the season. The Crusaders top-5 all stand in the top-11 in the state in the individual differential.

They won the state title last season and hope to tie Lincoln Southeast in two weeks for state championships with 12 at Riverside Golf Club in Grand Island at the Class A state tournament. With four of their top-5 back expectations were very high.

“I think the girls have handled the season very, very well so far,” Davis told me. “We have again have had another undefeated regular season and to have our varsity all averaging between 75 and 82 says a lot about how hard they have worked.”

But, a funny thing happened on the way to the story. You have to put the peg in the ground and tee it up. And, Omaha Westside did one better than Marian on Tuesday. With four players under 80 and junior Addison Benge shooting a 71, the Warriors shot 300. Marian 301.

“Our girls were amazing yesterday,” Westside coach Jared Hellman said of his team. “It starts with being a team that works hard and cares about each other. We have not beat Marian in two years and we play together nearly all the time.

“There is a common respect and admiration between the two programs.”

As a golf dad, let me tell you, that’s insane golf. Even if it is on Elmwood’s par-68. It was a school record for Westside and Marian’s Lauren Murman shot a 4-under par 64 that set the tournament scoring record by four shots — she made seven birdies.

Even so, the two teams combined for nine of the 15 medals in the tournament (five for Marian, four for Westside) and it sets up an interesting next few weeks.

“It was two great scores for two very good teams,” Davis said.

Lincoln Southwest also — hopefully, we hear — is getting healthy with freshman phenom Naryn Kim making a return soon. It sets up a frantic finish to the girls golf season. We can’t wait to watch.

Metro Girls Golf Medalists: Lauren Murnan, Marian, 64; Addison Benge, Westside, 71; Kendall Lauritzen, Westside, 74; Lucy Peterson, Marian, 75; Ellen Bode, Elkhorn South, 75; Audrey Nielsen, Westside, 77; Chloe DiPrima, Westside, 78; Delaney Schmitz, Marian, 79; Addison Kloeckner, Papillion-La Vista, 80; Faith Koranda, Westview, 81; Evie Rothe, Elkhorn South, 89, Leah Wisdom, Marian, 83; Sloan Mackintosh, Marian, 86; Samantha Dutton, Millard North, 90; Paige Rankin, Millard North, 90.

Girls golf will be the first NSAA championship of the fall and post season and district assignments are now ready. Schools in Class A and B are placed on a serpentine based on team differentials for the season. District assignments | Class A Differentials | Class B Differentials

 📈 📉 Rank ‘Em

Football and volleyball are past the halfway stretch. Softball readies itself for the postseason. The Coaches Polls for football and volleyball and softball are linked below from nebpreps.com. 

Football | Volleyball | Softball

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🏃‍♀️🏃”For all the small schools…”

One of the “big events” on the cross country scene each fall is the annual UNK Invite. It serves as a de facto state meet preview over the 5,000 meter Kearney Country Club course.

While there were many standout performances, the top one came from Perkins County’s Elijah Goodell. The No. 1 ranked runner in Class D (2024 runner-up) took on all comers in the Class A race and defeated Class A, No. 3 Aiden Gehring (Papio South) and No. 7 Ben Schlegelmilch (Lincoln East) with a time of 16:01.48.

FULL RESULTS

You can catch some quick recaps from Prep Running Nerd here: Class C-D and Class A-B. Also updated post-UNK state individual rankings here. Team rankings: Class B | Class C | Class D

While there will be a few meets over the next few days, most teams are down to conference meets mid-to-late next week followed by districts on October 15-16.

🏐🏐 The Volleyball Roundup

Quick hitters from Tuesday night action around the state.

• “No Nerves Norris” now 26-0 (and on a 48-match winning streak) after surviving Gretna in reverse sweep fashion. GAME THREAD

• 500. Elkhorn North coach Jenny Gragert won her 500th career game on Tuesday night in a 5-set thriller over Elkhorn South.

• Class A, No. 1 Papio South swept Westside. NEPrepZone

• A big sweep for Class C-1, No. 3 Ogallala over Class B (RV) Gering.

• We have already recommended Austin Jacobsen’s “Small Town Ball” to you once or twice, but this listen with Overton coach Hayley Ryan is worth your time. The Eagles are still No. 1 in the Coaches Poll. FULL PODCAST

• Out west, Garden County is now 15-2. How will the west vs. east matchups go in Class D district finals?

All The Scores

🎾🎾 That’s A Racket

Elkhorn tennis coach Jon Holtz tracks the best tennis in the state for the coaches to set up the coaches association’s dual championships — a precursor to the state meet. This year’s NSAA state meet will be in Lincoln on October 16-17 (Class A) and 20-21 (Class B). The duals will take place in Kearney on October 11 and October 13.

Class A defending champion Lincoln East is still at the top of the class while Kearney is also undefeated. In Class B defending champion Elkhorn Mt. Michael has passed Lexington and Elkhorn North for the top spot.

🗓🗓 Bas is Back

We are excited to announce that Chris Basnett will be joining our little Newsletter for the foreseeable future to bring more #nebpreps stories to your inbox.

Most of you know Chris from his time at the Lincoln Journal-Star where he was the lead preps writer. His “thank you” an all too often scene in the sports journalism world these days that we’d like to fix some day. Sooner rather than later.

That he wants to hang out with us is an honor. You can catch Chris helping us with our NSAA preview and recap stories for the association website and you’ll also get some of him in the Newsletter as well.

Chris’ love for high school sports (and our shared sickness for Husker basketball) will shine right here. We are excited to have him here, we hope you are too. You can support our work by upgrading your subscription for $25/annually which will continue to allow us to be on the sidelines sharing your favorite Nebraska stories.

The Newsletter will always be free, but we also hope to start working in some premium content when we get 25 folks at $25. You can be one of the first by clicking above.

As for Bas, he’s ready to go. He’ll be at Wahoo on Friday night for a ranked game with Elkhorn Mt. Michael. He’ll let us all know how good these top-ranked Warriors really are.

The Newsletter remains free to our readers thanks to our Harvest Partners and their support of our content. We thank OrthoNebraska, Northwestern Mutual — Nathan Karges as well as Striv AV and Striv Education for their support of Nebraska high school athletics.