Family, coaches of rookie tight end detail his path to Jacksonville

• Originally from the small town of Aurora, Nebraska, Boerkircher started his college career as a walk on.
• Boerkircher was the third tight end selected when the Jaguars drafted him at No. 56 overall.
• Boerkircher’s tight ends coach at Texas A&M believes his best football is ahead of him.

They all gathered in Gretna, Nebraska, on the night of April 24, a bundle of excitement and anticipation mixed with a sprinkle of anxiousness. Nate Boerkircher was at his parents’ house and joined by the full crew of his older siblings and four nieces, his fiancée and her parents.

There was no need for a first-round NFL draft party — they all loved Nate, but understood he wasn’t going to be selected the night before. And they would later admit, they weren’t completely sure the second- and third-round party would have a celebratory end, either.

But then a call with the 904 area code appeared on Nate’s phone. The Jacksonville Jaguars were calling to tell him he would be their initial draft pick. His older brother, Ian, was in another room when Nate’s future father-in-law burst through the doorway to tell him “The Call” had arrived.

“I ran into the room and we were over the moon when he told us it was Jacksonville,” Ian said.

The reaction of Jaguars fans was the opposite of over the moon, their angst at an irrational level because they had never heard of Boerkircher and because they adopted the dreaded “consensus board” that ranked Nate as a Day 3 (rounds 4-7) prospect as the “consensus truth.”

But Jaguars fans, this is a guy worth getting to know, a guy from really-small-town Nebraska who will bring an enforcer-type mindset to the Jaguars’ offense via maximum effort and whose journey to Jacksonville was the opposite of a figurative straight line. Deliberate was his race.

“He’s been a steady climber all of his life,” said his dad, Matt.

This climb was a mixture of horizontal and vertical steps. Under-recruited in high school. Walk-on at Nebraska. Five seasons in the Huskers’ program. One year at Texas A&M. And now the Jaguars.

“Nate has always wanted to do the right things even when it was hard,” said Emily Stolpe, one of Nate’s three older siblings. “For him, doing the right thing is showing up, working his butt off and doing what he could to better himself as an athlete even if people didn’t believe in him.”

Throughout the last two weeks, the Times-Union connected with Nate’s inner circle to detail his journey … and get their draft night memories.

The draft night experience for Matt Boerkircher (Nate’s dad):

“Incredible. Emotional. Excited. Very happy for Nate. Being new to the draft thing, I had been starting to follow the ‘consensus board,’ and all of the mock drafts and they were projecting him in the fourth or fifth rounds so we were expecting a Saturday announcement. But his agents said (before round 2), ‘He’s probably not going to get out of the third round.’ I was like, ‘I’m glad we all got together (Friday).’ But even then, I was in a believe-it-when-I-see-it-on-Friday-night (mode).”

Small-town Nebraska native

Aurora, Nebraska, is the kind of town where everybody knows everybody, mostly because there aren’t a lot of people to know. The 2020 census listed a population of 4,678 and when the four Boerkircher kids attended high school, their graduating classes were around 100.

Located five miles north of Interstate 80 at the intersection of Highways 14 (north-south) and 34 (east-west), Aurora is 72 miles west of Lincoln (home of the University of Nebraska) and 125 miles west of Omaha. On the main drag, there is a Pizza Hut, a Casey’s General Store, JoJo’s Gelato & Grill, Pueblo Veijo, Scooter’s Coffee, Dollar General and a hospital. The closest brand-name hotel is a Hampton Inn 26 miles east in York.

Matt and Sherry’s four kids are Abby, 31, Emily, 29, Ian, 26, and Nate, 24.

“Very busy house,” Sherry said with a laugh. “Kind of chaotic, but fun.”

Where did the kids hang out?

“People’s basements,” Emily said.

And the adults?

“You would see a lot of the older guys at McDonald’s talking about the football team,” said Emily, who lives in the Omaha area with her husband and two daughters.

The Huskies were the only game in town and community support was a constant. You went to watch them play on Friday nights (basketball and football) and then watched the Cornhuskers on Saturdays.

All of the Boerkircher kids played sports and being young, rambunctious boys, Ian and Nate would play jump-ball for Matt’s football throws in the family room (that poor couch took a beating) and backyard. Rough-housing was common.

“Oh, absolutely and we encouraged it,” said Sherry, who is a registered nurse. “It was great.”

Said Ian: “It would get fairly physical. I just felt like our family in general was high-energy. It was a ton of fun growing up.”

Nate missed the start of his junior season in 2018 due to knee surgery, but returned in time to catch two touchdown passes (4 and 27 yards) from quarterback Baylor Scheierman (now a guard for the Boston Celtics) to cap a 13-0 championship season with a 49-7 win over Ord at Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium.

“In a lot of ways, Nate was a late bloomer,” Aurora High School coach Kyle Peterson said. “But you saw the talent and athleticism and the tools he always possessed were exceptional hands and a kid who was willing to be physical.”

MORE FROM RYAN O’HALLORAN: Jaguars pick TE early in NFL draft, which should open up playbook

It was fitting that title season was capped at the Huskers’ home because it was Nebraska or nothing for Nate. He could have taken the Division II route like Ian, who started his career at Nebraska-Kearney, but Nate only had the red “N” in his dreams.

“I was shocked when he said he’s going Division I or he wasn’t going to play and just go to college,” Sherry said.

Following a game he attended in Lincoln, the Huskers’ coaching staff invited Nate to walk on for the 2020 season. Ian had transferred to Nebraska in 2019, also as a walk-on.

The Boerkircher Boys would be reunited in Lincoln.

The draft night experience for Sherry Boerkircher (Nate’s mom):

“I was holding my 2-year old granddaughter and somebody said, ‘Nate got a call,’ so I handed her off to somebody, I can’t even remember who. I went into the room — I had to get in there to see what was going on — where he was and it was surreal. Hard to explain. So amazing.”

Walk-on and wait at Nebraska

Nate red-shirted in 2020 and appeared in three games (two catches) in 2021 before his role increased in 2022-24 (36 games/17 starts). Some Huskers rosters swelled to 150 players because of their commitment to recruiting in-state walk-ons. They were all long shots to earn a scholarship and/or regular playing time.

“It was all about working as hard as you possibly could to make a name for yourself,” said Ian, who was a reserve offensive lineman.

Walking into his house during a phone interview, Ian looked at two touchstone pictures that made his Nebraska experience with Nate so special.

ST. JOHN, N.D. (Valley News Live) – A missing 16-year-old female from St. John in Rolette County was found safe Tuesday after North Dakota Highway Patrol canines tracked her to the west side of town.

The juvenile was last seen the night before, Monday.

Six members of the North Dakota Highway Patrol Emergency Response Team responded with mantrailing canines, Gary and Lorace. Three additional troopers supported the search.

Both canines were deployed in the St. John area and trailed from the juvenile’s home to a location on the west side of St. John. A follow-up search by K9 Gary in the area resulted in the juvenile being located safe and unharmed.

“It’s a really nice benefit of our dogs, is not only can they follow a trail when it’s there, but they can tell us when there’s not a trail,” said Trooper Steven Clark of the North Dakota Highway Patrol. He is also Lorace’s K9 Handler.

“By going farther down the road, both dogs said, ‘No, she hadn’t been here.’ We kind of felt that we should go back to that last area where we were and maybe she was in the area.”

Trooper Nevon Heisler, and K9 Gary’s Handler, spoke on how vital K9s can be:

“Just brings everything full circle. Like we train really hard, we work really hard. Even though we don’t find somebody on every trail we do, usually it ends up mid-trail or we direct people ahead of us and they find the person. In this case, it was Gary. I had to like use every part of me to stop him from going up to her. She was scared of the dog, Gary wanted to get to her because that’s how he’s trained is to get to the person.”

Missing persons in North Dakota

Last year, North Dakota had a 98% closure rate on missing persons cases. More than 1,300 missing persons reports were filed across the state.

The state says 984 people were reported missing with just over 400 being recurring missing persons cases. Currently, there are still 21 people unaccounted for.

All missing persons cases in North Dakota can be found on the Office of the Attorney General’s website.

The North Dakota Highway Patrol said agencies and organizations assisted with the search, including the Turtle Mountain Bureau of Indian Affairs, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians Police Department, Rolla Fire, St. John Fire, Belcourt Fire, Rolette County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Border Patrol.

The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians Tribal Council, Turtle Mountain Missing Indigenous Persons local chapter and Turtle Mountain Horse Nation Search and Rescue also assisted with the search.

Highway Patrol said searches like this one can start with one phone call, and early reporting can help bring loved ones home.

Men in Ohio can legally import 17-year-old child brides from any country around the world, a legal form of sex trafficking.

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• Ohio legislators are not voting on a bipartisan bill that would ban marriage before the age of 18.

Chagrin Falls resident Stephanie Lowry was 16 years old and 16 weeks pregnant when she was forced to marry a 19-year-old man in Summit County in 2001.

Fraidy Reiss is founder and executive director of Unchained At Last.

Ohio legislators are refusing to vote on Senate Bill 341, bipartisan legislation that would ban child marriage and stop encouraging adult men to prey on teenage girls.

Somewhere, Jeffrey Epstein is applauding.

Dozens of survivors of child marriage, experts and advocates – authors of this column included – have testified in strong support of the bill, to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions. Not a single member of the public has testified in opposition.

Not even the pedophile lobby.

But legislators are shrugging their shoulders and turning their backs.

So the marriage age in Ohio remains 17, even while states across the United States – including Pennsylvania and every state east and north of it, going all the way to Maine – have banned all marriage before age 18.

More: Ohio allows child marriage. Some lawmakers are OK with that

Girls are the ones who are suffering the heartbreaking consequences of Ohio legislators’ intransigence.

Some 5,063 teens were entered into marriage in Ohio between 2000 and 2024, according to marriage certificate data from the state health department analyzed by Unchained At Last, a nonprofit that leads a national movement to end forced and child marriage.

About 90 percent were girls wed to adult men.

a legal way to sex traffic girls

The term “suffering” is not hyperbole.

Current marriage-age laws legalize and incentivize the trafficking of teens under the guise of marriage.

A 17-year-old girl from Ohio can be taken overseas and forced to marry a lucky man who gets not only a teen bride but also a spousal visa and path to citizenship.

Additionally, men in Ohio can legally import 17-year-old child brides from any country around the world, a legal form of sex trafficking.

Further, marriage before age 18, even for the most mature 17-year-old, creates a nightmarish legal trap, simply because minors have limited legal rights until the day they turn 18.

Girls trapped

If they leave home to escape from parents who are planning an unwanted wedding for them, they can be taken into police custody and dragged back home or into court.

Where would they go anyway? Domestic violence shelters routinely turn away unaccompanied minors, in Unchained At Last’s experience.

Minors also are generally not allowed to bring a legal action independently, which creates additional obstacles. They also cannot easily retain an attorney to help them navigate this terrifying legal trap, because most contracts with minors, including retainer agreements, are voidable.

This is why all marriage before age 18 is recognized globally as forced marriage, which, in turn, is recognized as modern slavery.

The U.S. State Department also calls marriage before age 18 a human rights abuse, due to the devastating, lifelong repercussions it produces for girls. It undermines nearly every aspect of girls’ lives, from their health to their education and economic opportunities to their physical safety.

SB341, sponsored by Republican Sen. Louis Blessing and Democratic Sen. Bill DeMora, would solve all these problems, yet it would cost nothing. It has a $0 price tag. And it would harm no one, except creepy men who prey on teenage girls.

Ohio legislators must stop cruelly ignoring girls’ suffering and making Jeffrey Epstein proud. Pass SB341 today and ban child marriage.

Chagrin Falls resident Stephanie Lowry was 16 years old and 16 weeks pregnant when she was forced to marry a 19-year-old man in Summit County in 2001. She endured years of physical, sexual and financial abuse before she escaped, rebuilt her life and became an advocate.

Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor turned activist. She is founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit working to end forced and child marriage across the U.S.