Winning the big one

For years, winning the "big game" eluded volleyball and boys' basketball teams at B-B-E. We know what's happened since 2005 for those squads, with the volleyball team earning four state trips and the basketball team two.

Now it's the football team's turn. The last "big game" the B-B-E Jaguars football team won was in the middle of October in 1988. The Jaguars traveled to Grey Eagle to face the Swanville-Grey Eagle Patriots. The Jaguars were vying to win the Prairie Lakes Conference title outright.

In an afternoon game that day in Grey Eagle, the Jaguars battled through a game very evenly matched at the line of scrimmage and earned a 14-7 win for the school's only football conference title. Off the top of my head, a few noteworthy players on that squad were Monte Zilmer (center), Joe Zenner (back), Aaron Bayer (QB), Jason Kotz (back), Joe Schramel (lineman), Chad Bauer (WR) and James Duevel (WR). All of those players were seniors that year, with Zenner and Kotz both being two of the top running backs in the area. Zenner finished with over 1,000 rushing yards that season, with Kotz finishing with over 900 rushing yards. Bayer later was an assistant varsity football coach at B-B-E in the mid- to late-1990s.

Fun fact: the Jaguars have played in only two "afternoon" games since that 1988 season, that being in the early 2000s at Winsted (vs. HL-W-W) and then on October 25, 2008 at Minneota in the section semis.

B-B-E went 7-1 in the regular season of 1988 and were seeded number three in Section 4B. They beat Atwater-Grove City 13-8 in the first round of playoffs in Belgrade before losing at Morris to the state-ranked Morris Area Tigers 40-8 in the semifinals. The Jaguars were seeded #2 in the 1997 playoffs, making 1988, 1997 and 2012 the only years of B-B-E Jaguar football where the team has earned a playoff seed higher than number four.

With a combined Brooten and Belgrade/Elrosa enrollment of over 1,000 students that year, the Jaguars were a Class B team. They were also in Class B in 1989 and 1990. They dropped to Class C and qualified for the playoffs in 1992 and 1993. Then in 1994 they went back to Class B where they remained until 1996.

The 1995-1996 school year was the first year B-B-E's enrollment dipped below 1,000 students (it went to 993 that year).

In 1997, the Minnesota football classes were revamped to what we are familiar with today. The Jaguars were in Class AA from 1997 to 2000, missing the playoffs two of those four years (1998, 1999). In 2000, the Jaguars finished 2-5 in the Central Minnesota Conference (2-6 overall) heading into the playoffs, where they lost to Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City by a 42-14 score in the opening round as the #8 seed. The following season in 2001, A-C-GC went to state and finished 14-0 as the Class AA state champions.

Every year since 2001, the Jaguars have been in Class A.

A-C-GC and B-B-E did not meet again on the gridiron until 2010, when the Falcons won 15-6 in the Section 4A championship.

There's your history lesson on B-B-E football!

Stay tuned for more.