The play has nagged at Chase Bjorgaard for two years. Now Edina’s senior running back is staring at a chance for a little redemption and a whole lot of closure.

In 2023, Edina fell one point short in a Class 6A championship game loss to Centennial. The Hornets had rallied from a two-touchdown fourth-quarter deficit, cutting the margin to a point, 28-27, on a last-second touchdown pass by quarterback Mason West.

With the outcome teetering on the conversion, Hornets coach Jason Potts opted for the win. The call from the sideline was a quick slant to Bjorgaard, then a sophomore, angling toward the end zone.

A catch. A tackle. A yard short.

Leaving Bjorgaard and his Edina teammates to ponder what-ifs.

“I would be lying if I say I’m not thinking about that every single practice,” said Bjorgaard, who is coming off a brilliant senior season in which he rushed for 1,514 yards and 20 touchdowns. “I use it a little bit as fuel and motivation.”

That pretty much sums up Friday’s Class 6A championship game between Edina and Moorhead. Some might see it as a showdown between two flawed teams. After all, both lost four times during the regular season, making this the first time the large-school final has had a combined eight losses.

But both Moorhead and Edina see more than just championship hardware on the line. They see something more significant: an opportunity to define who they are.

Before the season, Moorhead coach Kevin Feeney knew the knocks on his team. The Spuds were moving up a classification, from 5A to 6A. It’s a huge jump, to play with the biggest football programs in the state. His team had talent, but would the Spuds be able to stick with the big boys?

Moorhead won its first two games of the season. At the same time, fate stepped in. During Game 2, a 34-27 victory at Woodbury, star quarterback Jett Feeney went down with a shoulder injury. He missed the next five games.

The loss of Feeney for most of six games proved to be a win.

“With Jett’s injury, and then a handful of others we lost throughout the year, a lot of guys had to step up and play physical football against some of the best programs in the state,” Kevin Feeney said after the Spuds’ 26-14 victory over Lakeville South in the semifinals.

“Even though in some of those games, the scores weren’t in favor of us, I knew we were heading in the right direction.”

When Jett Feeney returned, Moorhead was a changed team. The Spuds were still putting up points — they have scored 214 in the five victories since Jett Feeney’s return — but Coach Feeney saw a different group.

“We’ve got a resiliency and a toughness to us that I don’t think we had before, both mentally and physically,” he said.

Son Jett is a better player since his return from the “first time he’s ever had a real injury,” his dad and coach said.

“Sometimes, when things get taken away, you don’t know how much it means,” Kevin Feeney said, adding that Jett is now “playing with a real high appreciation and love for the game.”

Jett Feeney’s first game back was the final game of the regular season. It coincided with Moorhead’s trip to play Edina, a 51-44 Spuds victory Oct. 15.

After an unsatisfying 4-4 regular-season schedule, the loss caught the Edina players’ attention.

“Our schedule was tremendously challenging. We always looked at it through a growth mindset,” Potts said. “Those losses are really gifts. They give us answers of what we need to fix.”

The Hornets didn’t try to flush their losses, as many do. Instead, they examined them. “We talked about the emotions that come with losing,” Potts said. “Nobody likes losing. Obviously, we want to win and feel satisfied and fulfilled.”

Edina’s late-season surge took flight with a one-point victory over Forest Lake in the second round of the playoffs. The Hornets went on to avenge an earlier loss to Eden Prairie with a 23-21 victory in the next round and rallied from a three-touchdown hole to slip past Minnetonka 42-41 in the semifinals. And now Edina is one game away from the state championship that eluded the Hornets two years ago.

“I think a key game for us was the Forest Lake game,” Potts said. “We had a tremendous amount of focus. Then [the players] started getting momentum and understanding if we focus as hard as we did that week that we can beat any team.”

Edina senior defensive tackle Sawyer Jezierski, who will play at Iowa next year, might as well have been speaking for both of the Class 6A finalists.

“We just stuck with it, believing in our coaches and ourselves,” he said. “… Everyone is striving for the same goal. We can’t wait any longer. Now is when we need to be the team we know we can be.”