The coach bolted first. Then, the top players followed.
The unexpected exodus from Omaha Benson High’s football team months before the 2023 season forced undersized backups and fledgling freshmen into key roles on the field. A Week 1 matchup exposed all of the Bunnies’ inexperience.
When the final whistle blew, the scoreboard carried the biggest blowout in the history of the state’s top division.
93-0.
“I feel like my team was set up,” said team captain KeeVon Copeland. “Honestly, I don’t think that they should have allowed (our) team to play.”
The beatdown laid bare a new reality in Nebraska high school athletics.
Fueled by the rise of club sports, COVID cancellations and trickle-down trends from the college game, talented athletes are increasingly leaving their neighborhood schools to join stronger teams, according to coaches, administrators and sports writers who spoke with the Flatwater Free Press.
Over the last three years, nearly 1,500 high school athletes have switched teams without having to sit out under the state’s loose transfer rules. At the highest level, the consolidation of talent has tipped the scales of competitive balance, said Jeff Johnson, associate director of the Nebraska School Activities Association.
“The good have gotten better and the bad have gotten worse,” Johnson said.
The widening gap between haves and have-nots is most evident in Class A football, where transfer-laden suburban squads such as Millard South and Westside far outperform depleted teams from Omaha’s urban core.
During last year’s regular season, winning teams outscored their opponents by 33 points on average, nearly double the typical margin of victory from 20 years ago, an FFP analysis found.
The growing imbalance has caught the attention of the NSAA, which regulates high school sports. The association is preparing a plan to rework scheduling, so “the really good don’t play the really bad,” Johnson said. But that still won’t address the root problem of state law allowing transfer athletes to bolster top teams, he added.
Things haven’t gotten much easier for Benson football since the record loss two years ago.
In the first season after coach Terrence Mackey left for district rival Central, the winless Bunnies got outscored by nearly 500 points. Copeland, who had the team’s only touchdown, attributes the inability to compete entirely to the transfers.
Seven bruising losses to open last season decimated the team’s already thin roster with injuries. Benson Athletic Director Deondre’ Jones and his colleagues forfeited the remaining two games and paid a $1,000 fine to their Week 9 opponent, the soon-to-be state champ Millard South.
“I would rather pay a penalty,” Jones said, “than pay for a funeral.”
Inside the transfer portal
When the much anticipated Class A title game rolled around last year, transfers featured all over the field.
The receiver who scored three touchdowns, the cornerback who caught an interception, the defensive end who landed two sacks — all had joined Millard South from other high schools. Newcomers even handled the Patriots’ kickoffs and punts.
On the other end, student-athletes who had transferred to Omaha Westside ran in the lone touchdown and forced the only turnover in the team’s first loss in more than two years.
It wasn’t always like this.
In 1989, Nebraska became one of the first states to allow students to transfer outside their home district through a program known as option enrollment. But even before it became law, critics worried the education policy would have sporting implications.
A year earlier, Minnesota’s creation of a similar law had set off a chaotic flurry of illicit recruitment and high school athletes switching teams.
To prevent that fate, Nebraska barred districts from considering athletic abilities as part of their admission standards and prohibited students from competing for a year at their new schools. The sit-out period was shortened to 90 days just a year later.
Today, most transfer athletes don’t have to sit at all. High schoolers get one free transfer as long as their schools alert the NSAA to their impending transfer by May 1.
More than 450 student-athletes — moving both within and between districts — have appeared on the May 1 list each of the last three years, according to the NSAA.
But the list is just the tip of the iceberg since option students who enroll before their freshman year are automatically eligible to compete when they get to high school, said John Krogstrand, Omaha Public Schools’ athletic director. The NSAA doesn’t keep records on how many athletes fit in that category.
For example, option students made up 33 of the 70 players on Westside’s football team last year, but 26 of those students joined the district between kindergarten and ninth grade, Westside spokeswoman Elizabeth Power said.
Athletes who don’t use option enrollment to join a district must move into its boundaries to become immediately eligible. The NSAA stripped Gretna High of its 2021 football title after finding that the school, which is closed to option enrollment, had an ineligible transfer student on its team.
In basketball, relationships formed through club teams have inspired high school transfers for more than two decades, but transfer-loaded football teams are a more recent phenomenon, said Thad Livingston, a former Omaha World-Herald sports editor.
The transfer portal that shaped college sports over the last five years has trickled down to the high school level in Nebraska and other states, Krogstrand said.
It’s an open secret that high school coaches recruit athletes in defiance of NSAA rules, said State Sen. Terrell McKinney, who coaches wrestling at Omaha North High. Usually, it’s less a formal pitch and more an open-ended invitation to a player who the coach already knows from club sports, he said.
Coaches who leave for a new job are often accompanied by several of their old players.
About a dozen football players followed Mackey from Benson to Central, and several of coach Paul Limongi’s former Burke High stars helped him win a championship in 2022 during his first year at Westside. OPS and Westside declined interviews on behalf of Mackey and Limongi.
But overwhelmingly, it’s parents eyeing college athletics opportunities for their kids who initiate conversations with coaches — not the other way around, said Mike Sautter, a longtime high school sports reporter now with Hurrdat Sports.
And with club sports and social media breaking down geographic barriers, kids are recruiting their friends, said Jones, the Benson High AD.
Jakson Page saw the allure of playing basketball with close friends from AAU when he decided to transfer to Millard North for his senior year in 2021. Unhappy with his diminished role at Central, Page sought a chance to prove himself and knew the Mustangs needed someone like him, he said.
The move paid off. Page started nearly every game, and his steady point guard play helped the team to a state championship.
“That was a perfect way to end my senior year, and I got to do it with guys that were like best friends to me,” Page said.
A tilted field
As school officials across the country tried to ride the line between public health and public opinion, then-OPS Superintendent Cheryl Logan made the call to cancel the 2020 fall sports season.
Logan knew her decision would “make our athletes mad,” but she said at the time it was the only way the district could potentially get back to in-person classes.
The backlash was immediate. A chorus of OPS football players posted pleas to reconsider on social media with the hashtag #LetUsPlay. Several families even moved to houses in suburban districts to ensure their kids could compete.
“People wanted to play, and to just sit there and do nothing … it was very depressing,” said Wayne Newson, looking back on his freshman year at Omaha Bryan.
OPS was the only district in the state to call off the fall season, and many athletes later opted to take their talents to suburban schools, said Johnson, the NSAA official. The cancellation likely cost OPS a whole class, he said.
Sautter, the sports reporter, thinks the district is still feeling the effects.
“I said it at the time when they did it that it’s going to set them back at least a decade, and I still feel that way,” he said.
OPS high schools have fallen short of their pre-pandemic performances across the sports spectrum, an FFP analysis found.
In football, OPS teams have seen a drop-off in playoff appearances since the cancellation, and no team from the district has made the championship game since Burke won the title in 2018.
OPS teams have been shut out of three of the last five boys’ basketball playoffs. Two OPS teams made the playoffs annually from 2016 to 2020.
Even the district’s distance runners have struggled. Just one OPS cross country team has qualified for state since 2020. The boys’ and girls’ teams combined for 14 state appearances in the prior five seasons.
Only one OPS sports team — South High boys’ soccer — has claimed a state title since the pandemic hit.
McKinney, a state champion wrestler for North High in the late 2000s, said he never felt the urge to leave OPS since he and his peers were winning, but the dip in high-level success is causing athletes to turn to suburban schools where they can get more exposure on successful teams.
Krogstrand, who took over OPS athletics in 2021, noted that plenty of athletes from the district have reached impressive heights, including two alums drafted this year into the NFL and another into the NBA.
“It’s not like you have to transfer away to get those opportunities,” Krogstrand said.
The district is looking forward, not fixating on past decisions, Krogstrand said. A 10-year strategic plan calls for boosting coach development, strength training, nutrition programs and offseason access to facilities and training for non-club athletes, he said.
The urban sports struggles aren’t limited to Omaha. Two weeks before Benson was due to play Millard South last year, Lincoln High forfeited at halftime to the powerhouse team while trailing 63-0.
The Lincoln High team lost five players to transfers before the season, and its starting quarterback had just been knocked out of the game when coach Mark Macke decided to concede.
Macke, a 30-year veteran of Nebraska’s sidelines, said he doesn’t begrudge his opponent’s dominance, but if the margin of defeat had risen to triple digits, he would have lost his players for the rest of the season.
“You’re really not coaching,” Macke said. “You’re just trying to hold them together, make sure they keep their heads. All you do is look at the clock.”
Lopsided matchups on the gridiron benefit nobody — the stronger players don’t improve by beating inferior foes, and the smaller kids on the losing side get humiliated and risk serious injury, Livingston said.
“I think it has taken it to a psychologically damaging level — to the level of publicly funded bullying,” Livingston said.
The state’s best programs — Millard South and Westside — have earned their success by doing a tremendous job of coaching, promoting players on social media and helping them reach the collegiate level, Sautter said. Of course transfers are attracted by those qualities, he said.
More Nebraska-raised players are going to top college programs since the pandemic, and a dozen Millard South seniors have Division I offers this year, The Athletic reported.
Westside Community Schools, which receives the most option applications in the state, is popular with families, said Westside spokesperson Power, because of its unique academic offerings, central location, inclusive culture and advantageous size.
Built by boosters
The gap between OPS and suburban schools is made even wider by inequities in facilities and equipment, said State Sen. Terrell McKinney.
Private boosters are funding a $34 million addition to Westside High that will feature a new pool and gym, having previously footed the bill for new basketball, baseball, softball and golf facilities. Millard donors are bankrolling an 85,000-square-foot activity complex that will house six hardwood courts and a patch of indoor turf.
Meanwhile, Omaha North has been without a home football stadium for decades. After years of stalled plans, the high school is slated to build a new stadium over the next two years.
Amid an increase in blowouts and declining participation in popular sports, the NSAA is exploring ways to restore competitiveness. Likely solutions include manipulating schedules to prevent mismatches and allowing long-suffering teams to drop down a level, Johnson said.
But so far, the organization has stood firm on its transfer rules. Earlier this year, the NSAA’s representative assembly narrowly voted down a proposal that would have extended the sports sit-out period from 90 to 180 days for transfers who don’t appear on the May 1 list.
The failed legislation was meant to deter repeat transfers, but since most first-timers don’t have to sit out at all, lengthening the suspension period doesn’t resolve the root issue, Johnson said. That would require a change in state law, he said.
“We need a state senator to look at this and do something with the law because the law was not intended for kids to move for athletic or activity purposes,” Johnson said.
McKinney said option enrollment won’t go away “because it’s too beneficial to some school districts,” but something should be done. The loss of transfer athletes and competitive teams hurts the perception of urban schools and dampens community pride, he said.
The Democratic lawmaker said he would like to see the playing field leveled by sending more resources to OPS for athletics.
If the NSAA’s reforms don’t work, struggling teams will eventually give up, meaning less high school football in Nebraska, Johnson said.
At Benson, the out-migration of players posed serious safety concerns for those left on the team, Jones said.
Newson, Benson’s leading rusher and tackler in 2023, remembers his teammates suffering concussions at an unusually high rate, often due to poor tackling technique.
Team captain Copeland went down with a season-ending leg injury in Week 4 after a brutal hit by three opposing players.
Despite the overwhelming challenges on the field, Copeland said the Bunnies mostly stuck together off it and built a culture of resilience and mutual support.
“You’d think a lot of people would quit. Not many people did,” Copeland said. “We definitely built a community within each other.”
Jones is thinking on a 10-year timeline for rebuilding Benson football, but if things don’t change, the school may have to consider consolidating its team with another OPS school.
It would be a hard pill to swallow for alumni, he acknowledged. Benson boasts a proud football tradition, having produced a Heisman winner and four NFL players.
“The reality is if we want to have anything, we may have to do stuff like that,” Jones said.
Facing the same schedule that left them winless last year, the Bunnies are already off to a better start. In Week 2, they claimed their first victory in nearly three years.
Jones hopes they will take the field this time against their Week 9 opponent: Millard South.
This story was done in collaboration with Omaha Magazine.
