On Friday, horse racing fans will see something they haven’t seen in more than a decade in Lincoln.

At 3 p.m., in the first running of the Nebraska HBPA Derby, five horses will run a full mile around the track at Legacy Downs, in what will be the first real horse race in the Capital City since State Fair Park closed in 2012.

This year it will have four days of racing, with four races on Friday starting at 3 p.m. and five on Saturday starting at 1 p.m. The schedule will repeat itself the following Friday and Saturday, Sept. 27 and 28.

More than 60 organizations from across Nebraska have joined forces to call for “commonsense” immigration reform as the state faces among the lowest unemployment rates in the country and its economy increasingly relies on an aging workforce.

The coalition — which includes business, agricultural, labor, faith and refugee advocacy groups — gathered Wednesday on the west steps of Nebraska’s Capitol. The move came after two years of behind-the-scenes organizing to call for state and federal policy changes that, they say, are long overdue.

Bryan Slone, the president of the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, warned that Baby Boomers and retiring in droves every year as the state’s birthrate continues to decline. There are 2,000 more students enrolled in 12th grade in Nebraska than there are in kindergarten, he noted.

And, for the first time since 2010, when this year’s seniors were in preschool, the Lincoln Northeast football team has won the first three games of a season.

It started with a Week 1 win that snapped the Rockets’ 24-game losing streak dating back to 2021.

Then Northeast won its next two games and hasn’t allowed a point yet. Next up is Northeast’s biggest test of the season — a road game at North Platte on Friday night.

That’s it for Thursday, Sept. 19. Stay in the know with Lincoln’s longest-standing news source at JournalStar.com and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.