The road: The history

When it came to the Beatrice Orangemen advancing to the Class B State championship football game at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, the road was longer than just the trip last Saturday from 600 Orange Blvd. in Beatrice to Aldrich Field in Lincoln and their semifinal game against Lincoln Pius.

Beatrice’s current journey to the state title contest began four years again when the team reached its first state semifinal, falling to the McCook Bison, 24-17.

“That was the year I think we kind of surprised everybody,” Beatrice head coach Bob Sexton said.

The 2005 team was made up of a group of kids who were determined to win, Sexton said.

“They had a never-die attitude,” Sexton said. “There was a whole group which propelled us to that level.”

Football was “really important” to the 2005 team, Sexton said, and the players worked hard in the weight room and on the practice field to get to a competitive level.

While the 2005 team was “capable” of winning a state title, Sexton said it lacked the experience necessary to do so.

Sexton said he “made a commitment” to making the Orangemen a perennial state contender when he took the head coaching job in 2003.

“We made a commitment than we would play in this game (the state final) sometime,” Sexton said. “We’ve worked very hard to do that.”

Sexton said Beatrice’s players have put in a tremendous amount of time and effort to getting to Saturday’s state final against Aurora. The game will kickoff at 7 p.m. under the lights at Memorial Stadium.

Beatrice’s first state playoff appearance was in 1984 under then head coach Mark Kaczmarek. The Orangemen lost in the first round of Class A play to eventual state champion Omaha Central, 26-0.

The Orangemen returned to the playoffs under former coach Dallas Jensen in 1992, losing to Auburn in the first round, 26-6, and then again in 1993, advancing to the team’s first quarterfinal, but losing to eventual Class B undefeated champion Columbus Scotus, 24-23, in overtime.

Beatrice made another quarterfinal appearance in 2000, falling to eventual runner-up Scottsbluff, 28-12.

In 2001, 2002 and 2004, the Orangemen lost first-round games to Crete, Alliance and Holdrege, respectively. The 2001 Crete team finished as state runners-up.

Then, in 2005, Beatrice started its current string of four straight semifinal appearances with its trip to McCook.

“That game at McCook was an eye-opener,” Sexton said.

Throughout the game against the Bison, Beatrice had answered every score by its No. 1-rated opponent until the final one.

After McCook scored the go-ahead touchdown and extra point in the final quarter, the Orangemen drove down the field on the Bison, but after an errant pass on fourth down McCook took possession of the ball and ran out the clock.

Sexton credits the lessons learned at McCook with building the foundation for Beatrice’s current title-contending team.

“We’d always had kids who worked hard in the weight room, but not like the last four years,” Sexton said. “What the young kids saw was, to play at that level, you had to be strong.”

The Orangemen’s level of play has progressed since the loss in McCook, Sexton said.

 “Each year we’ve gotten better and better,” Sexton said.

Beatrice made it back to the state semifinals in 2006 and 2007, losing to Elkhorn, 35-0, and Crete, 33-19.

McCook and Elkhorn both finished as Class B State runners-up after defeating the Orangemen in semifinal action, while Crete went on to win the 2007 championship.

While there’s a lot of teams who would like to have played in three straight semifinals, Sexton said it gets to a point where it isn’t enough just to get there.

“You get a little spoiled when you get to the semifinals three years in a row, now four years in a row,” Sexton said. “All of a sudden people are saying you can’t win the big one when in reality we won plenty of ‘big ones’ to get to that point.”

Sexton said the Orangemen had to beat a number of good teams each year just to get to the semifinals, including two years ago when they defeated defending state champion Omaha Skutt on the Skyhawks’ home field by scoring two touchdowns in a five-minute time span.

“That was a huge win and then we had to turn around and play Elkhorn,” Sexton said, smiling.

Elkhorn, Sexton sad, was simply a better team in 2006 than the Orangemen.

Nearly the same thing happened last year when Beatrice defeated a solid Omaha Gross squad, 63-62, in overtime in the quarterfinals before falling to defending state champion Crete in the semifinals.

There was one major difference this year, Sexton said, as Beatrice made it through the first two playoff rounds with wins over Ralston and Skutt and then defeated Lincoln Pius 28-10 for their first state semifinal victory.

“This year, the difference was we were better than the team’s we’ve played,” Sexton said.

Finally being the “favorites” when it came to playing in a state semifinal, instead of the underdogs, motivated this year’s team, Sexton said.

“This group was really determined,” Sexton said. “They weren’t cocky, but they were very confident.”

Sexton said the coaching staff felt a “sense of urgency” and wasn’t going to leave any stone unturned when it came to preparing the team for the 2008 playoffs.

“We didn’t feel we had to do anything special,” Sexton said. “We just wanted to concentrate on the fundamentals and let our playmakers make some plays. That’s what has happened.”

While the Orangemen “respected Pius,” Sexton said they in no way feared the Thunderbolts.

It’s been the attitude of the team that’s helped them as much as anything make it to its first state final, Sexton said.

“These kids had the attitude they are going to Lincoln this year and they are going to get it done,” Sexton said.