Sitting here rocking through a Wednesday newsletter (on Tuesday night) and trying to keep up with ALL the volleyball — and figuring out what to name my fantasy football team with Travis Kelce as tight end? Travis’ Swifties? Karma is my Kelce? Hit us on Twitter if you have a recommendation.

Anyway, loving how ESPN goes from NFL Monday Night Football one night to Nebraska, Stanford VOLLEYBALL on a Tuesday in primetime. Much love for women’s sports right now. Let’s keep it rolling. Creighton won the Omaha Challenge over the weekend and moved to 14th in the AVCA Poll.

Let’s dive in to the mid-week Newsletter with as much confidence as a guy who puts his phone number on a Taylor Swift friendship bracelet.

The High School Roundup

The Wednesday newsletter, it feels like, could be pages and pages. So much fun stuff going on. Let’s get you ready for the rest of the week and see what we missed.

UPON FURTHER REVIEW: You know, look, we are always going to miss some in the Saturday newsletter, so we found three Friday night football games we wanted to showcase for you in today’s letter.

Sandy Creek 64, Exeter-Milligan/Friend 62 (3OT). Sometimes an 8-man game will have just about everything you dreamed of and then some. So it did on Highway 14 on Friday night when Sandy Creek scrambled late to tie EMF and then stopped a Breckan Schlueter 2-point conversion in triple overtime for a 3-0 start. Schlueter went over 5,000 career yards on his 335-yard, 54-carry (!!!) night, but he was overshadow by SC quarterback Ethan Shaw who was 13-for-21 for 247 yards passing (six for 119 to Connor Rempe) and ran 21 times for 85 yards and four touchdowns. Hastings Tribune recap

SEM 54, Parkview Christian 6. Want to make your team a state title favorite? Go out and beat the defending champions 54-6 like SEM did at home on Friday night. Mercy. The Mustangs got 179 yards on 17 carries from junior Maddox Jones (with three touchdowns) as they dismantled Parkview and jumped to No. 1 in the nebpreps.com Coaches Poll (below).

BDS 50, Blue Hill 0. You won’t find any team or individual stats from BDS’ 50-0 win over Blue Hill last Friday. That’s just how the Eagles like it. That you let them do their business. How are they doing in their 3-0 start? Well, they still haven’t allowed a point. You read that right. Unscored upon in three straight games to start the season. Up next? Lourdes Central Catholic (3-0) which has scored 40, 62 and 44 points in their wins. Something has to give, I guess.

RANK ‘EM: SEM is our first big mover in the nebpreps Coaches Poll for football presented by Pinnacle Bank. The preseason No. 1 teams are still the same in six classes (the Mustangs jump from sixth to first in six-man): Omaha Westside, Bennington, Boone Central, Ord, North Platte St. Patrick’s and South Loup. See the whole list of our coaches picks here for September 10. 

GOTW: Another week, another huge battle for the Pinnacle Bank game-of-the-week as covered by Mike Sautter. It appears down to a three-game race for Sautter’s Friday plans. Another great week of high school football we have ahead of us. You can still vote for your choice until noon today. 

Not Just Football

VOLLEYBALL UPDATE: The volleyball season continues to round into form and the coaches poll seems to be getting clearer and clearer as the weeks go on. Some big matches this week will help even more.

The top-ranked teams have held serve since our initial coaches pre-season poll with Papio South (12-0), Omaha Skutt Catholic (10-6), Minden (11-0), Lincoln Lutheran (10-0), Amherst (10-0) and Overton (9-0) all at the top of their respective classes. UPDATED COACHES POLL

Some big results from Tuesday night. Class A, No. 10 Bellevue West with big wins over Bennington and Platteview. (Post Game) Bennington over Platteview. Norris over Waverly in four sets. Minden moves up, gets two from Northwest and Hastings.

ALL THE SCORES // SEASON POWER POINTS 

RUNNIN’ AND RUNNIN’: Cross country runners are nearing the mid-point of season races with the huge Nebraska-Kearney state meet preview coming in less than two weeks. Then, before you know it, a return for the big race. The awesome content from Prep Running Nerd keeps coming through with their week two individual rankings here. And, if you missed it, videos of the Platte River Rumble. Boys Large School (Witte and Boonstra!!!) / Girls Large School (History Makers) / Boys Small School / Girls Small School

CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP TIME: Doesn’t seem right that we can be talking about conference tournaments in mid-September, but here we are. On Monday, top-ranked Gretna got a 4-1 win over No. 2 Papillion-LaVista in the Metro Conference championship game. In the EMC Tournament at Hastings, top-ranked Blair rode the arm and bat of all-stater Kalli Ulven to a 9-1 championship game win over the host Tigers.

Stay with us the rest of the season as we’ll partner with nebpreps.com and @nebraskahssb (loads of scores and updates over there) for our softball coverage.

ALL THE SCORES // SEASON POWER POINTS

ON THE LINKS: Three-time defending Class C state champion Broken Bow won the Gothenburg Invite on Tuesday with a 337 (man) team score. Great stuff from them and runner-up Minden (345) as they look to be solid front runners for the state meet at Lake Maloney in North Platte. Camryn Johnson (Bow) and KayLynn Jorgensen (Minden) tied for individual honors with Johnson winning in a one-hole playoff. Coaches: We’d love to promote more girls golf. Follow us on Twitter and we will follow back. Then, share your results with us!

THE OTHER NET: Each Sunday, we’ll release the top-10 power point rankings for the Nebraska tennis coaches in each class. These rankings will be used for a new state dual tournament in Kearney the week before the state tennis championships. Get the latest rankings here. 

Rear View Mirror: Weaker Boulder

There are days — and nights — when the Mirror wonders if we should keep writing, but we have decided, at least for now, that we are going to stick out. Let’s just get it our there from the start — the proceedings in Boulder made us want to put on a blind fold.

But, here we have resigned to a few things:

1. Matt Rhule has only coached two games.

2. If you really look at a stat sheet, Nebraska should have a chance to win multiple games this year and still put a smile on our face.

3. Turnovers will KILL all the good things on the stat sheet.

4. It’d be easier to have patience if the movie we were watching was at least a little bit different.

5. The next six games will certainly test our team (and our fans), but let’s chart our way to a bowl game just for fun.

READ THE FULL REAR VIEW MIRROR FROM THE COLORADO GAME HERE.

Parting Shot: The Tree Falls

PRETTY IN PALO ALTO: Dear kids — play with as much effort and enthusiasm at Becca Allick did last night. What a joy to watch. The winners from Lincoln went to Palo Alto and controlled No. 5 Stanford most of the night in a 3-1 (25-23, 25-16, 19-25, 25-21) win.

This team has a special look to them. (We aren’t going to jinx it here, that’s enough.) It was Nebraska’s first regular season road win over a top-five team since 2017.