This senior year was special.
Seagan Packett-Trisdale wouldn't discount a thing when asked for one specific reason as to why.
“I think this entire season might have been my favorite moment of the past four years,” the 6-foot-1, 290-pound lineman said. “I love this entire team.”
Blair High School football returned to the Class B playoffs Friday at Omaha Skutt, but closed out a bounce-back fall 5-5 after a 21-7 loss to the sixth-seeded Skyhawks. The No. 11 Bears claimed four less victories a year ago, missing the postseason entirely after five-straight qualifications from 2016 to 2020.
“We were a competitive football team,” coach Bryan Soukup said after Friday's 14-point defeat.
Packett-Trisdale described how tight the BHS roster has gotten this fall, too, noting lineman get-togethers to watch film away from the classroom.
“I couldn't have asked for anything more out of this team,” he said. “I love them, man.”
The standout blocker was one of 14 12th-graders who were on the sideline for their final high school game at Skutt.
“This has been a tremendous group of seniors. I love these guys. I'm going to miss these guys,” Soukup said. “They were so much fun to be around.”
Packett-Trisdale, a team captain, believes his class helped right the program after last year's struggles.
“We got our team back on track after that 1-8 season,” he said. “We played against a few really good teams. We played really good football, but we just could not pull it through on the scoreboard.”
Dane Larsen, another senior captain with the injured Brayton Osius and Shea Wendt, compared the season to his sophomore campaign playing alongside his brother Dex — a current Wayne State Wildcat — which was his own favorite time as a Bear.
“We had a pretty good season that year and, obviously, it came to an end similarly to how this did,” the linebacker said.
BHS lost Friday despite just a handful of punts. It scored first and returned to the Skyhawks side of the 50 yard line multiple times as the game went on, but came up empty.
“You know, we had some penalties. We had a couple turnovers that were costly,” Soukup said. “We did a great job moving the ball most of the first half. Just didn't get some points to show for it.”
The loss, he said, wasn't due to a lack of effort.
“Kids played hard,” the coach explained. “Just need to put more points on the board, obviously.”
Blair scored on its opening drive after a pair of Skutt penalties negated a 3rd-and-7 incompletion from its own 32 yard line. Two quarterback Bode Soukup passes to J'Shawn Unger in the flat resulted in another first down before Larsen earned a big gain on a screen play.
Finally, on 4th-and-12 at the Skyhawks' 32, Soukup took the snap, scanned the field and completed a touchdown pass to wide open junior Brady Brown with 8:05 still left in the opening quarter. Kicker Sergio Dominguez scored the extra-point, and the Bears led 7-0 with what wound up as their final points of the season.
Skutt responded, though, tying the score with 6:09 still left in the first. Anthony Heithoff earned his way into the end zone on a 13-yard touchdown run before Noah Boyd sent his own PAT kick between the uprights.
BHS' next drive ended at the Skyhawks' 34 when a second Soukup fourth-down pass fell incomplete. Skutt took over possession and held it into the second quarter before quarterback Bennett Turman — who, like the Bears' QB, is a coach's son — threw an interception to Ethan Baessler.
Blair was unable to turn the turnover into points, though, punting the ball away despite reaching its playoff opposition's 32 yard line again.
Next, however, the Skyhawks produced the game's longest offensive play. Colin Pike's 63-yard touchdown run earned his squad a 14-7 advantage with 7:42 left before halftime.
The next two BHS possessions ended in Skutt territory, too. First, there was a Bears fumble recovered at the 30. Then, the visitors missed a 43-yard field goal attempt just before the half.
On the Skyhawks first drive of the second half, however, it was Packett-Trisdale who stopped a fourth-down run short of the first-down marker. Blair eventually fumbled the ball back, though, as the home team went ahead 21-7 on a 41-yard connection between Turman and receiver Wyatt Archer.
The Bears earned multiple opportunities with the ball to climb back into the game from there, but sacks ultimately limited their progress. Their last drive, which started 84 yards from the end zone with 5:01 left in the fourth quarter, concluded nearly 4 minutes later after three Skutt sacks.
“I'd have to watch the film,” Soukup said when asked about the Skyhawks' pressure. “I can't really say offhand where some of the breakdowns were.”
The game ended on kneel downs as Skutt ended Blair's season for a third time in five years. This campaign, though, was a return to relevance for the Bears after they claimed just a single win in 2021.
“They helped build things back up to where we need to be,” coach Soukup said of his seniors. “We kind of went through some years where we were young, low numbers and stuff like that, but they kind of helped us turn the corner.”
Larsen said his class took its role seriously.
“Our senior group was one that really, really cared about football and cared about creating a bond with the underclassmen, and tried to build this program back up to what it can be,” he said.
Though he'll no longer be in uniform to see it, Packett-Trisdale expects next fall's BHS squad to be “a really good football team.”
“We grew up a lot this year,” said Soukup, the head coach. “We were still a young team and we've got a lot of quality guys coming back that will have a lot of experience to go on.”
