Vote: Who should be SBLive’s Nebraska High School Athlete of the Week? (9/25/2023)
Here are the candidates for SBLive’s Nebraska High School Athlete of the Week for September 18-24. Read through the nominees and cast your vote. Voting will conclude Sunday at 11:59 p.m. If you would like to make a nomination in a future week, email athleteoftheweek@scorebooklive.com.
Editor’s Note: Our Athlete of the Week feature and corresponding poll are intended to be fun, and we do not set limits on how many times a fan can vote during the competition. However, we do not allow votes that are generated by script, macro or other automated means. Athletes who receive votes generated by script, macro or other automated means will be disqualified.
Abby Beard – Millard North Softball
Beard hasn’t needed much of an adjustment period to step into varsity action and make a difference for the Mustangs. Coming into the week, the Millard North freshman already had 11 hits and eight runs driven in. And as solid as that is, Beard’s four-game stretch this past week showed why the coaching staff trusted her despite Beard’s relative inexperience. In four wins she collected five hits, drove in nine and sent two pitches over the wall. Her best, and to this point, most memorable game was Saturday’s 13-0 win over Gretna East in which Beard went 2 for 2 with a double, a home run and five RBIs.
Jayden Ehrisman – Guardian Angels Central Catholic Volleyball
Ehrisman is putting together quite the season as the quarterback of the Bluejays offense. The GACC senior has had 20 or more assists in every match but two and has piled up 377 total in 14 matches. And as good as she has been through a year plus as the starting setter, she’s rarely been better than on Thursday night when she had 40 assists in a win over Oakland-Craig. It was the sixth time in Ehrisman’s career that she had 40 or more assists.
Reese Fisher – Ashland-Greenwood Softball
Fisher had one of the most dominant starts anywhere in the state on Saturday when she struck out 15 Plattsmouth hitters as part of a 3-0 AG win. It was the second time this season Fisher has totaled double-digit Ks following 10 in an Aug. 22 8-0 win over Platteview. Fisher faced 25 hitters, walked two and gave up two hits. She was also very efficient despite striking out 15 on just 93 pitches. The performance was a new single-game career-high in strikeouts and her first-ever complete game.
Kendyl Flaming – Wallace Volleyball
Flaming had two matches with double-digit kills in her first 12 matches then found some momentum and has been on quite the run lately. This past week in four matches, she had 11 or more in all four matches and put together 61 total while the Wildcats kept a winning streak alive and extended the run to 15 in a row. Her best of the four matches was 23 kills in a three-set win over Paxton that also came with 14 digs.
Keira Hennerberg – Diller-Odell Volleyball
Hennerberg had a busy week with the chance to lead the Griffins’ offense in nine matches. That alone meant she would litter the stat sheet with assists, but it wasn’t just the number of matches that allowed Hennerberg to have a career week – it was performance. Hennerberg’s top match of the week was Sept. 21 in a tough five-set loss to Tri-County. She already had three matches from the previous three days under her belt when Hennerberg racked up an amazing 59 assists in the loss. Overall, the senior had a total of 249 assists in the nine matches.
Katherine Kerrigan – Ainsworth Cross Country
Kerrigan is last year’s Class D state meet runner-up. In her junior season, she ran eight races, won three times and finished as runner-up three other times. Kerrigan has continued that into the start of her senior year with two wins already, including this past week at Ord where she broke 20 minutes for the first time this season. Her time of 19:38.1 is over a minute better than any of her previous three 2023 races and bested only by a 19:24 she ran last year at the SWC Championship. Kerrigan took the Ord title by almost a minute and claimed her second victory of the season to go with a gold medal at Ainsworth.
Ava Larmon – Shelby-Rising City Volleyball
Few players in Nebraska have had the type of back-to-back attacking performance Larmon enjoyed last week. The SRC senior had 66 total kills in five matches and put together 29 then 20 in a pair of wins on Sept. 12 and Sept. 19. Larmon’s 20-kill night on Sept. 19 started a week where she had 11 or more in four of the five matches. An all-around player, Larmon also chipped in 51 total digs for the Huskies.
Alisha McMurtry – Bellevue East Softball
McMurtry’s power was on full display last week during a stretch of six games that saw her pile up 10 RBIs and four home runs. The Bellevue East sophomore was most effective early in the week during a series of wins over Burke, Central and Columbus. McMurtry drove in three on three hits, a double and a homer against Burke, had three more driven in on two hits and a long ball against Central then pushed four across the plate on two blasts against Columbus. McMurtry has 10 homers and 27 RBIs on the season.
Lauren Medeck – Papillion-La Vista South Volleyball
Medeck was among the most efficient hitters in the state last week. The Papio South senior had double-digit kill totals in three of seven matches but also hit at least .300 in all seven matches. That included a torrid .480 with 12 kills on 24 swings and no errors in a three-set sweep of Millard West on Sept. 19. For the week overall, Medeck piled up 65 kills on 136 swings with 10 errors for an attack percentage of .404.
Sydney Wendt – Lincoln High Cross Country
Wendt picked quite the time to come through for her first varsity cross country win. The Lincoln High sophomore had an up-and-down freshman season that included a finish as low as 54 and as high as ninth. Though she was 27th at the district race, Wendt built some momentum for this fall with her best time of the season. It all came to fruition on Saturday in Crete when she was the class of the field by 20 seconds and led the Links to a team win. It was her third top-10 finish of the season and the third time she broke 21 minutes.
Kyle Cox – Sandhills/Thedford Football
The coaching staff found a myriad of creative ways to get the ball in Cox’s hands in Friday’s eight-man blowout of Hyannis, and it’s easy to see why. The Knight junior totaled 227 yards from scrimmage, threw two passes, carried it 13 times and hauled in four receptions. His best work was on the ground where Cox turned those 13 carries into 152 yards, three touchdowns and a long of 51. On defense, he had two tackles and blocked a punt in what was one of the most complete performances this fall anywhere in Nebraska.
Isak Doty – Sidney Football
Doty was included in SBLive’s list of the best quarterbacks in Nebraska, and his start to the season has shown exactly why. The Red Raider senior has three games with 100 yards passing and rushing, 17 total touchdowns and almost 1,500 yards of offense. He missed out on making it four 100-100 games on Friday by just one passing yard but was all over the field with his legs. Doty rushed for the second-highest single-game total of his career, 187, scored twice and averaged over 11 yards per carry.
Wyatt Frey – Red Cloud Football
Frey came into Friday completing better than 60% of his passes with nine touchdowns and two games of better than 200 passing yards. Just a freshman, Frey hasn’t wasted any time coming into his own under center. He led off the year with an 11 of 17 performance and 216 yards with four touchdowns. This past week he was a perfect 11 for 11, racked up 203 yards through the air and connected for six touchdowns. Frey already has 15 passing touchdowns, 774 yards in four games and a completion rate of 69%.
Mason Gunn – Gretna East
Without checking every box score in the state, it feels safe to say that no other running back in Nebraska worked harder than Gunn on Friday night. The Griffin junior carried it 31 times for 165 yards and two touchdowns. It’s the second straight week Gunn has eclipsed 160 yards and been used as a workhorse. He had 168 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries the week before. Gunn had 185 yards in his first three games but has become much more of a focus for Gretna East in the last two and rewarded the Griffins with 333 yards on 52 carries and three scores.
Brody Krusemark – Pender Football
Krusemark was involved in nearly every play on both sides of the ball during Friday’s 36-28 eight-man win over Guardian Angels. Offensively, the Pendragon senior carried the ball 13 times for 144 yards and four touchdowns. He had a long of 43 yards and put together his first 100-yard rushing game of the season and fifth of his career. Defensively he made 11 tackles, two for loss and raised his season tackle total to 71. He has six TFLs, a sack and a fumble recovery.
Mason McGreer – Perkins County Cross Country
McGreer faced his stiffest competition of the season thus far but was up to the challenge in Ogallala on Sept. 21. The Perkins County junior set a new personal-best time of 15:59.7 and edged out the runner-up by just over three seconds for his fourth win of the year. McGreer is a perfect 4 for 4 in 2023 and now has eight wins in his career. Dating back to last year’s regular season, McGreer has won his last eight regular season races in a row. His PR time was more than seven seconds ahead of his previous best.
A.J. Raszler – Platteview High School
Raszler has been unbeatable as of late but he was coming into last week’s Fort Calhoun Invite with a sour taste in his mouth after finishing fourth in Waverly. The field included the reigning Class B champ and other state meet qualifiers, but Raszler was also on a four-race winning streak when he settled for fourth. The Platteview senior didn’t settle again and raced to the front of the field in Fort Calhoun with a time more than 10 seconds ahead of second place. Raszler now has five wins on the season and has cracked the 17-minute mark in each of his last three races.
Ian Reardon – St. Edward Football
Few players were as dynamic as Reardon who averaged over eight yards per carry and found the end zone four times in Friday’s 58-53 eight-man win over Santee. The Beaver senior carried it 18 times for 147 yards and racked up his third 100-yard performance of the season while leading St. Ed to its first win. But Reardon was needed on both sides of the ball. Defensively he came up with 11 tackles, eight of those on his own. He’s averaging 8.2 yards per carry for the season and has scored seven times.
Anthony Rezac – Westside Football
Rezac is among the best players in the state and could be on this list every week. He earns his first nomination of the year behind his largest passing total of the season and most passing yards since tossing 341 in the state championship win over Gretna last November. Friday in a 41-0 blowout of Norfolk, Rezac threw for 285 yards on 18 of 25 passing with four touchdowns. He completed passes to six different receivers and moved to within 30 yards of another 1,000-yard season. In five games he’s thrown 13 touchdowns and just one interception.
Bode Soukup – Blair Football
Soukup had a great game, even by his standards, in Friday’s 42-7 win over Mount Michael. The Bear senior passed for a season-high 260 yards on 14 completions and missed his career-high by just five yards. Soukup completed 67% of his passes and connected for four touchdowns – the highest touchdown total he’s ever had in a game. With just over half of the season done, Soukup is 20 yards away from 1,000 yards passing, is completing 70% of his throws and has 10 touchdown passes.
