HUTCHINSON – Not a single person involved with the Nemaha Central football program – be it coach, player or fan -- was ever going to assign blame of last year’s stunning 36-28 loss to Southeast of Saline in last year’s Class 2A state championship game on one person.
 
But that still didn’t keep Caleb Strathman putting a big part of the defeat on his own shoulders.
 
“A big part of it was that onside kick,” Strathman said of a pooch kick he couldn’t corral with just over a minute left, one the Trojans recovered right in front of him to set up their game-winning drive. “I thought about that every single day. Never let it go.”
 
Redemption for Strathman and the Thunder came in a big way Saturday in Hutchinson when Nemaha Central got another shot at Southeast of Saline in a rematch of last year’s championship game.
 
Perhaps fittingly, Strathman was the first Thunder player to touch the ball in the game and he took a year’s worth of motivation and ran with it. Literally.
 
The senior raced 84 yards to take the game’s opening kickoff back for a touchdown. And just to further exorcise any demons that might have still lingered on the Gowans Stadium field, Strathman made a house call the next time he touched the ball as well, returning a punt 76 yards for a score.
 
His two touchdowns in the first two minutes of the game set Nemaha Central on its path to redemption as the Thunder rolled to a 35-6 victory over Southeast of Saline, capturing the program’s third state title in four years. The Thunder finished 13-0 while the Trojans saw their 25-game winning streak come to an end and finished 12-1.
 
“As soon as I saw that we were receiving, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to take it back. Get a little get back,’” Strathman said. “It means the world. Getting your number called on, doing your job to the fullest extent and putting in all your effort and getting rewarded for it. Couldn’t have had a better start.”
 

 
Indeed, the Thunder couldn’t have asked for a better way to start the game, especially given how things ended a year ago in the title game. After falling down 20-7 at halftime, Nemaha Central dominated the second half and took a 28-20 lead with two minutes left.
 
But Southeast of Saline rallied. Getting a touchdown and two-point conversion with 51 seconds left to tie the game, the Trojans then perfectly executed the pooch kick that eluded Strathman and recovered, setting up their game-winning score with 11 seconds left.
 
Ever since that game, Strathman had a reminder every time he looked at his phone.
 
“My background is all white with 1:51 on it,” he said. “We were up with 1:51 left and couldn’t finish it off.”
 
Somewhat ironically, it was almost that same amount of time in which Strathman and the Thunder took to pull off an equally stunning start to this year’s title game.
 
The Thunder won the coin toss and elected to take the ball. Just before the Trojans kicked off, Thunder coach Michael Glatczak hollered onto the field for his deep guys to switch spots, moving Strathman over to the left side.
 
It proved to be a game-changing decision.
 
“We kind of had a game plan and coach saw something and switched it late,” Strathman said. “It came to me and I was off to the races. I saw a bunch of guys getting blocks and I bounced it to the outside. Everyone did their job and that’s the reason I got to celebrate in the end zone.”
 
Strathman had barely caught his breath before he was back out on the field helping the Thunder defense stymie Southeast on its first offensive possession. He then went back to field the punt and picking it up at the Thunder 24, he worked his way along the right sideline through some traffic and then found a seam up the middle and was gone for his 76-yard return.
 
Less than two minutes had ticked off the clock (1:47 to be exact), Nemaha Central’s potent offense hadn’t seen the field and the Thunder led 14-0.
 
“Obviously it was a game-changer,” Southeast coach Mitch Gebhardt said. “You don’t ever want to give up an opening kickoff return and then we hoped to get some momentum back but stalled on offense and then they take the punt back, too. That makes it tough to get down to a football team that’s awfully good like Nemaha Central is. We struggled getting down that many points.”
 

 
Likewise, it was just the start Nemaha Central needed.
 
“Just to get that kind of jump-start against a really, really good team, I think that got our defense going too,” Glatczak said. “We talked going into the game about how Carter (Hajek) and Grady (Gebhardt) were the guys everyone was keying on so who was going to be that X-factor. Well, Caleb can be that guy for us and he certainly was and I know he really wanted to make an impact after how last year ended.”
 
After Nemaha’s stunning start, the game did settle in and when Tiernan Ptacek hit Malachi Hopkins in the end zone for a 5-yard TD pass on the first play of the second quarter, the Trojans were right back in it trailing 14-6.
 

 
To that point, too, Southeast had been up to the task defensively in slowing down Thunder standout quarterback Carter Hajek as Nemaha’s offense did virtually nothing the entire first half. Going into their final drive of the half, the Thunder offense had managed just 50 yards with Hajek – a 2,000-yard rusher for the third straight season – held to just 36 yards.
 
But as is typically the case with Hajek, he can only be contained for so long. And that was the case.
 
Right after the Trojans had fumbled the ball away at the Thunder 32, the click, click of his first 12 carries led to the boom, a 68-yard touchdown run with 54 seconds left in the half that extended Nemaha’s lead to 21-7 at the break.
 
“Sometimes it’s tough waiting (for a big run to pop), but I trust my line and my guys,” Hajek said. “I’ll be patient and eventually we’ll bust one and that’s what we did today. That big touchdown came right after a turnover and that was big for the defense to get us the ball back.”
 

 
While a 13-point halftime margin might have seemed fairly commanding, Glatczak had plenty of recent history to point to to keep his team from being too comfortable.
 
For starters, there was last year’s title contest where the Thunder trailed Southeast 20-7 at halftime before ripping off 21 straight points in the second half to take the lead late in the fourth quarter.
 
In addition recent playoff games had seen the Thunder hold a double-digit halftime lead only to have both Sabetha and Osage City come back in the second half.
 
“You go back the last two weeks, Sabetha two scores, Osage two scores, and so we told the fellas, ‘We have to keep going. We can’t relax at all,’” Glatczak said. “I mean Gebhardt can take it 80 yards in a heartbeat and they’d been driving and offensively we struggled in the first half.”
 
That also gave Southeast some hope as well.
 
“We talked about how last year’s game flipped and what it was going to take to get back,” Mitch Gebhardt said. “It was one play at a time and things like that. You can’t have turnovers in a game like that when you’re in that position and we had too many.”
 
Not only did Southeast lose three fumbles in the game, including one on the first possession of the second half that Nemaha turned into a touchdown drive capped by a 4-yard run by Hajek, but the Trojan offense never found its groove after going into the title game averaging 455.3 yards per game. 
 
Nemaha’s defense was honed in on was trying to slow down Grady Gebhardt, who came into the title game with more than 2,500 combined rushing and receiving yards and 43 total touchdowns.
 
The Trojans’ horse, however, never really hit his stride in the game. Gebhardt carried the ball 25 times but Central held him to just 116 yards, well below his season average of 162 yards per game. He only had one catch for five yards.
 
The Thunder were particularly stifling of Gebhardt in the second half, holding him to just 28 yards after halftime.

 
“You take Jacobson off that team and it slows them down a little bit,” Glatczak said of Trojan quarterback Gannon Jacobson, who was lost for the season with an injury in Week 6. “This wind hurt (replacement quarterback Tiernan) Ptacek more than we thought. But we were going to stop Gebhardt and make 2 (Malachi Hopkins), 11 (Kaden Barragan), 39 (Amarion Holub), 10 (Ptacek) – all those other guys beat us. We weren’t going to let Gebhardt beat us and our guys bought into that.”
 
Southeast only had 79 yards in the second half and committed two of its turnovers in the second half as well.
 
Nemaha tacked on an 8-yard TD run by Jayden Seitz late in the third quarter to finish the scoring. 
 
Hajek finished the game with 211 yards on 32 carries, pushing him to 7,889 yards in his career to rank No. 2 on the all-time state rushing list behind Wichita Collegiate’s DeAngelo Evans, who ran for 8,472 yards in his career. With his two touchdowns in the game, Hajek finished his career with 132 career touchdowns (129 rushing) to break Evans’ career record of 131 total TDs.
 

 
Immediately after the game, Hajek and several other Thunder seniors ran to the sideline to hug teammate Daniel Childress. Their classmate had been an integral part of the team before being diagnosed with brain cancer earlier in the season. 
 
After having emergency surgery on Oct. 2 to remove the tumor, Childress returned to walk out with his teammates for their rivalry game with Sabetha. Following that 20-18 victory, Childress returned to Memphis to begin treatment, but left his Thunder teammates with a message.
 
His treatment was a six-week process and if the Thunder could make it back to a fourth straight state championship game, he would be there.
 
Both sides delivered on doing their parts to get there and Childress walked out with the other Thunder captains for the coin toss and remained on the sideline for the game.
 
“To be honest, I was a little worried because it had been pretty close the past couple of weeks,” Childress said of Nemaha’s narrow playoff wins over Sabetha (21-20) and Osage City (22-19).
 

 
Childress was back in Seneca on Wednesday and on the field Saturday before heading back to Memphis for another set of treatments. But he left with the joy of experiencing another state title with his teammates, also playing a key role on the 2023 title team as a sophomore.
 
“I knew the first play of the game once Caleb took that return to the house they were going to play a way they’ve never played before, and they did,” Childress said. “I know they did it for me and I wouldn’t have been anywhere else than be here with these guys to celebrate another state title.”
 
Following his second return touchdown, Strathman was greeted at the sidelines immediately by Childress and the two embraced and celebrated. The celebrations afterwards were even more extensive as Childress received the team trophy at midfield and brought it back to his Thunder teammates, who mobbed him.
 
“It’s just a storybook ending to a career these seniors started as freshmen,” Glatczak said. “The foundation was laid with previous years and these kids hoisted the bar. And with Danny, he’s holding that trophy and bringing it to the team. We had a lot of face-time calls with him before our games and he kept telling the guys, ‘One more. Get me one more and I’ll make it to Thanksgiving weekend.’
 
“And sure enough we did that. And it was about so much more than football. The bond these guys have is unbelievable and just a storybook way for it to end.”
 

 
CLASS 2A CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
 
At Gowans Stadium, Hutchinson
 
NEMAHA CENTRAL 35, SOUTHEAST OF SALINE 6
 
Southeast of Saline (12-1) … 0 … 6 … 0 … 0 … -- … 6
 
Salina Central (12-1) … 14 … 7 … 14 … 0 … -- … 35
 
Nemaha Central – Caleb Strathman 84-yard kickoff return (Layton Thomas kick)
 
Nemaha Central – Strathman 76-yard punt return (Thomas kick)
 
Southeast of Saline – Malachi Hopkins 5-yard pass from Tiernan Ptacek (run failed)
 
Nemaha Central – Carter Hajek 68-yard run (Thomas kick)
 
Nemaha Central – Hajek 4-yard run (Thomas kick)
 
Nemaha Central – Jayden Seitz 8-yard run (Thomas kick)
 
TEAM STATISTICS
 
… SES … NC
First downs … 13 … 13
Rushes-yards … 37-147 … 45-253
Passing yards … 110 … 21
Passing (Comp-Att-Int) … 12-22-0 … 3-4-0
Total plays-yards … 59-257 … 49-274
Fumbles-lost … 3-3 … 0-0
Penalties-yards … 2-10 … 0-0
Punts-Avg …4-34.8 … 4-30.0
 
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
 
Rushing – Southeast of Saline: Gebhardt 25-116, Ptacek 7-14, Douglas 2-13, Holub 3-4. Nemaha Central: Hajek 32-211, Seitz 9-42, Strathman 2-2, Team 2-minus 2.
 
Passing – Southeast of Saline: Ptacek 12-22-0, 110 yards; Nemaha Central: Hajek 3-4-0, 21 yards.
 
Receiving – Southeast of Saline: Holub 4-47, Hopkins 3-20, Douglas 2-36, Lippold 2-2, Gebhardt 1-5; Nemaha Central: Strathman 1-13, Thomas 1-5, Seitz 1-3.