Where's Bronson?

It's 75 hours from the Class A grand finale, and there's a slight problem at Buell Stadium, home of the top-ranked and unbeaten Millard South Patriots.

The maestro is missing.

Coach Andy Means scans a pack of teenagers dressed in identical practice jerseys.

He looks to the east sideline. Nope. Then the west sideline. Nope.

Practice started at 3:45 p.m. Now it's past 4.

“Have you guys seen Bronson?” he says.

If this were your average weekday afternoon, if Bronson Marsh were your average player, nobody would raise a fuss. But Monday night at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, the Patriots will try to avenge last year's state championship loss to rival Millard West.

And it might help to have the most prolific quarterback in Class A history.

Training room, a voice says. Yep, that's where he is. He'll be here any second.

A minute passes, then two, then three.

Still no Bronson.

Coach Means drills the kickoff team as assistant coaches start kidding around.

Maybe Marsh, who stands less than 70 yards from Scott Frost's state 11-man record of 6,793 career passing yards, got nervous and went AWOL.

They know better. If you've seen Millard South the past three years, you can't miss Marsh.

He's won 28 games as a starting quarterback. He owns the career total offense record in Nebraska's largest class and, in 2009, has paced the Patriots to 47 points per outing. He might be the state's best high school quarterback since Eric Crouch.

“I'm darn glad he's a senior,” Millard North coach Fred Petito says. “Seems like he's been around longer than I have.”

But Marsh is still seeking Millard South's first state title since 1995, and he has only one more shot.

Up the hill, we find him alone in the locker room, removing his stud earrings, pulling a headband over his spiked blond hair, preparing for his last after-school practice. Actually, Marsh is still thinking about a calculus test last period. The subject matter: graphing using derivatives.

“It was harder than I thought it was going to be. I don't think I aced it.”

That's newsworthy, because Marsh is a wiz with numbers.

Passing: 140 of 241, 2,314 yards, 28 touchdowns and five interceptions.

Rushing: 84 carries, 738 yards, 12 touchdowns.

Add it up. In 12 games, Marsh has accounted for 3,052 yards total offense and 40 touchdowns.

“They've got skill players that are the envy of most coaches,” Petito said. “It's not like he's doing it alone. But everything goes through him.

“He just doesn't seem to ever be off.”

Marsh is the quarterback in vogue: a dual-threat distributor who specializes in the zone read from the shotgun spread.

Big arm, quick feet (he's expected to contend for Class A gold in the high hurdles) and most comfortable outside the pocket, where he can chuck it on the run or turn upfield, lower his shoulder and bowl through defensive backs.

“Shoot, we had them in third-and-long and had him wrapped up,” Papillion-La Vista coach Jeff Govier said. “He broke two tackles against some pretty big kids and flipped the ball 30 yards down the field, completed it and that guy runs another 30.”

During Millard South's state semifinal win over Elkhorn, Govier watched from the stands.

He saw Marsh score in four plays, return to the sideline, calmly wait for the next possession, flipping the football to a teammate to stay loose. He went back out and led another scoring drive, then another, then another.

“He seems so well-balanced,” Govier said. “He controls his emotion, yet can be so explosive with the plays he makes. He's really unique that way. Most of the time, you have a guy who has his abilities, they're kind of high-wired.”

Marsh, like Todd Reesing at Kansas or Husker recruit Tyler Gabbert, is undersized by traditional quarterback standards.

5-foot-11¾, he says, 200 pounds.

Unlike those guys, he's not getting Division I attention. Nebraska and Iowa State are interested in Marsh but, at this point, only as a defender — and only as a walk-on.

The University of Nebraska at Omaha and North Dakota are among the lower-division schools coveting him.

“I want to go to a big school,” Marsh says. “I've always wanted to play at Nebraska.”

Creighton Prep coach Tom Jaworski has dealt with recruiting long enough to know he doesn't understand recruiting.

“All I see is a terrific quarterback, the ability to both run and pass the ball,” Jaworski said. “It would seem to me he would fit into a lot of the modern offenses these teams are running.”

“You've got to understand,” Millard South's Means said. “These colleges have their rubrics they use and he doesn't fit into some of their rubrics. It's sad, because I think somebody's going to get a great football player ...

“I've played Division I football (at Nebraska). This kid's a Division I football player.”

Marsh envisioned college opportunities long before this fall.

Five years ago, he lived in Missouri Valley, Iowa. Seeking better opportunities, Marsh's parents enrolled him at Council Bluffs St. Albert for eighth grade.

Marsh didn't like it. They moved across the river to Millard.

Marsh had played midget football in Elkhorn, and some high school coaches knew about him in middle school. Marsh even attended a few Metro games — unofficial visits? — where he talked to assistant coaches.

But Marsh chose a coach who hadn't seen him. Andy Means was no fool, though.

“We knew from the first workout he was going to be pretty special,” Means said.

Marsh became second-string varsity quarterback for a Patriots squad that navigated the 2006 regular season unbeaten.

By Marsh's sophomore year, he was starting, directing traffic, leading seniors.

“He wasn't afraid to tell anybody if they were doing something wrong,” said Ty Kildow, former Millard South wideout and current walk-on at Nebraska.

“If it would've been my freshman year, they would've beat me up,” Marsh said. “But I think they kind of got used to me.”

As a junior, Marsh helped the Patriots make a late-season push that took them to Memorial Stadium. But Millard West was too good.

Wildcats 21, Patriots 8.

Marsh remembers everybody crying afterward. It took a long time to get over that loss. It took longer to get back to Lincoln.

Marsh is almost 30 minutes late to practice when he closes his locker door. Oops, forgot his helmet.

Forgive the kid, he hasn't slept much lately.

“Been thinking a lot.”

Calculus?

No, no, he says.

“The game.”

Contact the writer:

679-9899, dirk.chatelain@owh.com

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