By Con Marshall
One of western Nebraska’s all-time outstanding high school athletes who became a tremendous tight end for the Chadron State Eagles in the early 1990s, Joe Planansky, a native of Hemingford, will be inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame on September 4 in Lincoln.
A long-time chiropractor in Fort Collins, Colo., Planansky will be the ninth inductee with Chadron State ties going into that Hall of Fame. About 20 years ago, he was the first former CSC athlete inducted into the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Hall of Fame, five years after the Eagles had joined the conference.
The previous Football Hall of Fame inductees are long-time coaches Ross Armstrong and Brad Smith and now seven players, dating back to LaVerne McKelvey, who wrapped up his playing career as the star of the undefeated 1925 team, along with Milford “Dub” Miller from the 1930s, Lonny Wickard from the 1950s, Brad Fults from the 1970s, Casey Beran from the late 1990s and Danny Woodhead, college football’s all-time leading rusher 2004-07.
What made Planansky such a standout? In short, he combined exceptional blocking with his ability to catch and run with the football and desire to succeed.
Not many football teams build their offenses around the tight end, but Chadron State designed numerous plays in the early 1990s around theirs. That’s when Coach Brad Smith called Planansky, “probably the best blocker I ever coached.”
When he concluded his career in 1994, he had caught 154 passes for 1,877 yards and 11 touchdowns. His reception total was a school record when he graduated and he still ranks among the top 10 on the Eagles’ all-time list.
Planansky was a four-year starter, a three-time unanimous all-conference selection and was chosen by his teammates as the Eagles’ most valuable player as both a junior and a senior. He also was placed on the college’s All-Century team when it was chosen in 2014.
There weren’t many Division II All-American teams selected in the early ‘90s, but Planansky was placed on the C.M. Frank Small University Second-Team All-American team as a junior and moved up to the first-team his senior year. Frank, who was a history professor at Edinboro University and an amateur artist, drew a caricature of Planansky that was on the cover of the program that announced the All-American team.
The Planansky name has been associated with Chadron State a long time. His great uncle, Wilmer Planansky, earned 10 letters in three sports at CSC in the late 1930s. He was a charter inductee into the Chadron State Athletic Hall of Fame in 1983 and well into his 80s he came from California each Memorial Day weekend to play in the CSC Golf Tournament.
Altogether, nearly two dozen family members have attended the college. Wilmer’s sister, Joan, was the CSC Homecoming queen in 1950 and Joe’s father, Ed, played football for the Eagles in the late 1960s.
Ed was his son’s football and wrestling coach at Hemingford High School. Since the Bobcats seldom threw the ball, Joe didn’t have many receiving statistics, but the word got out that he was one of the premier players in the state. He earned all-state honors and was selected to play in the Nebraska Shrine Bowl the summer after he graduated from high school and he caught a touchdown pass thrown by Chadron High quarterback Kevin Stein, who was later Planansky’s teammate at CSC.
Joe also was a sensational wrestler, among the best in the state his senior year, when he had a 34-0 record and won the Class C state championship at 189 pounds.
Chadron State appeared to lose out on one of the best athletes in its own back yard. Joe initially enrolled at Kansas State, where he planned to study engineering and play football. But after a year in Manhattan, he decided engineering wasn’t his forte and transferred to Chadron State.
Smith remembers being extremely happy about the decision. “I knew he would contribute immediately. He was big (6-4, 230 pounds), had soft hands, ran the 40 in about 4.8 seconds and was a tremendous blocker. He wasn’t a finesse blocker, either. He was very physical. Our tailbacks loved to run behind him.”
Smith added, “Joe is such a mild-mannered person and an extremely humble one. You won’t meet a finer gentleman. But once he stepped onto the playing field his level of intensity went up about 300 percent, and he’d knock your socks off. The contrast always amazed me.”
Planansky caught 21 passes as a freshman while sharing playing time with a senior, then grabbed 45, 44 and 44 the next three years. He averaged 12.2 yards per catch during his career.
He also did well in the classroom, graduating with a 3.38 GPA while majoring in math and chemistry,
After concluding his eligibility, Planansky became the first Chadron State gridder to play in the Snow Bowl all-star game in Fargo, N.D. During his senior year, most NFL teams sent scouts to Chadron to check him out. He was invited to the NFL Combine in Indianapolis and signed a contract that spring with the Miami Dolphins.
Planansky spent most of the 1995 season on the Dolphins’ developmental squad. He was even invited to quarterback Dan Marino’s home for a party that included Hootie and the Blowfish as guests. Marino usually referred to him as “that Polish kid,” even though the Plananskys are actually Czechs.
Near the end of the ’95 NFL season, Planansky was activated for two games. His future in the pros looked particularly bright when the Dolphins traded away Pete Mitchell, a Division I All-American tight end from Boston College.
But after the season was over, Hall of Fame coach Don Shula retired and Miami replaced him with Jimmy Johnson.
While Planansky said he got along well with Johnson, he was not impressed with several of the team’s assistants. After about a month of training camp in the fall of 1996, Planansky asked for his release.
“It was making me into a kind of person I don’t want to become,” he told his parents, Ed and Kay, when he called them to tell them he’d be coming home. Johnson and several of the players tried to talk him in to staying, but Joe was firm in his decision.
Planansky found that life goes on after his athletic career ended. He was a student assistant coach with the Chadron State football team in the fall of ’96, then attended graduate school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln one semester. The following year, he taught math and coached the wrestling team at Gering, Neb., High School.
While he was in Lincoln the spring of 1997, Joe met his future wife, Kim Koelling, a volleyball standout at Nebraska Wesleyan University. They were married in the summer of 1998 and moved to Mankato, Minn., where both were graduate students, teaching assistants and assistant coaches for two years at Minnesota State-Mankato.
In the fall of 2000, he enrolled in Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas. He graduated in 2003 and has been practicing his profession in the Fort Collins area for more than 20 years.
Joe and Kim have two children, Kaley and Jensen, now young adults.
