One month ago, East Bernard traveled to Tidehaven for the District 14-3A DII Championship Game and lost 59-6. 

To be fair, East Bernard was a two-touchdown underdog. The Brahmas had started the season 0-3. Tidehaven was the state’s No. 1-ranked team. But 59-6? Picture what that blowout must have looked like, and East Bernard head coach Jeremy Jenkins assures you it was worse. He, his team and his town were humiliated.

“They had a running clock on us,” Jenkins said. “They could’ve scored 80 points. That is the absolute worst defeat in the history of East Bernard.”

That’s why none of his players believed Jenkins when he told them in the halftime locker room that they’d see Tidehaven again - and beat them - in the Region IV Championship. 

This entire season, from the 0-3 start to the blowout loss to Tidehaven, has been a battle to convince his players how good they can be. They had grown up in this football-crazed community in the shadow of last year’s senior class. After last season’s 10-2 record, the first double-digit win season since 2019, most in East Bernard expected a rebuilding year. Jenkins thinks those in the locker room might have, too.   

But something changed in the lowest moment of East Bernard’s season. Since that night, East Bernard has made the state’s most impressive playoff run. The Brahmas beat No. 7-ranked Poth on a last-minute kickoff return that featured a double reverse and a lateral. Then, they knocked off No. 10-ranked Lexington by forcing nine punts and three interceptions. Last week, Jenkins’s prophetic statement was fulfilled when East Bernard beat Tidehaven, 34-31, in the biggest upset of the regional finals, rallying from a 31-19 deficit with less than four minutes remaining.

East Bernard is the last team standing in the playoffs that either started 0-3 or has four losses. 

“It’s the only thing anybody is talking about right now,” Jenkins said.  

And many are wondering how it happened. Was this all luck? Did everyone just overlook East Bernard? Or, maybe, Jenkins was right to tell this team they didn’t know how good they were. And maybe after slaying Tidehaven, they’ll finally start believing it. 

“The kickoff return at Poth was magical, and the comeback (against Tidehaven) was magical,” Jenkins said. “But we’ve beaten the No. 1 team, the No. 7 team and the No. 10 team in three consecutive weeks. That’s not magic. That’s 12 quarters of really good football.”

Peek at Jenkins’s resume for a hint at how this happened. Four years ago, as the head coach at Harmony, this publication predicted the Eagles would miss the playoffs. Harmony started the season 0-4, then made it to the state semifinals for the first time in school history. 

For all the similarities, Jenkins says that Harmony team and this East Bernard team are polar opposites. Both groups had awesome kids raised in rural communities. But his East Bernard players are unassuming, without the swagger and arrogance of most teams that’ve made it this far. No wonder they’ve snuck up on the state. 

Senior QB Dan Bartlett, whom Jenkins refers to as criminally underrated, is the perfect embodiment of this East Bernard team. Bartlett has completed 63 percent of his passes for 3,098 yards, 38 touchdowns and 8 interceptions. When Tidehaven’s defensive line shut down East Bernard’s run game in the regional final, Bartlett willed the team to victory with 415 passing yards and 90 rushing yards.

Jenkins chuckles when thinking back on it. Here’s a kid who he exaggerates weighs 135 pounds (Bartlett’s HUDL lists him at 6-foot-1, 160 pounds), throwing a dime under duress, getting up from a hit most guys twice his size wouldn’t, then doing it over and over again. 

“He’s unquestionably the toughest kid in our program, period,” Jenkins said. “He gets absolutely murdered. We threw the ball 42 times and probably got sacked another eight or nine.”

But that’s what this entire East Bernard team has done - getting up and throwing after getting suplexed into the turf. 

“This is why athletics are so awesome,” Jenkins said. “A month ago (against Tidehaven), the wheels fell off and this whole community was humiliated. But in life, the wheels are going to fall off. Somebody will get cancer. You’ll lose your job. If you keep your composure, stick together, and continue to do the right thing, you can overcome it. That’s the beauty of athletics. It mimics life.”

For Jenkins, the greatest reward for this season won’t be a trophy. It’ll come a decade down the line when his boys become men and face a giant much scarier than Tidehaven. Then, they can look back on what they did in 2025 and East Bernard, remembering how good they can be.