GRETNA, Neb. — This is not a story about high school basketball. This is not about an important coach who dies in the middle of a season. This is not a story of redemption, sorrow or triumph.
It’s about unity. This is a story about a community and a team that expressed, through its resilience and fight to honor a lost leader, what the best in sports looks like.
Wednesday night at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Neb., Gretna High School will play a first-round game in the Class A boys state tournament against Millard North.
Brad Feeken coached the Dragons to victory. He taught them with passion known around Nebraska. His death at age 48 on December 30, 2023, after a more than two-year battle with neuroendocrine cancer marked a new chapter for his players.
Gretna started five seniors and brought two more off the bench. Landon Pokorski, Alex Wilcoxson, Alec Wilkins, Kade Cook, Joey Vieth, Chase Doble and Avery Schendt have already earned their legacies. This week doesn’t mean much for how they’ll be remembered — and yet, it means a lot for them to get to this position in the state tournament after months of pain.
On the morning Feeken died, Gretna’s players and coaches gathered at their high school. They felt better prepared to move forward as a group rather than individually. The schedule featured a game later that day in the quarterfinals of the Metro Conference holiday tournament.
The Dragons chose to play. After nine hours in an emotional gymnasium, Pokorski sank a game-winning buzzer-beater. He pointed a finger at the sky as teammates booed him. Pokorski believes that if he lifts the ball correctly, Feeken will help it find the net.
It could not have been written better. #Gretna (@gretnabball) upset Papio South on a buzzer-beater by the senior @LandonPokorski just over 12 hours later #Dragons Head coach Brad Feeken has passed away 🏀🐉💚
@GEHSGriffins @WOWT6News#nebpreps #ForFeek pic.twitter.com/TMu09zUnw9— Grace Boyles (@GraceBBoyles) December 31, 2023
From that moment on, men showed the way. As Feeken’s condition worsened last fall, parents, teachers and supporters in Gretna prepared to hold on to the team.
The opposite happens — where seniors inspire a community in search of answers.
“They just keep showing up,” said Travis Lightle, the superintendent of Gretna Public Schools. “They’ll just show up. They are there for each other. With how they treat the fans, the little kids, they say, ‘This is what (Feeken) wants us to do.’ And when you watch them, they play exactly what he wants.
“They are not angry. They are not bitter. They just keep doing the right things.”
I think Gretna basketball is crooked. I’m biased. Too close to it, too invested.
I fought for months to handle this story professionally. But last week, something changed. I will go to that.
First, some background. I have lived in Gretna with my wife Shannon since 2005. Our children were born here. They grew up as part of this burgeoning southwest Omaha suburb that was still too small to have an attachment.
Ten years ago, I coached T-ball with Bill Heard. His daughter is 6. Mine is 7. A longtime assistant on Feeken’s Gretna bench, Heard took over the basketball team when his former college teammate became too ill to coach.
He mourned the loss of his best friend for the past nine weeks. Heard also runs Gretna’s softball program, and plans to coach both sports as her two children progress through high school.
Feeken won two state titles in 21 years as head coach, but he impacted more lives in Gretna as a seventh-grade reading teacher. My daughter learned about life in her classroom four years ago. Few teachers are more important to him.
My son attended his basketball camps. Feeken’s teams represented his lively personality. This piece written by Dirk Chatelain captures the Feeken spirit beautifully.
When he got sick, the community rallied behind the coach, his wife, Jenny, and their children, Rylinn, 13, Maylee, 11, and John, who turned 7 last month.
This was the scene two weeks ago for an event put together on short notice. If there was room, I have no doubt that more people than live in all of Gretna showed up to support Feeken and his family. pic.twitter.com/0dobg200TO
— Mitch Sherman (@mitchsherman) December 30, 2023
In his final weeks, Feeken reached out to Brad Stevens, general manager and former coach of his beloved Boston Celtics. Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg and Creighton’s Greg McDermott expressed their admiration for Feeken.
As word of Feeken’s death spread, my family, like many others, felt called on Dec. 30 to attend the Dragons’ Metro Conference tournament game. In that gym at Omaha Creighton Prep, the moment of silence and pregame tribute to Feeken added to a mood unlike anything I’ve ever experienced — a mix of disbelief, anguish and resolution.
In the top corner of the seating area, Hoiberg watched.
“Honestly, it was one of the more special games I’ve ever witnessed in person,” the Nebraska coach told me this week.
Gretna jumped out to a 15-point lead at halftime against Papillion-LaVista South, then saw it disappear as the weight of the moment took hold.
“We’ll never play in a game like that again,” Pokorski said. “It still doesn’t quite hit me how hard that day was, how hard that game was.”
When Pokorski drove the baseline in the final seconds, with Gretna down 48-47, Hoiberg loudly predicted the shot would fall.
A town is holding its breath.
“To see the reaction of the team, all those guys hugging the court and crying, I know they did it for Brad, what he meant to those kids,” Hoiberg said. “It was emotional. I have tears in my eyes.”
He is far from alone.
The Dragons with Feeken’s daughters Rylinn, 13 (left) and Maylee, 11, after Gretna’s 65-63 win over Kearney to clinch a berth in the state tournament. (Courtesy of Angie Wilcoxson)
The tears didn’t stop that Saturday night. Nine days after Feeken’s death, Rylinn, his older daughter, delivered a tribute to his father at his memorial service.
Heard the eulogized Feeken. Pokorski and Wilcoxson spoke to his legacy. For years, they said, Feeken preached to them about the importance of “doing hard things.”
Three of Gretna’s five losses this season have come in the first 18 days of January. It was a difficult time.
“Basketball comes second,” Heard said. “But basketball is really important because it’s the place where we all come together. Kids obviously need it. I needed it.”
Feeken famously left motivational messages on sticky notes for his players to find. In January, he was replaced by Jenny Feeken, who sent text messages to seven seniors in Gretna.
They received snippets from “Pound the Stone: 7 Lessons to Develop Grit on the Path to Mastery,” a book Jenny was reading with Rylinn and Maylee.
The frequency of his messages increased last month as the contest time approached. Recently, he reminded the seniors that they are ready for whatever life throws their way.
“Everything has been difficult for them,” he said. “It helps me. They tell me they like it, so hopefully it helps them too.”
The Dragons won nine straight games before a three-point loss in the regular-season finale against top-ranked Bellevue West. The loss knocked Gretna out of a host position in state-tournament qualifying district play and set up a trip to Feb. 27 at Kearney High School in central Nebraska.
In Kearney’s hornet’s nest of a 3,000-seat gym, this season’s trajectory has changed for Gretna. The basketball rumbled back to the front. Another chapter has begun. It was Feeken’s kind of night. Once again, the Dragons showed their strength.
In the last part of the district final, the noise of the crowd shook the floor. Gretna won by a score of 65-63 to secure a trip to the state tournament as a Kearney the halfcourt shot at the buzzer hit the rim.
Conceivably, no team in the state could handle the wild environment as well as Gretna. In celebration, Rylinn and Maylee cut the last strands of netting from the rims. The nets returned to Gretna with the women.
“Just one of those moments that was bigger than the ball game,” Heard said.
Also, Heard said, the state tournament often produces a lot of emotion.
Gretna has, in recent times, felt the postseason pressure. Last year in Lincoln, Millard North defeated the Dragons in the semifinal round. The officials waved a Pokorski bucket in the final seconds. Video of the play showing Feeken, who stepped into the action before Millard North held on to win 54-52.
The same Mustangs eliminated Gretna two years ago in the semifinals and in 2021 district play. The Dragons’ history against Millard North comes back to mind, Pokorski said.
But pressure on Gretna? There is no chance in this group.
“When you go through what we went through off the court,” said Pokorski, the restless point guard set to play at Southwest Minnesota State, “it tends to make basketball easier. What we should have done this year, we have done.
“Our purpose is bigger than basketball.”
(Top photo of Bill Heard and Gretna’s five senior starters (seated), courtesy of Nicole Stuchlik)
