“My life just took a new direction and I’m pretty happy with the direction it’s taken since then,” said former Husker fullback and current assistant principal of North Platte High, Scott Siegel. He thought he had his whole life figured out in college when things took an unexpected turn, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In high school, Siegel played running back, and before he made his final decision about college, he had scholarships to play that position with a few smaller colleges around Nebraska. During his time in high school, he wanted to be a business administrator like his father. “We do what we see,” he said. When he made his final decision in 2003, he ended up walking on at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. “What happened was, my year at UNL, that was Coach Solich’s last year and when the next coach came in, they kind of got rid of the position that I was playing,” he said. “They didn’t have that position in the new offense anymore, so I went elsewhere with my life.”

Years later, Siegel doesn’t regret his time playing football. He believes it helped him find his true passion for education. “When you’re younger, you don’t really know how things are going to turn out. You want to have some ideas. I think what you’ve got to understand is that just because you have an idea, doesn’t mean it’s going to turn out that way,” he said. “Sometimes when it doesn’t turn out that way, it’s for the better.” Siegel learned a lot from that experience but most of all, he’s learned that you have to be adaptable. “You have to keep your eyes open. You have to take opportunities, and you just have to keep going because you don’t know where things are going to head,” he said.

Siegel taught for four years before he decided to get his master’s degree in order to become an administrator. His updated plan was to become a school principal around the age of 36. “But like I said, you [have to] keep your eyes open and look for opportunities. I got to be an administrator when I was 28. It’s just the way things worked out,” he said. Siegel had never thought that from growing up in Grand Island, that he’d later end up in North Platte. “I’m here, and I love this job. I love this place, and I love what I get to do everyday,” he said. “So all of that from a failure, turned out pretty good afterwards.”

“I’m working on my doctorate degree, so I’d like to finish that up sometime. But I’m not in a huge hurry,” he said. “Being in this school and being at my current job is something I’m incredibly happy with.” He appreciates the people he gets to work with; the administrators, the teachers, and the students. “There is so much energy and there’s so much enthusiasm,” he said. One thing is for sure, though, Siegel wants to stay in North Platte. “I want to stay here a long time,” he said. “I want this to be a place where my children can grow up and be happy.”

It’s easy to see that Siegel cherishes his family, his job, and his life. “We’re just really happy to be here. Sometimes in life, it’s hard to find that place. Where you can get so caught up in doing this or that, and you get caught up in all these goals that maybe you lose sight of the whole point of life, to be happy,” he said. “Sometimes, when you are happy, you need to really accept that.”