Standing in a makeshift metal stand, Joel Brase watched the golf cart hum from concessions stand and parking lot toward the track and cheering audience. He saw nervous Centennial fans on the opposite sideline. He saw excited home fans at field level beside him. And in the middle of it all he saw a Lincoln Lutheran football brimming with confidence in a comeback.
Under lights in their own backyard, the Warriors took center stage and completed a second-half rally to beat Centennial. Players and parents roared.
That game almost didn't happen. At least, not like that.
Brase lives with his family in Seward and commutes to Lincoln Lutheran, where he's the athletic director. He described himself as Seward County through and through. His daughter goes to St. John's Lutheran School. But his latest big project was bringing football to Lincoln Lutheran.
Typically, the Warriors rent fields at Nebraska Wesleyan and Pius X. They've also come to Seward to play at Concordia University on occasion. But with the onset of COVID-19 and its subsequent restrictions, the Warriors weren't allowed to play at Nebraska Wesleyan. Brase pondered over the summer, but no one knew what the football season would look like. On the back-burner, however, was a first-time innovation.
Lincoln Lutheran has hosted football before, just sub-varsity. There are no lights on those fields behind the school, so those games have always started around 4:30 p.m. There's also a small battery-operated scoreboard, which Brase said wouldn't cut it for a varsity football game.
“In the spring we looked into everything we'd need to do for our field to host a varsity football game,” he said. “We have three-and-a-half football fields and a four-lane track that people don't realize we have. We felt good about our space.”
So they rented a larger scoreboard and transported it by trailer. They established a temporary press box, 15-by-30 feet, 6 feet off the ground. They painted the field. A group of football parents helped install the row of lights during a particularly rainy week over the summer. Brase also called to rent a golf cart to help transport handicapped or elderly fans from the parking lot to the football field since it's at the far end of the school grounds. When it became clear this was their plan, they also had to account for locker rooms, crowd space, and an area for officials – all the logistical things they never had to deal with before.
“We knew we'd have to make decisions on the fly,” Brase said.
The rented bleachers and the final light installation came the day before Lincoln Lutheran's first home game. Brase couldn't thank those parents and volunteers enough for their time and energy.
Brase invited players, those volunteers and others out to the field to soak in that evening when the lights turned on. Players came out around 8 p.m. and started throwing passes.
“When we cranked the lights on and the field was painted and guys got under the lights, that's when I started feeling really good about what our game could be and the atmosphere of what it could be,” Brase said. “A small eight-man game where cars were around the field, I had that vision, but until it started forming, that's when I got excited.”
The Warriors lost their first game under the lights, against Archbishop Bergan. But in the week that followed Brase asked the coaches and players what they thought. Each one loved it.
Of course there were initial hurdles and the ongoing pandemic has kept the athletic department on its toes. But the C2-school community in a city with multiple Class A schools, as Brase described it, came together to host football.
“We have that smaller community feel and when it's something they feel the community do, they're willing to put in the effort to do it well,” Brase said. “At that point people were just happy to be able to play. I'd say that was our main focus at the beginning – have it feel like a normal Friday night.”
The Warriors went on to beat Syracuse 44-0 and Centennial in the 21-17 comeback at home. They closed their regular-season with a 3-6 record. They made the playoffs as the No. 16 seed, giving them a rematch against No. 1 Archbishop Bergan in the first round.
