John’s Journal: The Family Business Continues

 

ROCHESTER – Long ago, decades before Tom Kane even began contemplating retiring from a Hall of Fame career coaching boys soccer at Lourdes High School, years before coaching three state championship teams, before even thinking about coaching high school soccer at all, he made a decision. It impacted the trajectory of his coaching career and his life.

Blake, the oldest of Tom and Carmen Kane’s three children, was 4 years old when Tom took him to the YMCA for a kids soccer program. The person in charge was Fuad Mansour, founder of the Rochester Youth Soccer Association. Mansour informed Tom that Blake was a year too young to take part in the program, but that hurdle could be cleared if Tom volunteered to coach.

Thus was a legendary soccer coaching career launched. Kane learned the game, became certified to coach through USA Soccer and eventually became president of the Rochester Youth Soccer Association.

Kane coached a Lourdes club soccer team for two years before it became a varsity sport in 1997. In 22 varsity seasons he has a record of 386-86-32 with three Class A state titles, 15 state tournament appearances and 14 Hiawatha Valley League crowns.

Kane was honored in a brief pregame ceremony Monday evening before the Eagles defeated Lake City 2-0. When his final season ends, the program will remain in family hands when his son Sean takes over. Sean, an assistant to his dad for years, is the co-coach this season.

“My son's been with me since 2006 so it just makes a nice transition,” Tom said. “I just thought it’s a perfect opportunity for me to walk away because I know what he'll do, and he'll do a great job.”

A 2013 inductee into the Minnesota High School Soccer Coaches Association Hall of Fame, Tom Kane was among a group of parents who came to Lourdes activities director Marv Peters in the mid-1990s, asking to start a soccer program.

“At the time I knew little about soccer, but it was really growing in Rochester,” said Peters, who retired in 2017 after 44 years at Lourdes. “The youth soccer program was great here in the early 90s so we made a plan and started club soccer for a couple years.

“Tom’s numbers were so good right off the bat so we said, ‘Hey, let’s do this along with girls soccer.’ We made a great hire in Sarah Groven, who’s still the girls coach.”

Success came early for the Lourdes boys, with the Eagles winning back-to-back state championships in 1998 and 1999, then adding a third in 2012. Twenty-six players went on to college soccer, including seven at the NCAA Division I level.

“It was an every-year event that we would go to the state tournament,” Peters said.

Tom Kane, 64, played hockey at Lourdes before graduating in 1974. He will retire from a career with IBM later this year.

He made the decision to retire before Covid-19 struck, but he and Carmen are hoping to travel when it is safe. They have six grandkids in Rochester, Northfield and Apple Valley, who are also part of their grandparents’ plans; “And there's a lot of things I'd like to do in the fall that I haven't done for 25 years,” Tom said.

Soccer has been the family business as long as the Kane kids can remember. Blake, Meghan and Sean all played the game and became coaches, now helping their own children learn the sport.

Steve Strickland, the current Lourdes activities director (and track coach), said, Tom “has given everything he has and continues to do so. He's been a great mentor for me, too, with helping me understand soccer. I can't say enough about him, he's turned into a good friend. And what a great set-up to find that next head coach. Sean's going to step right in.”

--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn, listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.

John’s Journal: Three Dates, Three Decisions

When I think about the current landscape of Minnesota high school activities, everything centers around three days on the 2020 calendar: March 12, August 4 and September 21. Let’s go through the significance of each…

March 12: This was the second day of the four-day girls state basketball tournament, and as things turned out it also was the final day of the tournament as we began learning how Covid-19 was impacting every part of daily life across the globe.

August 4: The MSHSL board of directors made a decision that no one, including board members, wanted to see. But for the sake of health and safety, they postponed the fall football and volleyball seasons until next spring while allowing soccer, cross-country, girls tennis and girls swimming and diving to continue under virus-related restrictions.

September 21: As special meeting of the MSHSL board resulted in the decision to revive volleyball and football this fall, with shortened seasons and spectator limits (no fans for volleyball, 250 for football).

None of those decisions were easy for anyone to make and were/are difficult for some to accept. But whether it was the MSHSL staff deciding to stop the girls state basketball tournament at the halfway point (as well as halting the boys basketball postseason) or the board making drastic changes to fall sports, the health of everyone involved was paramount.

All these months into this worldwide pandemic, there is a lot that is unknown about the virus and its impacts, especially long-term. We do know that people of all ages can become gravely ill; the odds may be slimmer for young people but dangers are there. In addition to student-athletes, the safety of coaches, officials and others is taken into account.

We already know that some officials have chosen to stay away from the sports they love this fall, and there will be more when volleyball and football begin playing games. I worry about the older folks who have worked on sideline chain crews for football games in their communities for decades and take great pride in that; some may decide to step away this fall and let’s hope that those who come back will wear masks, as should everyone on the sidelines.

Some people have asked me 1) why the board members made their decisions in August and 2) why they changed their minds in September. I don’t speak for the board but I believe there were several factors in this week’s decisions. When they voted to delay football and volleyball, they were following recommendations from medical experts, the Centers for Disease Control, state agencies, etc.

At that time none of our surrounding states had made those decisions one way or the other. The board’s calendar played a role in that; they met Aug. 4 and didn’t have another scheduled meeting until Oct. 1, so they had to decide how fall sports would look. The Big Ten’s football reversal, allowing games this fall, added to the pressure.

Since then, surrounding states chose to go ahead with football and volleyball. That didn’t have a direct impact on decisions by the board, but it ramped up pressure. In addition, a survey was sent to member schools before this week’s special board meeting; of the 394 schools that responded, 76 percent wanted to play volleyball this fall and 80 percent wanted football back this fall. In retrospect, a similar survey could have been taken before the Aug. 4 meeting, but hindsight is always 20-20. The board’s job is to make those decisions rather than having surveys make the calls.

It’s interesting to note that from a health standpoint, nothing has really changed since Aug. 4. The board spent almost an hour during this week’s meeting with Dr. Bill Roberts, chair of the MSHSL sports medicine committee and one of the most respected sports doctors in the world. He talked about what is known and unknown, making it clear that we don’t know much more about Covid and young athletes now than we did in early August, which seems like years ago.

Covid-19 has changed every aspect of our lives, from work to school to shopping to restaurants, movies, professional and college sports, etc. So of course it has an impact on high school sports and activities. And unless things regarding the virus change in a hurry, high school winter sports will be different in the coming season.

The board of directors will tackle the challenges of winter sports at its Oct. 1 meeting. I have no inside knowledge and can’t guarantee what will happen, but I think anyone who has followed this process can make the assumption that winter sports seasons may be shortened and postseasons may not be what we are used to.

As noted above, guidelines from the Minnesota Department of Health and Department of Education do not allow spectators at events inside school-owned facilities. That’s why swim meets this fall are being held without fans in attendance and why the same will hold true when volleyball matches begin. Those departments also limit spectators at outdoor events to 250 people, which we see now at soccer games and will see at football games.

The decisions on who will be among those 250 is up to the schools. With soccer, some conference have developed systems using passes or lists for allowing fans into the games. And please remember that 250 is the total number of fans, not 250 from each school. And those 250 are in addition to players, coaches, managers, officials, announcers, scoreboard operators and others deemed essential to game operations.

Winter sports are almost exclusively held indoors; basketball, hockey, wrestling, gymnastics, dance. Nordic and Alpine skiing are outdoor sports (along with occasional outdoor hockey games). Some hockey facilities are school-owned and some are not; that may have an impact on whether spectators are allowed.

State tournaments are another area in which nothing is normal. Fall sports are expected to end with section tournaments in adjusted formats, and winter sports may end in a similar fashion. Here’s an example I have used: during the state volleyball tournament at Xcel Energy Center, up to 24 teams come in and out of the building each day, watched by thousands of fans. That many teams are not allowed to be together under Covid conditions, and there’s no way the MSHSL can afford to rent the Xcel Center for a three-day event with no ticket sales.

This fall, several school districts around the state have been forced into distance learning because Covid rates in their area have risen above lines set by the Department of Education. When schools are in distance learning under those terms, their activities must shut down until the numbers drop below the line. If schools choose distance learning voluntarily, their activities can proceed.

After one of those school districts was forced into distance learning this week, this message was posted on social media: “Please communities - wear masks, practice social distance - do it for the kids.”

Everything has been drastically different since March 12 and we have to expect everything will remain different into the future ... whatever that future holds.

Please wear a mask. Please practice social distancing. Let’s care of our kids.

Better days will come. 

--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn, listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.

John’s Journal: Title Dreams Appear Dashed, But They Run On

SLAYTON -- If there is one individual athlete and one team that would seemingly have every right to feel as if they are being treated especially unfairly by the Covid-19 pandemic, it is Murray County Central/Fulda senior Morgan Gehl and her cross-country teammates.

Last year, in her fifth appearance at the Class A state championship meet, Gehl won her first state title and the Warriors placed fourth in the team standings. Morgan is now a senior and every other runner is back this fall, with every intention of winning a team state title.

But the virus has thrown everything into chaos, and at this point the odds of holding a traditional state championship meet appear to be slim because gathering several hundred runners and thousands of spectators is unworkable under Covid-19 restrictions.

“It’s pretty deflating for our team if it doesn’t happen,” said Warriors coach Dominick Damm. “We had the fourth-place girls team and nobody graduated and my girls ran thousands of miles this summer.”

The 2020 regular season also is drastically different. Murray County Central/Fulda is a member of the Red Rock Conference, which like many conferences has limited competitions to triangulars involving conference members (Covid restrictions allow no more than three teams on a cross-country course at one time). The Red Rock consists of 11 small schools, and with cooperative agreements there are only five cross-country teams in the league. So those five teams see a lot of each other.

In a normal season, the Warriors would travel farther to face more teams and larger schools.

“They’re decent teams but we’re not getting the chance to run against Luverne or Canby or even some of the AA schools, like Worthington, Marshall, New Ulm and some of those other schools,” Damm said. “It’s definitely been a struggle to lay stuff out there for them to shoot for.”

Thursday at the beautiful Slayton Country Club, the girls and boys teams from Murray County Central/Fulda, Heron Lake-Okabena and Southwest Minnesota Christian/Edgerton held races on the junior high, junior varsity and varsity levels.

The Warriors girls and boys varsity teams both came out on top. Tim Salentiny of Heron Lake-Okabena was the boys champ, followed by Isaiah Kathman of Murray County Central/Fulda and Paul Salentiny of Heron Lake-Okabena. The girls race was a testament to the strength of the Warriors, with sophomore identical twins Amanda and Ashley Overgaauw sharing first place and Gehl third.

It was the second time in three meets this fall that the twins have finished ahead of the defending state champ. Morgan is dealing with a knee issue that “depends on the day. If we do workouts that are stop and go, then it'll start acting up,” she said.

For the Warriors last year at state, Ashley Overgaauw finished 50^th, Amanda Overgaauw was 52^nd, Brylei Schreier was 93^rd, Ella Stepak was 126^th, Ryanna Schreier was 141^st and Josie Harms was 148^th in a field of 176 runners. The team champion was Perham, followed by Luverne, Howard Lake-Waverly-Winstead and Murray County Central/Fulda.

With the coop agreement, some of the Warriors runners attend school at Murray County Central in Slayton and some are students in Fulda; Gehl is from Fulda and the Overgaauw are MCC kids. And here’s another quirk: During the spring track and field season, Fulda and Heron Lake-Okabena form a coop team. So Gehl runs on two different teams in two different seasons.

Gehl was undefeated last fall, culminating with her dominant state championship at St. Olaf College in Northfield. She finished in 17 minutes, 53.5 seconds, with runner-up Jade Rypkema of Nevis clocking in at 18:20.2. In Morgan’s first trip to state as a seventh-grader, she placed 61st, followed in the ensuing years by eighth-, fourth- and third-place finishes.

She will never forget the feeling of winning a state title.

“Oh, it's awesome,” she said. “It's kind of unexplainable. When you're going down that last home stretch, there are so many people there. And then you cross it and you're like, ‘Oh my gosh, I just won.’ ”

She seems accepting of this year’s restrictions while wishing she and her teammates could make a run at a team state crown.

“I'm glad that I got to go there and win a state championship,” she said. “But for our team, it's like, man, I wish we could be there. I'll bet we would have won.”

Gehl, the Overgaauw sisters and the rest of the team worked hard over the summer, putting in mile after mile on picturesque country roads and trails. 

“Morgan really motivated us this summer to try to get better, because we ran about 15 miles a day,” said Amanda Overgaauw. “And she's a really great partner to run with every day in practice.”

No matter how this season ends, Gehl is confident that the twins have a bright future.

“Their work ethic is super,” she said. “And they're really super nice, they're great people. And I hope they get to go to state one year and hopefully finish one and two.”

--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn, listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts and hear him on Minnesota Public Radio.

John’s Journal: Thinking Back To 19 Years Ago This Week

 

I’ll always remember where I was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I had an appointment to speak to a class at Bloomington Jefferson High School, and I turned on the radio at home as I was getting dressed for the day.

There was talk of something bad happening in New York City. I turned on the TV in the kitchen and saw a big black smoldering hole in the side of one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. A plane had apparently struck the building, but nobody knew anything more than that. Before long another aircraft blasted into the other twin tower.

I drove to Bloomington Jefferson, arriving a few minutes early. I listened to the radio in the car for as long as I could and then walked into the school and was escorted to the room where the Sports Literature class was meeting. There were televisions in the classrooms, but because of construction work in the school none of the TVs were working. I told the class everything I had learned from listening to the radio, and then we were all in blackout mode.

After the class period ended, I drove to the Star Tribune building in downtown Minneapolis. Like everyone else in the newsroom, I watched the scenes on television. The Pentagon was on fire … a plane had apparently gone down in Pennsylvania.

Fast-forward a few years and I was back at Jefferson, writing about a memorial stone that had been installed at the school in honor of former Jaguars quarterback Tom Burnett, who died when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. I also wrote about former Blake linebacker Gordy Aamoth, who died in one of the twin towers on Sept. 11. The stadium at Blake now bears his name and a twisted beam from the World Trade Center is on display at the stadium.

In the Sept. 14, 2001, edition of the Star Tribune, I wrote a column under the headline “High school sports can help the healing.” I had spoken with people at Colorado’s Columbine High School as well as Osceolo High School in Wisconsin, where a traffic accident had claimed twin brothers a few weeks before Sept. 11. That column seemed to resonate with readers at the time, and to this day people occasionally will mention it to me. I have heard from a few people who say they saved that column, and they read it every day as Sept. 11 comes around. That is equally touching and humbling.

Here is that column as it appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Sept. 14, 2001…

High School Sports Can Help The Healing

In the horrible wake of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, all after-school activities were canceled Tuesday in the Jefferson County (Colo.) School District. This didn't surprise Ed Woytek, the athletic director at Columbine High School.

The day's events hit Columbine hard, especially the senior class. They were freshmen on April 20, 1999, when two students shot and killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

"Our coaches and all of us are on kind of a fine line, especially with what happened here previously," Woytek said.

Columbine still is recovering from that day. Recovery also is an ongoing process in Osceola, Wis., where twin brothers Eric and Aaron Kipp, 18, died in a car accident on the way to football practice 30 days ago.

With thousands of innocent people presumed to have perished this week, what do you say? How do you heal? Maybe it's best to listen to the kids. That's among the lessons learned at Columbine and Osceola.

"Pretty much all of them are saying to us, 'We need to be a family,'" Woytek said. "Because that's what happened a few years ago; they got with family. And that's where we need to be, that's where our American people need to be, is with family."

After the Kipp brothers died, football practices were stopped for a short period. But soon, everyone wanted to return -- or try to return -- to some sense of normalcy.

"Very soon, the kids were ready to go back," said Osceola coach/principal Mike McMartin. "They said, 'Coach, I need to keep busy.' And they were right. When we jumped back into it, although they weren't the best practices in the world, there was almost a big sigh of relief that they could start moving forward and take with us all the good things that the boys had shared with us for so many years, instead of thinking about the bad."

Activities went on as scheduled Tuesday in Osceola, the day of the attacks.

"We just really felt during that time it was massively important that we show to the kids, 'Hey, we're going on. We're not going to let these people defeat us or take us off our feet here. We're going to move forward and be proud,'" McMartin said.

At Columbine and Osceola, tragedy struck a specific community of people. This week, tragedy struck us all.

The Columbine Rebels take a 1-1 record into tonight's game at Dakota Ridge. Osceola is 3-0 and the homecoming opponent for rival St. Croix Falls. The games go on, as do our lives.

"Everybody keeps saying we'll never get back to normal, just like our nation will never get back to normal," Woytek said. "But hopefully we're going to get as close to normal as we can."

So if sporting events are part of your normal routine, stick with it. If you haven't been to a high school game in years, tonight would be a wonderful time to go. Get away from the television, escape the headlines. Find a seat in the bleachers and take a break, however temporary, from all that's gone so wretchedly wrong in this world.

Watch the team captains shake hands before the coin flip. Hold your hand over your heart during the national anthem as the flag flutters at half-staff. Bow your head during the moment of silence to honor this week's victims. Get on your feet for the opening kickoff. Watch our young people -- players, cheerleaders, fans -- as they smile, holler and laugh together during this evening that is tradition both athletic and social. Buy popcorn, listen to the band, cheer first downs, simply celebrate.

Maybe administrators at every school can find a recording of God Bless America, and across our states -- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado and beyond -- we'll sing together when the game ends. Just like a family.

--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn, listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts and hear him on Minnesota Public Radio.

John’s Journal: Timing is Everything for Josh Gerber

Josh Gerber likes to stay busy and he doesn’t mind long days and hard work. As the founder and owner of Wayzaya Results, a company that provides timing services for track and field, cross-country, Nordic skiing and similar competitions, Gerber is used to the grind.

His first cross-country event this fall was held Aug. 22. Due to Covid-19 concerns, only three teams were allowed to run at one time, meaning wave after wave of three-team clusters (varsity and junior varsity) had to be prepared and timed. It ended up being a 12-hour day for Gerber. And he loved it.

“I was a little rusty,” said Gerber, 33. “It’s been kind of weird, a weird range of emotions. But it’s nice to get back out there.”

Gerber is among the countless numbers of sometimes unseen people who make high school activities possible. Whether they are officials, ticket-takers, custodians, scorekeepers, timers, etc., they work – often as volunteers -- to ensure kids can participate.

Gerber, who was a track and cross-country athlete at Wayzata High School and Luther College in Iowa, was in junior high when he became interested in the process of compiling results. After running in a meet, he noticed a scoring error. Before long he was exploring software and doing his own scoring and timing.

As a student at Luther he was hired to time high school meets for the Three Rivers Conference and Hiawatha Valley League in southeast Minnesota. From there, his business has grown into a well-known name in the Midwest. Wayzata Results has worked events at the University of Minnesota since 2013, along with the University of Iowa, Northern Iowa and many Division II and III schools and conferences, along with the MSHSL state cross-country championships since 2013 and state track meet since 2014.

With half a dozen contract employees, Wayzata Results can work five or six events in different locations on the same day.

Last spring was slow with the cancellation of Minnesota high school track and field and the college outdoor track season. This fall’s high school cross-country season is different, with no big meets and staggered starts. In a normal autumn, Gerber’s company would work most every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday; this year most of its meets are on Thursdays.

“When the NCAA cancelled everything (last spring), that hurt,” he said. “We were supposed to do some pretty big championships last year. It was the right decision, so it hurt less, but it still hurt because some expenses have to be paid anyway.”

But wait, there’s more: Gerber is also a veteran MSHSL soccer official who has returned to that job. He’s back on the soccer field this fall, glad to be back for the first time since working last year’s state tournament at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“For soccer, it's taken a back seat to my timing schedule since I've been getting busier,” he said. “I usually referee college and high school soccer during the fall, but since all college seasons are cancelled I'm doing roughly 19 or 20 games this year.”

Being an official is part of the family for Gerber, who lives in Chaska with his wife Katie and son Brady. His father, Steve Gerber, is a longtime track and cross-country official who also works as the public-address announcer at the MSHSL state cross-country meet. 

"I'm lucky to have a very supportive family that allows me to do multiple sports in a season,” said Josh.

--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn, listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts and hear him on Minnesota Public Radio.

John’s Journal: Celebrating Pete Herges in Albany

ALBANY – The glowing late-summer sun dove into the horizon behind the scoreboard at the Albany High School football field on Thursday evening, followed on the opposite end of the sky by a rising football moon … orange, giant, full, glorious.

For more years than anyone can remember, the home of the Albany Huskies has been known as Michael Field. A second title was added during a sweet on-field ceremony Thursday. The scoreboard and press box now carry new signage declaring “HERGES STADIUM” in honor of Pete Herges, 90, who coached the Huskies to glory from the 1950s until the 1980s. Pete and his wife Joan, along with their extended family and nearly 50 of Pete’s former players, were honored guests Thursday.

B.J. Michael, the Albany superintendent from 1944 to 1971, hired Pete in 1954. The field remains under B.J.’s name and the entirety of the sterling football and track facility now carries Herges’ name. The word “legendary” doesn’t have enough weight to properly describe the reverence for Herges in Albany and central Minnesota. The process for finding his replacement when he retired from coaching football in 1980 is telling.

Jim Mader, then the football coach at Jackson High School, was interviewed in Albany and subsequently took over for Pete. The interview for a teaching job was with the principal. The interview for the football coaching job was with the entire school board … twice.

“We lost the first two games and that didn’t go over very well,” Mader said of that 1980 season. “Then we won nine in a row and went to state. I had all kinds of advice. One thing Pete never did is interfere, never. When I went to him for advice he gave a lot of good guidance.

“Pete told me when I took the job, ‘You’re going to win the conference the next three years unless you screw it up.’ And we did. We won a lot of them.”

Mader coached until 2003, when then-assistant and current head coach Mike Kleinschmidt took over. That makes three head football coaches since 1954. Another sign of long-term commitment in Albany: Thursday’s ceremony was directed by Scott Buntje, who is only Albany’s fourth athletic director since 1954 (Herges and Mader are among those four).

The Huskies have gone to state in football 20 times since 1974, winning championships in 1989 and 1997 and placing second in 2000 and 2005. Under Herges, the Huskies had a record of 168-51-3. Albany has had only two losing seasons since 1962.

Herges, who also coached golf for 29 years and baseball for 10, is a member of five Halls of Fame: Minnesota Athletic Administrators, Minnesota Coaches Association, Minnesota Football Coaches, Minnesota Golf Coaches, and Albany High School. 

Joe Hasbrouck was a multi-sport athlete who graduated from Albany in 1971. He was a two-time state high school golf champion, went to the University of Houston on a golf scholarship and remained in Houston, where he is now retired. He was “crushed” that he was unable to attend Thursday’s ceremony. His admiration for Herges is boundless.

“He was stern and you respected him. He didn’t pamper anybody. When we would be behind, we would come into halftime and he would grab the blockers and ask, ‘What’s going on? Why isn’t that working, why isn’t this working?’ He would fix the problems and we kept winning games. He was a very solid guy. To this day everybody respects him greatly.”

Hasbrouck remembers coming into a football season after most of the starters from the previous high-level team had graduated.

“We had lost one game in three years but the next year we lost all of our super good guys and our quarterback. That summer we were thinking, ‘What are we going to do? (Teammate) Dickie Glatzmaier said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, we’ve got Coach Herges.’ And sure enough, with a bunch of rookies we went undefeated.”

Pete and Joan, their family, Mader, Kleinschmidt and Pete’s old players gathered on the home sideline of the football field, in front of a large group of locals in the stands. They wore mostly purple (the school colors are purple and white). Some wore, as did Pete and his family, purple t-shirts with “Team Herges” on the front. There were a couple of old-school letter jackets and sweatshirts worn by Pete’s players.

The Albany High School band played the school song (“Anchors Aweigh”) as Pete’s fellow members of American Legion Post 482 presented the colors. The grass on the football field was immaculate, surrounded by a brand-new track that – like the grass – bore no lines.

Buntje began the ceremony by saying, “Good evening and welcome to Herges Stadium.” Cheers erupted.

The Huskies have played football on their current field since 1967, where not much has changed over the years. They still win, they still wear purple, they run a small number of plays to perfection, they don’t pass much and they still run some of the same plays as the old-timers did under Herges decades ago.

“I found a 1966 playbook and I might as well just slap the 2020 cover on it,” Kleinschmidt told the crowd.

The ceremony’s final speaker was Pete himself. Always a coach, he had notes written on a piece of paper, hanging on a clipboard. Item No. 1 read, “How I got here.” B.J. Michael’s name was mentioned underneath, along with this: “Joan – gave me one year. Yet, here I am 65 years later.”

And there he was, the man of the hour, standing in the glorious sunshine at Herges Stadium.

--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn, listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts and hear him on Minnesota Public Radio.