Raiders have big goal to reach -- and then some

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM -- When Jamie Wagner was a freshman football player at Nicollet High School, he set a goal for himself and his Raider football team.

By the time that he ended his high school football career at NHS, he wanted his team to have won 40 games.

Wagner's football coach, Tom Murphy, told the then-ninth grader straight out that winning that many games in a career "was a pretty high goal," said Wagner. "He said that there were a lot of football teams in the state that would never win that many games in four years. No football team in our school's history had ever won that many games in four years -- they had never even come close."

But Wagner's dream began to come to fruition when, as a freshman, his team won 11 games "we knew that it was actually attainable. We knew that if we won 10 games a year for the next three seasons and made it back to the state tournament at least one time, we would have a chance of doing just that. We put it out there as something to shoot for."

The 11 win season in his freshman season was followed by nine wins as a sophomore to put Wagner's goal of 40 career wins at 20 with two seasons remaining.

'We were halfway there and we all realized that (40 wins) was something that we could do," he said.

Wagner and the 11 other players who began as freshmen went 7-3 last year to bring that win total to 27 with their senior season remaining.

And they started out their final season at Nicollet with eight straight regular season wins by scores of 48-12, 55-6, 49-7, 50-20, 21-18 (their closest game of the regular season), 59-6., 66-7 and 21-4 before continuing their roll with playoff wins of 37-12, 28-6, 31-20 and last weeks' 60-28 toe-tagging of Chokio-Alberta.

The goal -set by Wagner of 40 wins -- now stands at 39 following that home playoff win over Chokio-Alberta as the Raiders prepare to meet Stephen-Argyle Thursday at 8 a.m. in the Dome.

"I was just talking to Coach Murphy and he said that he wants us to change that goal of 40 wins to 41," Wagner said. The 41st win would give the Raiders a first-ever State Nine-Man Championship. "But we know that 40 wins has to come first."

WATCHED NICOLLET AS FRESHMAN: Wagner said that as a freshman, he watched the Raiders advance to the 1999 Nine-Man Championship game before falling 18-8 to -- the team that they will face Thursday in the Semi-Finals -- Stephen-Argyle.

"Watching that was unbelievable," he said. "It was awe-inspiring. You don't know what to think because in the stands you are not a big part of it. It was a ton of fun to be part of that team and it gave us an extra boost to get back to the Dome -- an extra drive. We knew that that team was really good but now we can do something that that team -- or any team -- has ever done at Nicollet before. That team did not reach the 40 win mark in their career."

But that team did something that Wagner knows that this current team has not yet done -- despite being the winningest four-year class in football.

'They reached a state championship game but if we win (Thursday) we will get to that mark also," he said.

WORK WELL WITH QUARTERBACK: If you have ever seen Wagner and Raider quarterback Tony Hulke play on the football field, you notice that they have a certain understanding about each other.

And there is a reason for that.

"Tony and I have pretty much played football together our entire life," he said. "We went to Day Care together. I was five years old and he had been there before I was. We started a football team -- myself and Ryan (Tony's older brother) and Tony and some other kids in town started a football league together. It really wasn't a league because we only had the same two teams so Tony and I have been playing together for 10 years -- since we were seven or eight years old. We played football almost every day for one summer. We have been together almost every day and we have a trust built up with him and I trust him completely either on defense or offense. That trust is something that has been built up over a long period of time."

Wagner said that he knows that Hulke "is going to make a play at sometime in the game -- you know that he is going to break one because he always has and you can rely on him. You know that if you are down as a team, he will pick you up. and I hope that the team feels the same way about me that I can also pick up the team."

LAST SEASON TOGETHER: Wagner knows that both he and Hulke are seniors and their high school football careers together are coming to a close.

"That (last high school football game together) is something that I have thought about quite a bit and that is going to be hard -- and not just Tony but everybody. As a team, we are very close and we have done so many things together through the years. We all have known each other forever. It will be hard to say that this is it -- this is the last time that we lace our shoes up together as a team."

"But hopefully, we can all look back on our careers and say that this has been great -- we were successful."

So for seniors Tony Bratsch, Mattias Hellblom, Josh Allerson, Paul Nourie, JJ Hornung, Jeff Naumann, Michael Inhoff, James Bernau, Jake Anderson and two special seniors -- Jamie Wagner and Tony Hulke, success has already been achieved.

You need not look any further than what this team has done in their careers -- careers, names and stats that will ever be in the record books at Nicollet High School.