Thanksgiving’s break gave me a little time to reboot my mind and catch up a little bit after the fall sports season came to a close last week with Sandy Creek’s 44-42 Class D-1 state football championship win over Stanton.
First off...Holy moly, what the Cougar football team did this season was nothing short of monumental. This group of seniors has been through the wringer in their young lives. Playing football together since they were in elementary school, whether on the same team or not, and they capped off the season with the ultimate accomplishment a team can achieve in high school sports...THEE state title.
As I look back on this accomplishment, the best part of it all, at least to me, is that the championship wasn’t just a one or two-person show, not at all, it was eight guys, on the field at any given time that made this all happen, not just this year, but for the past three to four years, heck, since elementary school for that matter.
They didn’t always play on the same team, they weren’t always on the field at the same time as Cougars, but as this ultimate prize developed over the past seven or eight years, serving as student managers, as little brothers that may have been a pain in their big brother’s butts, the glimmer of a state title was always there.
So to see these young men leaving Tom Osborne Field as champions was beyond priceless for me to witness. I have to admit, I’m even a little speechless yet after the Cougars win, not in the fact that they won it, but in the way they did it! Just WOW, that’s what I have.
Back up three to four weeks, and the Sandy Creek cross country teams state runner-up title in Kearney. Three young ladies stepping up in a big way to set a tone for the future of things to come for the Cougar squad of Madison Shaw, Paige Stengel, and Madalyn Andersen. Their future is beyond bright and building. We at CCN were blessed to see the arrival of the program in a big way, and so look forward to the future of things to come.
As I look into the future, it’s time for a quick change of focus to the winter season, as the basketball and wrestling seasons begin this week. December is, year in and year out, a crazy time for us, thus the reason we routinely take advantage of a four-day break for the holiday, as three out of the past 16 years at the Clay County News, we’ve had a football team battling for state titles, thus cutting into our “breathing time” between the fall and winter season...not that we’re complaining by any means!
With the short break between seasons, the 2024-25 winter sports preview will be a little late this year, as we give Sandy Creek’s boys basketball and wrestling teams a little time to soak in their football title run before shifting gears, in order to take our traditional pre-season team pictures for the annual winter season preview. It is our hope that it will come out in next week’s paper.
Quickly following that will be our Christmas Wishes edition, which again, we rely heavily on our schools to lend a big assist in those special sections, with our kid’s drawings and artwork to make that come true.
It’s kind of “hangover time” if you will, as we quickly move from the high’s of the fall season and move into the next phase of the 2024-25 winter season.
The holiday leftovers bleed into this coming week as we have no choice but to quickly transition into the winter season, because, well, it’s here, whether we like it or not.
