BEEBE — The 2014 football season did not start out ideally for the Beebe Badgers and coach John Shannon.
However, things turned around, and the Badgers had one of their best seasons in school history. And for that, Shannon has been honored as the 2014 Three Rivers Edition Coach of the Year.
The Badgers started the season 0-4 but still managed to get things together and finish seven points short of advancing to the Class 5A state championship game, ending the season with an 8-5 record.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Shannon, who is a 1984 graduate of Beebe High School and has completed his eighth season as head coach. “I felt going in that we had one of the best teams we’ve had since I’ve been here. It didn’t start out too good, but once we started getting some of those injured kids back, we started playing like I thought we could.”
The Badgers lost to Greenbrier, Lonoke, Vilonia and Little Rock McClellan to start the season. The Badgers got on the right track with a 28-21 win over Jacksonville in Week 5. After stumbling to eventual state champion Pulaski Academy in Week 6, the Badgers won their final four regular-season games, including a 41-37 win over Sylvan Hills, which was undefeated at the time.
Also during the late-season push, Beebe received a forfeit win from McClellan, which had used an ineligible player.
“We heard that there might be the possibility of a forfeit the week we played Sylvan Hills,” Shannon said. “The week of North Pulaski, it became official.
“Going into the Sylvan Hills game, it was a must-win to even have a chance to get into the playoffs. All of a sudden, we go from barely getting into the playoffs to being the No. 2 seed.”
Beebe’s leading rusher, Trip Smith, missed the first three games of the season but still rushed for 1,543 yards and 18 touchdowns. Quarterback Aaron Nunez injured a knee against Vilonia and missed several weeks of play.
“[Nunez] actually tore his ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), but he braced it up and came back and played the week after Pulaski Academy,” Shannon said of Beebe’s win at Mills. “That was huge because he was a three-year starter.”
Shannon said the Badgers had two starting offensive linemen out part of the season, as well as a starting linebacker.
Needless to say, the biggest win of the regular season came at Sylvan Hills in Week 9.
“Each week, we felt like we were getting a little bit better,” Shannon said. “Going into the Sylvan Hills [game], we had a feeling that our kids were going to play well. We felt like we had a good game plan. Beating Sylvan Hills was the big momentum push that we needed to put us in position to make the run that we did in the playoffs.”
In the playoffs, Beebe opened with a 49-48 win over Nettleton, then won another shootout with Hot Springs, 42-35, before falling to Wynne, 35-28, in the Class 5A semifinals.
Against Nettleton, the Badgers jumped out to a 21-0 lead before the Raiders rallied to take the lead.
“That is when I knew we had something special,” Shannon said. “Our kids … you could see it in their eyes; they weren’t going to quit. They were going to fight to the end, and we came back and got a one-point win.”
Against Hot Springs, the Badgers trailed 14-0 before rallying for the win.
“We never got the lead until the last 30 seconds,” Shannon said. “I could just tell that our kids had a belief that they could win.”
Against Wynne, Shannon said, he wanted to have the ball last with a chance to win.
“That’s exactly what we had, but we just ran out of time,” he said. “It’s a tribute to the kids and them never quitting, and believing they’ve got a chance to win until the final horn sounded.”
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.