By: Con Marshall
After having a terrific high school career as both a football player and a wrestler, recent Chadron High School graduate Quinn Bailey was the 31st former-Cardinals football player selected for the 67th annual Nebraska Shrine Bowl. That game will kick off at 3 p.m. MDT this Saturday, June 7 in Kearney.
Bailey will play for the North team which, ironically, has Kevin Stein, a 1990 Chadron High graduate, as its head coach. After teaching and coaching at Gordon for several years, Stein has been the football mentor at Grand Island Northwest since 2010.
In 1990—35 years ago—Stein was the primary quarterback for the North in the Shrine Bowl and was named its Most Valuable Offensive Player after leading the team to a 19-16 victory.
The late Dick Stein, Kevin’s father and Chadron High’s head football coach for 22 years, compiling a 144-71 record, was the North’s head coach.
Bailey is one of four players from the Panhandle on the North’s 45-man roster. The others are Jackson Jenkins, a lineman from Mitchell, along with Landon Riddle of Sidney and Barron Williams of Gering, both wide receivers and defensive backs for their team last fall.
Bailey, who is 5-foot-8 and was listed at 180 pounds last fall while playing football and won his third consecutive state wrestling championship as a 157-pounder, racked up amazing statistics in both sports for the Cardinals.
Last fall, he carried the football 356 times for 2,674 yards and scored 36 touchdowns to go with 20 two-point conversions for a total of 256 points. He was the state’s second-leading 11-man rusher and was third in both touchdowns and points scored.
For his prep career, Bailey who will play college football at Western Colorado, rushed 848 times for 6,164 yards and scored 85 TDs and 558 points. He amassed 7,754 all-purpose yards. All these statistics Chadron High records, as well as the most ever posted by a western Nebraska gridder. His career wrestling record is 181-10.
Of course, the Shrine Bowl will have lots of outstanding players. One of Bailey’s North teammates is Barrett Wilke of Stanton, the state’s leading 8-man ball carrier who played in 13 games in 2024 and rushed for 2,873 yards. And, another Stanton standout, Becker Pohlman, a Chadron State College recruit who was a First Team All-State linebacker and also ran for 1,489 yards, is on the North roster.
The North’s quarterbacks include Braylon Anderson of Oakland-Craig, who threw for 3,055 yards in just nine games and was named the Class C-2 First-Team All-Stater at his position. Another North signal caller is Nate Collins of Omaha Burke, who threw for 2,338 yards last fall, second highest in Class A.
Both Sidney’s Riddle and Gering’s Williams could be targeted for passes. Riddle became the Panhandle’s 11-man all-time single-season pass receiver last fall when he caught 59 tosses for 1,032 yards. Williams had 51 receptions for 539 yards.
The South’s leaders will likely include quarterback Dylan Van Dyke of Omaha Skutt, who threw for 3,457 yards while leading his team to the Class B state championship. Another South quarterback is Ethan Shaw, who led Sandy Creek to the D-1 8-man championship last fall while rushing for 1,700 yards and passing for 2,026.
A third South quarterback is Chadron State recruit Noah Shoemaker of Cozad, the Class C-1 First Team All-State choice after throwing for 1,910 yards and tying the C-1 state record by throwing for eight touchdowns in on game last year.
Other Chadron State recruits in the game include Camden Walker, a wide receiver for Stein’s team at Grand Island Northwest, and Keagyn Linden of York, a lineman who will play for the South.
Kevin Stein is hoping that his team Saturday will play as well as his dad’s team played in 1990. As his MVP honor indicates, Kevin was among the reasons the North won the game. He was the quarterback for most of the game, completing eight of 16 passes for 116 yards.
Five of those passes were caught by tight end Joe Planansky of Hemingford, including a 17-yarder that netted the North’s first touchdown in the opening quarter. Later in the game, the pair connected on passes of 15 and 21 yards during another scoring drive and they also hooked up on a 16-yard toss that helped the North post the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter.
Stein and Planansky were teammates at Chadron State four years in the early 1990s.
Terry Connealy of Hyannis and Tom Hernandez of Gering were other players from the Panhandle on the North roster in the 1990 game. A photo that Marcia Stein, Kevin’s mother, possesses from the game, shows that he wore Connealy’s helmet during the Shine Bowl because Hyannis is written on the helmet.
There are a few other “Chadron connections” in this year’s Shrine Bowl. One of the North assistant coaches is Kevin Stein’s nephew, TD Stein, also a former Chadron High and Chadron State quarterback, and now the head football coach at Alliance.
Also on the North coaching staff is Mike Kozeal, who played fullback for the Chadron State Eagles in the mid-1980 and has taught and coached at his hometown of Sargent, Neb., for at least 30 years. The South’s coaching staff includes Jonn McLain, an all-star quarterback at both Chadron High and Chadron State and now an assistant football coach at Boys Town in Omaha.
(In addition, Tyler Marshall, a standout basketball player at Chadron High in the late 1980s, is a member of the Scottsbluff crew that will referee this year’s game.)
McLain passed up a chance to play in the Shrine Bowl after he graduated from Chadron High and chose to instead play for his high school coach, Mike Lecher, in the West Nebraska All-Star Game in Scottsbluff.
It was a successful venture. McLain completed 19 of 24 passes for a record 365 yards and five touchdowns during the West’s 48-22 victory over the East while easily winning the Most Valuable Offensive Player honors.