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Editorial: So young, yet so powerful
Op-Ed · January 04, 2018
With the last batch of high school football honors coming in December, we finally can take time to recognize the accomplishments of a young Class 1A West Branch Bears team and what it accomplished in the 2017 season: A lot.
Starting nine freshmen and sophomore players, West Branch Head Coach Butch Pedersen and his varsity staff somehow found a way to beat a Class 2A team, a Class 3A team and go undefeated in the regular season.
The team overcame experience-heavy teams with talent and hard work, climbing from No. 10 in the preseason rankings to No. 4 by the end of the season before meeting another tradition-heavy team in the Pleasantville Trojans in the first round of the playoffs.
While it takes an entire team effort to win games, many school records were matched or fell around the talent of quarterback and field-goal kicker, junior Beau Cornwell, as well as his receivers, especially seniors Ben Thompson and Jacob “Cheese” Graves. For a full list, see the Nov. 16 story on the team’s awards’ banquet.
To no surprise, senior Jacob Barnhart, a Division I college football offensive lineman prospect, made the Des Moines Register’s and Iowa Newspaper Association’s all-state lists, as well as regional honors with the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s Iowa Prep Sports 2017 All-Area Football Team and the Your Prep Sports 2017 All-Area Football Team. Graves, Cornwell and Thompson also earned spots on all-state lists. Pedersen won Coach of the Year honors for District 3 and a dozen players, from freshmen to seniors, made that same All-District list.
And injuries to two rising stars — sophomores Tanner Lukavsky and Wyatt Goodale — left us wondering if more records may have fallen, or fallen harder, had they played all ten games.
The Bears chose “Perfect Effort” for its 2017 motto, and their performance certainly echoed the spirit of that, and we expect to see more next season when several members of the 6-3 freshman-sophomore team step up to varsity.
West Branch’s football team played at a high level considering its youth on the field, and they earned every single accomplishment and honor. Their momentum coming off a 9-0 regular season seemed to end far too abruptly, yet the community ought to be very proud of producing another strong season.
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