Casen Carney was in fourth grade in 2017, the last time Muenster made the state championship, and the moment was far too big for him. 

Muenster head coach Brady Carney tasked his children with passing out water that day. His daughter, Ady, played to win, sprinting onto the field at every timeout to give the referees water. That way, they thought twice about making a ticky-tack call against her dad’s team. But Casen was MIA when the team needed him. The stage was too grand, and the AT&T Stadium lights were too bright for him and his buddies not to play their own football game on the sidelines, pretending all those people were there for them.

“Their main goal was seeing how much tackle football they could get in before the game started,” Brady said.

Casen’s ragtag group included Garrett Hess, Jake Wheeler and Logan Flusche. Seven years later, all four will suit up in Wednesday night’s Class 2A Division II State Championship when Muenster plays Shiner. For real, this time. Casen always used to tell his dad his junior year would be the year they made state. Sure, they had the athletes. More importantly, they had the bond.

Brady gets choked up when talking about this group. Not because he’s achieved the dream of coaching his son in the state championship but because his son being on the team allowed him to watch the group grow up together. 

“The greatest teams I’ve had, they love each other,” Brady said. “Family means something to them.”

And for Casen, now a junior quarterback, Muenster football has always been his family. Brady estimates his son has spent 300 days a year at the football facility for nearly a decade. Casen would walk from the school building to his father’s football practice every day after elementary school and hang out with his buddies, both high school and the same age, sometimes longer than he even wanted to. 

“This was basically my second home,” Casen said. “I remember I wasn’t allowed to get rides home when I was little, and I’d have to wait for my dad after practice. I’d get so mad because it’d be like 5:30-6 before I could get home from school.”

His father still puts in long hours like he did back then, but having Casen on the team helped Brady realize more physical work for the kids doesn’t always mean better results. He’s coached Casen to a stellar season (2,990 passing yards, 1,446 rushing yards, 62 total touchdowns) but, for the first time, he sees how a player’s output can affect him at home, especially over a season that’s stretched from the second day of August to late December. 

“It helps me realize just how much these kids go through as far as work,” Brady said. “I used to push kids way harder than I do now. But I can see he needs more rest, and I can see that at home from him that I never got to see from kids that weren’t with me.” 

Casen agrees his father’s loosened up. It helps he’s not the freshman quarterback anymore - the one who couldn’t catch snaps because his hands were nervously shaking. 

“My freshman year, he was always on my butt every single practice,” Casen said.

But Casen’s not the waterboy or the freshman now. The moment’s not too big for him. He and his teammates dreamed of it and practiced for it since they ditched their jobs to play football on the sidelines of AT&T Stadium.