Different teams, same family: Prichard brothers meet in UNK-Chadron State rivalry
Nicole and Craig Prichard have already decided what they’ll wear when the University of Nebraska at Kearney travels to Chadron State College later this week.
Nothing blue and gold. Nothing cardinal and white.
And don’t expect them to pick a side once the game starts.
“I don’t really cheer for anyone, to be honest,” Nicole said with a laugh. “Every time either one of them steps out there to kick, I just pray they make it. That’s as far as it goes.”
It’s the safest approach when you have a son on each sideline.
Trey Prichard is a kicker for UNK. His younger brother Shay handles the same duties at Chadron State.
The Monument, Colorado, natives will be opponents Thursday when the Lopers and Eagles meet in Chadron for the latest installment of this in-state rivalry.
For their parents, both retired U.S. Air Force members, the matchup creates an unusual situation, but an easy decision when it comes to game-day attire.
“I’ll just wear normal clothes,” said Nicole, now a resource teacher at Bear Creek Elementary School in Monument. “I’m staying neutral.”
Always Competing
Trey, 21, and Shay, 20, are a little more than a year apart, so competition has always been part of their relationship.
The third and fourth of five children, they spent much of their childhood playing sports together, whether it was organized competition or something they created in the backyard.
Soccer was the family sport. Their older sister played, their older brother competed collegiately, and Trey and Shay spent countless hours with a ball at their feet.
“I was kicking a soccer ball around for as long as I can remember,” Trey said. “Some of my fondest memories are just going out in the back with Shay. We’d have our little pop-up goal, and we’d play out there for hours and hours.”
As they got older, those games weren’t always so friendly.
“When you have siblings who are that close together in age, you get into fights all the time,” Trey admitted. “Especially athletically, you want to be great, you want to impress each other, and you want to battle. There were hours of us in the backyard playing football or playing soccer where it was war.”
Shay remembers things pretty much the same way.
“Those games got heated,” he said with a laugh. “He didn’t like to get beat. I didn’t like to get bullied by my older brother. But as we got into high school and both matured a little bit, there weren’t as many fights over sports and Legos and all that kind of stuff.”
Sibling rivalry aside, the brothers have always been very close.
“He’s my best friend,” Trey said. “That’s the best way to put it. I look up to him in a lot of ways, even though he’s younger than me, and he’s taught me so much. I just love him to death. I couldn’t ask for a better younger brother than Shay.”
“We’ve always been 1 and 2,” Shay echoed. “We have a really good relationship, which is awesome.”
Nicole sees that bond, too.
“Honestly, they’re just best friends, truly,” she said. “I think football certainly has drawn them closer.”
Switching Sports
For most of their lives, neither brother imagined that football would bring them to college.
Trey was completely focused on soccer until his junior year at Lewis-Palmer High School, when a friend who kicked for the football team encouraged him to give the sport a try.
“I didn’t touch a football until my junior year, but it was so exciting to me because it was something new,” he said. “It was also something that translated really well because kicking came so naturally to me.”
Trey played soccer and football simultaneously for two seasons, but his college plans began shifting as he embraced the atmosphere of Friday nights.
“Football brought this pageantry and this tradition that high school soccer doesn’t have in the States,” he explained. “I fell in love with the band, the crowd and the environment during games. Football also has a camaraderie and brotherhood that other sports can’t offer. Once I got to experience that, I was hooked.”
Shay followed a similar path, with some encouragement from his older brother. He became the team’s kicker after Trey graduated.
“He told me I have to get out there and play, but I was a little hesitant because I wanted to play college soccer,” Shay said. “But as soon as I stepped on the field I loved it, so I’m very grateful he told me to go out there and try it.”
Trey might have opened the door, but Shay quickly made the position his own.
“He crushed it,” Trey said. “He was way better in high school than I ever was. He was incredible.”
Seeing his younger brother succeed brought a different kind of satisfaction for the current Loper.
“I was prouder watching him than I ever felt coming off a field,” Trey said. “Getting to watch him play and compete and do something that I love so much and wanted him to do so badly, I’ll take that feeling over my own success any day of the week.”
Their Own Paths
Trey’s college search led him to UNK, where the opportunity to continue playing football was only part of the appeal.
“This feels like home,” he remembers telling his mother after a campus visit. “This feels like somewhere I can not only play football but more importantly make an impact on the people around me and get to build relationships that will last a long time.”
Now a redshirt junior studying exercise science, he serves on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee executive board, participates in Fellowship of Christian Athletes and is active with a local church. Last spring, he led a UNK football initiative that sent players to Park Elementary School each week to read with students, a program head coach Ryan Held plans to continue this fall.
“Football is awesome, and I love it, but it’s not all there is to this place,” Trey said. “Being involved with those things has been huge for me personally.”
After graduation, Trey plans to become a firefighter and hopes to serve as a pastor later in life.
Shay’s college journey took a different route. He initially committed to Northeastern State University in Oklahoma before transferring to Chadron State, a program that had also recruited him out of high school.
He found the environment he was looking for there.
“I got out here and I loved it,” Shay said. “All the guys kind of took me under their wing. We had two really good specialists, so the specialist room was already competitive. It was just a really fun environment to hop into and start to learn and work under those guys.”
The redshirt sophomore is studying business administration with plans to someday open a gym where he can train athletes. He’s also involved with Huddle, a student-led Christian organization at Chadron State.
“We joked about him coming here and competing, but I think he needed to make his own path,” Trey said. “I’ve been so proud of how he’s handled that.”
Being at different schools hasn’t created much distance between the brothers.
Trey rarely goes a day without talking to Shay, and they continue to train together when they’re home during the summer. The shared position gives those conversations another dimension.
A kicker deals with pressure and disappointment differently than most players, Trey said, and there’s value in having someone who understands those emotions – especially when that person knows you as well as a brother does.
“Good day or bad day, he’s the first person I text, because he just gets it,” Trey said. “And I get it for him.”
Shay credits Trey with helping him understand the mental side of the position, from overcoming misses to navigating the transition from high school to college football.
“He’s been a great role model,” Shay said. “We both get better working with each other.”
Family Before Football
Although their college careers took them to different parts of Nebraska, once a year those paths cross on the football field.
UNK and Chadron State renewed their in-state rivalry in 2024, playing for the Good Life Trophy. The Lopers won 18-6 that season in Chadron and 41-21 last year in Kearney.
Trey played a prominent role in both victories. His college debut came in the 2024 matchup, when he kicked a 25-yard field goal, converted an extra point and ran for a two-point conversion. Last season, he made field goals from 41 and 25 yards and went 5-for-5 on extra points.
Shay redshirted in 2024 and didn’t play last season, although he was in uniform. During halftime of the 2025 game, the brothers shared a brief moment together while warming up on the field.
“It was one of those moments where you just know this is something you’re going to talk about and think about for a long time,” Trey recalled. “It was pretty surreal for me.”
This year could bring another first – the chance for both brothers to kick in the same game.
Shay is ready for it.
“I’m cheering for him every day except for that one,” he said with a smile. “I’ve always kind of followed in his footsteps. And now I decided to come up to a rival school and we get to compete against each other at the next level, which is a blessing. It’s really awesome.”
Trey won’t hesitate to remind his brother that he’s 2-0 in the series, and he’d love to make it 3-0. Those bragging rights are part of the fun.
But they’re hardly what he’ll remember most.
“I’m just so grateful for him,” Trey said. “I can’t speak enough to how much I love Shay and how much I care about him and how proud I am as an older brother.”
That’s why the Chadron State game will always mean more.
“I could make a million field goals. I could win games. I could do whatever,” Trey said. “But that experience, seeing him out there and getting to suit up with him and hopefully this year getting to kick against him, I’ll take that over everything.
“That Chadron game is always circled for me not because it’s a rivalry, not because it’s a big game for us, but because I get to see him. And that is worth more than any football achievement in my mind.”
Nicole sees the matchup much the same way. The scoreboard matters for the teams, but it doesn’t change anything for their family.
“At the end of the day, they’re really good to each other, so it doesn’t really matter who wins,” she said. “Trey is supportive of Shay, and Shay is super supportive of Trey.”