By Con Marshall
It’s mid-season for the Chadron High School football team. The Cardinals are 4-0 entering their fifth of nine games this fall. It will be played Friday night at Ogallala, whose football team has been a tough opponent for the Red Birds through the years.
The Indians lead the all-time series by a narrow 11-9 margin. The teams have split their last 10 games, but Ogallala has won the last two—38-21 in 2022 and 22-14 a year ago.
Those games were interesting. The same player, Harry Caskey, a 6-foot-2, 220-pound specimen, was the mainspring in both victories while playing different offensive positions.
As a junior in ’22, Caskey was the quarterback. He completed 11 of 14 passes for 149 yards and one touchdown, besides carrying the ball 29 times for 139 yards and three more TDs.
Last year, Ogallala began the season with Caskey at quarterback again, but lost its first two games—29-6 to Gothenburg and 28-22 to Broken Bow. Coach Brent Bauer and his staff changed things in a hurry. They moved Caskey to running back and the Indians won their next seven games, qualified for the Class C-1 playoffs and barely lost to Auburn 36-32 in the first round.
Caskey finished the season with 1,132 yards rushing and 13 touchdowns to go with eight 2-point conversions for a total of 94 points. He also was named the Class C1-7 District’s Defensive Player of the Year after leading his team in tackles with 72. He also was First-Team All-State.
Caskey’s best game last fall was against the Cardinals. He carried the ball 28 times for 227 yards, the first time he had exceeded 200 yards rushing in his career. The Indians got another big boost when teammate Caden Rezac returned a kickoff 85 yards.
Ironically, Ogallala did not complete a pass versus the Cards last fall.
The good news is that both Caskey, now a freshman linebacker on the U.S. Air Force Academy football team, and Rezac, who is playing baseball at Northeast Community College at Norfolk, have graduated.
Interestingly, the Indians began this season by defeating the two teams that beat them last year. They toppled Gothenburg 35-22 and edged Broken Bow 28-25. But since then, Cozad has blasted them 47-6 and upstart Gering prevailed 26-8 last Friday night.
The latter were the first two teams Ogallala defeated last year after the offensive structure was revised. Graduation hit the Indians hard last season. They reportedly dressed just 21 players last Friday against Gering.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals have been rolling. The winning streak will no doubt grow if they can continue to limit the opponents to one touchdown a game as they have done in the first four.
Chadron’s offense also has been potent with senior Quinn Bailey gobbling up the yards and scoring lots of touchdowns while being ably assisted by his buddies who block.
After carrying the ball 38 times for 324 yards, the second highest of his career, against Gothenburg, Bailey has rushed 139 times for a state-high 1,119 yards and 11 touchdowns this fall. In addition, he has caught eight passes for 181 yards and four more TDs, the first of his career as a receiver.
Bailey’s 108 points this season also lead the 11-man ranks in the state.
The Lincoln Journal Star’s high school sports writer Chris Basnett has noticed the Cardinals, moving them up from seventh in last week’s Class C-1 rankings to fourth place this week. However, the Cards remain unranked by the Omaha World-Herald.