Like a shadow in the night, it was there and then it wasn’t. Barret Boesiger could feel it, then he couldn’t. Winning the state basketball championship proved to be a most elusive goal.
It looked like he was going to have that Class B state championship trophy in his hands last March, holding it high over his head as the leader of the 2024 Norris boys basketball team. All they had to was get over the hump in the last four minutes against Skutt.
Didn’t happen.
In last year’s state title game the Titans trailed most of the game and were down by 10 points early in the fourth quarter before storming to within one point of the lead with exactly four minutes left in regulation. It was do or die time...and Barret’s very talented Norris team didn’t. After reaching the program’s first state title since winning back-to-back state championships a generation before, the Titans lost the game, 70-63.
“It was a great game, and it was a dream come true to get to play in a state final at PBA, but losing stays with you,” says Barret, who is a six-foot-tall, 180-pound shooting guard. “We didn’t finish, and they did. Give them credit, but the hurt still fuels us. We want to earn another chance in the final.”
Funny thing, all that. A couple of years ago Norris fielded an exceptionally young team - as a sophomore starter Barret was one of the veterans on the squad - and after some ups and downs was basically a .500 ball club entering the postseason. And then the magic happened.
First came the 42-39 win over Beatrice in the opening round of subdistricts, a most remarkable outcome given how the Orange had beaten Norris by 17 points just three weeks earlier. Then came the epic subdistrict final when the Titans outlasted 19-win Crete, 63-61 in double overtime. Crete had beaten Norris by 17 a month before. Don’t ask how, just keep plugging away.
In the district final the well ran dry for Norris, points were awfully hard to come by, but they were for Roncalli Catholic, too. At the buzzer a Norris freshman (naturally) hit the game winning-three pointer. Name of Macoy Folkerts. Still a member of the band (of brothers).
Norris lost its first-round game at state that year, eventually runner-up Platteview led by history making senior Connor Millikan doing the honors, but either way that experience set the stage for all that winning Norris has done the past two seasons, including this season’s 16-1 record entering Friday’s game at Lincoln Pius X.
“Being that atmosphere when I was a sophomore, having that under our belt helped us play well last year,” remembers Barret, who was a first-team all-stater as a junior. “We learned a valuable lesson in the (Platteview) game. We were so amped up in the pregame we were actually tired, exhausted when we started the game. We’ve learned how to manage and focus our energy much better now.”
A natural born competitor, Barret was basically preordained to become a basketball player, following in the footsteps of his father, who played college ball at Nebraska Wesleyan, part of a big ol’ happy family of athletes. “From the time I first stepped on the court I believed I belonged there,” says Barret. “I am a competitor, 100 percent, and believe that if you want to become a good athlete and be successful you have to be willing to compete. I always want to be an elite competitor so I can reach my full potential.”
Kid must be doin’ something right. On a team loaded with athletes and scoring option he’s second on the team at 14 points per game.
Born in Lincoln, Barret has both an older sister, Morgan, who is a student at Nebraska Wesleyan, and younger sister, Reese, who is a freshman at Norris High. “We all like to compete. We wind up pushing each other to be our best without even knowing it,” says Barret. Doesn’t hurt to have cousins Maisie and Malorie Boesiger in the mix, Maisie a current Huskers volleyball player and Malorie a difference maker on the team at Norris. “We are a super close family and us older kids do our best to be good role models for the younger ones.”
Barret has two other younger cousins, Greyson and Max, and Barret also enjoys his time with them, most of it spent what a guy might call a rustic athletic complex. “It’s really a shed that has a one-half basketball court, a golf simulator and some other stuff in there,” says Barret. As a family they enjoy card games - lots of pitch, another game called Sevens - and watching sports on TV. Barret’s favorite meal is a healthy plate of grilled chicken, rice and broccoli, and he enjoys all kinds of music. “Depends on the mood but I will go with some ‘80s and ‘90s rock, some Adele, a like country like Luke Combs, and worship music,” says Barret, adding he recently enjoyed a recent contemporary Christian music concert starring Brandon Lake.
An outstanding classroom student with a 3.8 GPA, Barret has also played some football and been on the track team during his high school career, though he skipped track last spring to concentrate on refining his game of basketball. Musta worked because after “getting looks from a lot of NAIA and DIIs” he’s earned a basketball scholarship to Morningside University where he plans to study business and finance, the end goal to become a financial advisor. Barret wears No. 4 in basketball as a tribute to his father, who wore the same number back in the day.
The kid’s seen a lot of stuff over the course of his high school athletic career, even before that to be right honest, and Barret believes it has all been to help prepare him for this moment, a charge toward the Class B state basketball championship to cap his senior year.
“We have been underdogs and we have been favorites. We have gotten every team’s best effort this season and thrive on that kind of challenge,” says Barret. “Getting so close to the top last year certainly serves as added motivation for me, and for everybody on the team, and that is another reason I feel we are as prepared as we can be for what we will see the rest of the way.”
Maybe, just maybe, all the way to the top.
