BY DIRK CHATELAIN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER


BURWELL, Neb. – The whistle blows again. Adam Marten’s head drops. For a moment, he stares at the gym floor.

The 38-year-old coach has worn a scowl with his purple shirt most of the evening. He has watched his Sandhills Panthers play ragged basketball in the most important game of the season. Marten had seen it coming, too, just as he had sensed the fouls leading to this moment.

An official approaches the scorer’s table: One-four, block. That’s five. Marten’s 5-foot-7 freshman point guard walks to the bench.

Outside Burwell High School, a neutral site for subdistricts, the smell of cattle stagnates in the dry winter night. Across the highway sits an outdoor arena, home to Nebraska’s Big Rodeo. Hundreds of cowboys come from hundreds of miles to soak in the atmosphere.

But that’s July. That’s bull ridin’. This is February. This is Class D-2 basketball.

Just 20 Sandhills fans made the hour trip on this Tuesday night. There would’ve been more, but ranchers can’t leave home during calving season – some things never change.

Others are changing fast in rural Nebraska, especially in towns like Dunning and Bassett and Arthur and Harrison. People are leaving ranches for jobs closer to Interstate 80. Main Street businesses are locking doors because ends won’t meet. Those left behind are searching for answers to questions once so simple.

That’s Marten tonight: a man searching for answers. He won’t find one on his bench. He doesn’t even bother to look.

He trails by 11 points with 2:44 left. Ordinarily, that’s enough time for a rally. Marten isn’t thinking rally. He turns to the official waiting for a substitute. Motions to proceed.

His team is on the floor.

Where are the kids?

Sandhills isn’t alone.

Arthur County’s girls finished the season with six players. Sioux County had eight boys. Same for Keya Paha County.

In a country of skyscrapers and sprawling metroplexes, in a world where impoverished children make balls out of rocks, there are teenagers in western and central Nebraska who can’t find enough friends to make up athletic teams.

Come to the Sand Hills! We got fields and balls to spare!

“We are just beginning to see the beginning of it,” Rock County principal Steve Camp said.

Enrollments in Class D-2 schools generally are dropping. As they do, maintaining athletic traditions – woven as tightly into the community fabric as grain elevators and water towers – is like overcoming an 11-point deficit with three minutes left.

Rural economics, school pride and geographic bad luck share responsibility.

Western Nebraska is ranch land. Until 10 or 15 years ago, Arthur County High School Activities Director Rod Boots said, each ranch employed seven or eight workers. Those workers had families. Those families supported towns and schools.

The ranches are still there, but better equipment and technology enable owners to employ fewer workers. Viable businesses haven’t filled the void. Economic development and student enrollment go hand-in-hand, Camp said.

Less than 450 people now occupy Arthur County, which covers twice the area of Douglas County. Thirty years ago, the school had between 40 and 50 secondary students. Now there are 28.

“It’s very consistent throughout the Sand Hills,” said Boots, who’s been at Arthur County for 27 years.

Consolidation offers a solution. But squabbles between communities, coupled with a desire for independence, make change difficult. Often, schools agree to consolidate activities, but the deal falls apart when they must decide the team’s new nickname or color.

Sandhills and Thedford have begun to study athletics consolidation.

“I’m not extremely optimistic anything will get done,” Marten says. “They’re not in a much different boat than we are. But when it’s a neighboring school and kind of the rivalry idea and some people can’t forget things that happened 50 years ago, it’s pretty hard to meet in the middle.”

Even if everybody was willing, cooperation faces impediment. Eastern Nebraska high schools sit in close proximity, allowing schools to share students and resources if they choose. But look at a map of western Nebraska. Look at Arthur, north of Ogallala. Arthur County High’s closest neighboring school is 32 miles away.

“It’s not like we’re sitting here right in the same back yard,” Sandhills’ Marten said. “There’s no quick fix.”

A thin bench

Marten, a social studies teacher and father of five, returned to his alma mater this year after teaching at Thedford. He started the season with 10 players. Not perfect, but enough. In January, two brothers moved to New York. Another player broke his finger, leaving seven.

But kids were working hard. They were in great shape. They were getting along. After a winless football season, they had won six in basketball, including an upset of Mullen in the conference tournament.

As Sandhills prepared for the subdistrict opener against Rock County, Marten noticed fatigue. Maybe it was an inability to scrimmage, or even to practice 5-on-3, but Marten sensed his team stumbling to the finish.

He was right. Early in the game, Sandhills pushes the ball up court – it always does. Poor passing and ball-handling errors lead to a bevy of turnovers.

21-11, Rock County.

“Hey, we gotta move our feet and stop penetration, fellas,” Marten shouts after a Rock County player drives baseline for a layup. The next possession, the same player executes the same move, resulting in a foul.

30-19, Rock County.

Plagued by officials’ quick whistles, the Panthers slip into a deficit and, worse, foul trouble.

The result: a Catch-22.

To get back in the game, the Panthers must defend aggressively. If they do that, they risk fouls. Two of Marten’s best players receive their third fouls in the second quarter. They charge forward. Go on a run.

30-27, Rock County.

Sandhills High, located in Dunning, originated through consolidation in the early 1970s. At the time, it had Class D-1 numbers. No longer. In two years, there will be 12 or 13 girls in the entire high school.

39-34, Rock County.

Late in the third quarter, Marten’s only player taller than 6-3 fouls out. Over the next seven minutes, Marten tells his players to keep their hands away from ball-handlers. Stick ‘em in your pockets if you have to. Defending carefully, they yield offensive rebounds and layups.

46-34, Rock County.

At the 5:03 mark of the fourth quarter, one of Sandhills’ two seniors commits his fifth. That leaves next to Marten one assistant coach, two junior high student managers, two injured players and two players who have fouled out.

53-46, Rock County.

The decisive foul leaves Sandhills with four on the floor.

Marten calls two consecutive timeouts to devise a 5-on-4 strategy. His players spend the rest of the game chasing Rock County ball-handlers and hoisting 3-pointers. Two more players finish the game with four fouls.

Final score: 67-50, Rock County.

Rock County coach Andy Cronin had never seen the 5-on-4 scenario before. It left him, of all things, “embarrassed.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

‘Creative’ practices

Soon, it may be Cronin looking for bodies.

Rock County, located in Bassett, used to be a stalwart in Class C-1. Now it’s D-2. It dropped from 11-man football to six-man in a five-year span. You can scour all of Rock County and find just five sixth-graders.

Short-handed coaches agree that practice presents the greatest challenge. Some say they occasionally violate NSAA rules that prohibit players from practicing against coaches, student managers, the girls’ team or faculty.

“If we’re going to be competitive, we have to create a practice scenario,” Sioux County boys basketball coach Paul Windsor said. “How exactly do you do that? I don’t know.”

Nor does Windsor know how to push kids when there’s no fear of sitting the bench. He preaches determination: Don’t let numbers be your excuse.

Sioux County, because of illness to three kids, played one game this year with five available players. It had six for three other games. Football season’s harder.

Next year, the school will operate an eight-man team with 10 players.

“We don’t practice kickoffs and punts,” Windsor said.

“By God’s grace,” the team made it with nine players about five years ago, Windsor said. Sioux County could opt for six-man, but the nearest opponent would be three hours away.

It’s a stark contrast to the early 1980s, when Sioux County’s four-year high school enrollment pushed 100. Now it’s close to 30. Within a 10-year period, it could be as low as 19.

The closest town to Harrison is Crawford, 28 miles away. But Crawford, a Class D-1 school, is reluctant to unite – the enrollment increase may bump up Crawford to Class C-2 and 11-man football.

Sioux County also sponsors wrestling. It could eliminate the sport, but Windsor doesn’t want to seize from kids any opportunity, especially after the school won a Class D state title in 1976.

Windsor has faced the 5-on-4 scenario twice. The first time, five years ago, “I got tears in my eyes.”

But there’s a lesson for kids in that adversity, he says. His boys may never go to a state tournament, but they win a few games each year.

“As long as they’re not getting drubbed all the time, I think they’re deriving benefit from that activity.”

Searching for options

Elderly people hate to give up driving.

The Sioux County coach is thinking of his parents and all the folks around town.

They might move at half the speed limit, might not see an approaching car or pedestrian, might not be able to pass a test. But elderly people hate to give up driving.

It’s a step away from independence, Windsor says. And if you can’t drive, soon you won’t be able to work in the garden or cook in the kitchen or live alone. That’s the fear anyway.

Shrinking towns, he says, are like elderly people.

A time zone and 40 miles separate Arthur County and McPherson County schools, but they cooperate junior high sports. They discussed last year playing football and volleyball together. They proposed keeping each school’s colors and uniforms and mascots.

They’d play half the home games at McPherson, wearing its Longhorn jerseys. They’d be the Wolves when they played at Arthur.

“We thought we had it worked out pretty good,” Arthur’s Rod Boots said. “The kids were even in favor of it.”

But as Arthur was marching to the six-man state championship game, McPherson was reconsidering.

At a September meeting, many parents opposed athletic cooperation. Yes, the boys struggled to compete – six times this winter in basketball, they lost by at least 30 points. But the girls haven’t lost a regular-season basketball game in three years. McPherson chose to go it alone.

“They just thought if we took that step, it’d be the first step toward shutting down the school completely,” McPherson County Activities Director Alan Miller said.

Miller was proud of the parents’ resolve that day. But he worries that school pride numbed their wits.

McPherson will be the smallest high school in the state next year with 16 students in grades 10 through 12, Miller said. The school will sponsor six-man football with just seven or eight players. That means freshmen and sophomores – some of whom don’t particularly enjoy football – will be tackling seniors.

“My concern is, what if we have two kids get hurt the first game?” Miller said. “We’ll have to quit the season.”

Such a scenario may frustrate the kids serious about athletics, Miller said. They may transfer.

On the other hand, had McPherson joined Arthur, some kids who live east of town 40 or 50 miles from Arthur may have chosen to leave anyway. If there’s a good option, Miller would listen.

He’s been teaching at McPherson County for more than two decades. He wants to finish his career there. He doesn’t know if the doors will stay open long enough.

For now, he’s just worried about football season.

“I’m going to hold my breath.”

Crunch time

Tough decisions loom like a thunderstorm on the Great Plains horizon. Soon some schools will drop wrestling to keep basketball. A more painful, but likely, scenario: drop team sports like football and basketball in exchange for cross country and wrestling.

Schools must work together, says the Sandhills coach, or “we’ll all go down on the sinking ship together. People have really got to decide what’s important, whether they are willing to make that sacrifice to have a little more competitive chance on Friday and Saturday night, or if they’re willing to live with what we’ve got right now.”

After Tuesday’s loss, Marten congratulated his players inside a quiet locker room.

He thanked his two seniors for their hard work and leadership. He stressed to underclassmen the need for repetition. He emphasized offseason skill development.

Before he dismissed his seven boys to the maroon van and the dark highway home, he reminded his returning players:

“Next year starts tomorrow.”

Copyright ©2007 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 10:57 am and is filed under Articles.