Friday Night Lights: Beeter Business as Usual

The past two seasons of Chinook Sugarbeeter football have been magical. Yet, with great success comes great expectations, and dealing with those expectations will be one of Chinook's biggest challenges in 2016.

Of course, having all eyes on you is never a bad thing and after making the Class C 8-Man state championship the past two seasons, and winning it last year, the eyes of 8-man football will once again be on Chinook. Yet, the Beeters aren't thinking about last season or the one before it. They are focused on the here and now and their goal is simple: just win.

And even though they return just two starters from a season ago, with their track record, you have to like their chances of doing just that.

"It's a completely new season," starting quarterback Kade Friede said. "We lost nine seniors from last year's team and we have two starters back. So it's going to be up to us seniors to pick things up with our leadership and we are going to have to have a lot of young guys step up and fill some of those roles.

"We have big shoes to fill," He added. "But the state championship is so fresh on my mind and we are the only Class C team that can defend our title, so we are going to try and do what we can to get it done."

Friede, who played some quarterback the past two seasons for Chinook and also started at linebacker on defense, is referring to the fact that Denton-Geyser-Stanford, the Six-Man state champ from Class C, is now playing 8-man football, which means that no matter what happens, there will be a new king of Six-Man this fall.

However, when it comes to 8-man football, the Beeters are hoping they can keep that title and the Northern C crown, which they have won the past two years, right there in Chinook.

One person who can help achieve that, probably as much as any current Beeter, is All-State running back Tate Niederegger, who racked up more than 1,300 total yards from scrimmage and seven touchdowns on offense in 2015, as well as 93 tackles, two interceptions. 1.5 sacks and nine passes defensed on defense.

"It's just going to be like any other season," Niederegger said. "We are going to get ready and go out there and do our thing. We really only have four guys that played a lot last season, so it's going to be up to us (seniors) to make sure the younger guys are where they need to be."

Yet, despite all the changes, the Beeters still appear ready to make another deep playoff run this season. Having Niederegger and Friede back on both sides of the ball will help, so will a head coach and a coaching staff that knows how to turn out good players, particularly along the offensive and defensive lines.

Another thing that will help Chinook this season, is the fact that they have gone through transitions like this before. After getting to the championship game in 2014, the Beeters watched key players like Gavin Gunderson, Lane Seymour, Cody McCracken, Zach Schelllin and Thomas Reid all graduate.

With all that talent gone, all the Beeters did, was play even better, posting a perfect 12-0 record on their way to winning the championship that eluded them the year before. That attitude, of focusing on the present, not the future or the past, is one of the biggest reasons the Beeters have won so much the past two seasons and that mindset is not going away.

"I know it's a cliche," Coach Friede said. "But we really just try to take it one game at a time. We don't try to think any farther down the road than that. We just want to improve with each game and hopefully, by the end of the season, we will be right there in the playoff hunt again."

While Chinook is currently focused only on Centerville, its opponent for the season-opener this Saturday at Hoon Field (kickoff is 7 p.m.), the long-term goal hasn't changed. And even though the Beeters may take it day-by-day, they are still dreaming big - state championship big.

"Every year, the goal is the same, to win the state championship," Niederegger said. "Winning back-to-back, has never been done in Chinook and just thinking about how many seniors we lost last year and how good of players they were, that would make it that much sweeter. To lose all that and to be able to come back and rebuild that quickly, that would be amazing."