Coach Mitchell expects the best game of the year

SIDNEY – Friday night, the Sidney Raiders play for a chance to compete for the championship, an invitation to play at Memorial Stadium. 

The 11-0 Raiders will face Central City’s 10-1 team in Sidney 5 p.m. Friday.  The Raiders’ journey toward the playoffs brings back memories of 31 years ago when Mike Mitchell was the coach. 

“I was a coach at Sidney High from 1984 through 1994. We went to the semi-finals in the fall of ‘93.  At that point in time, we started the year pretty decent, a lot like the last two Sidney teams. As the year went on, we played pretty well. We did lose one game to Alliance. Back then we were Class B. And we actually got beat up pretty bad in that game; got a couple kids dinged up, and did not play very well,” Mitchell said. 

Following the loss to Alliance, Sidney regained their focus and qualified for the playoffs. The Raiders hosted the first round with Cozad, winning in overtime. 

“In the second round we had to go to Valentine. At that time, first-round games were on Wednesday, and the second-round games were on the following Monday. We went to Valentine, and shut them out and played pretty good football up there and came home the following Saturday against Hastings Adam Central,” he said. 

The Raiders lost the game against Hastings 19-0, giving up two touchdowns in the first half, and two field goals in the second half, Mitchell recalled. 

“It kind of motivated us when we had that loss part way through the season. We kind of refocused on the things that we’d been doing very well, and, anytime you work with high school kids sometimes they get to feeling a little overconfident at times, as do their parents, and it kind of helped all of us to refocus to what we needed to do,” he said. 

It was a time of focus and regrouping for the team and the coaching staff. Preparation for the next game sometimes required a lot of travel time.

 “And then we were all of us watching film and spending a lot of time in the evenings after practice trying to come up with a game plan. But as far as with the kids, it was a situation where they stayed pretty focused after we had that loss to Alliance, just played real good football. It's fun to watch them mature in those situations," Mitchell said.

Mitchell describes himself as quiet, but could apply discipline when necessary. He said a coach needs to know how to approach a player, and how not to.

After more than 40 years in the classrooms and on the fields, Mitchell still shows up on the sideline occasionally.

"I missed the kids more than anything else. That's what got me coming and first watching practices here when I retired, and then talked with Coach and see if I can get involved a little bit more, and love working with the kids," he said.

He credits his successes as a coach to the student athletes, the coaching staff and to the parents.

He sees similarities between the 1994 team and the 2024 team.

"Coach Smith is a lot quieter than I ever was. He's a very quiet individual, very knowledgeable of the sport, but he communicates with his coaches, but he does, he communicates with his coaches. He lets the coaches do the coaching, works well with them, has a lot of individual conversations with kids, but when he sees a need to get a little stern, he's not afraid to stop things," Mitchell said.

He credits Coach Smith with the ability to say the right thing at the right time to get the job done. 

He predicts the game against Central City Friday, November 15, will be challenging. Even with Central City having more speed than the Raiders have seen, and a strong line, the home team will finish with about a two-touchdown margin.