John’s Journal: More Basketball History In The Offing For Dreier

Had Mike Dreier made a different decision 44 years ago, who knows what might have happened? What we do know is that Dreier, head coach of the New London-Spicer girls basketball team, is on the cusp of history.

When the Wildcats’ home game against Litchfield tips off Tuesday night, Dreier will have 999 career victories. Should it end with New London-Spicer (14-1) defeating the Dragons (12-6), Dreier will become only the second coach in Minnesota high school basketball history – and the first girls coach -- with 1,000 wins.

The other is Chisholm legend Bob McDonald, who retired after the 2013-14 season with 1,012 boys basketball victories over 59 seasons. McDonald was 80 years old when he stepped down and 87 when he died in 2020. Dreier, 70, has a chance to pass McDonald’s total before this season ends.

Asked how it sounds to have his name and Bob McDonald’s in the same sentence, Dreier said, “It doesn’t sound like they belong together. He was an icon.”

Always deferential, always wanting the team to be the focus, always respectful of the game and the opposition. But Dreier’s career coaching girls basketball may have never began if not for a choice he made when he was hired as a teacher. There were two coaching jobs available and he had the pick: seventh-grade boys basketball or assistant varsity girls basketball.

He wanted to coach basketball and the varsity job had more appeal. So he was hired as an assistant before another fateful turn: the head coach stepped down before the season began, and 26-year-old Mike Dreier was suddenly the head coach.

Victory No. 1 was a 29-22 decision over Kimball on Dec. 12, 1978. His first season ended with a record of 3-15, and that’s the only losing record in Dreier’s career. His overall record is 999-184 for a winning percentage of .844.

According to records maintained by the National Federation of State High School Associations, only 12 girls basketball coaches in the country had won at least 1,000 games before the current season began. The national record is 1,416, set by Leta Andrews of Texas in 2014.

Dreier graduated from Burnsville High School in 1969 before embarking on a circuitous college path. He started at Winona State, transferred to Bemidji State, then the University of Minnesota and finally Hamline to complete his undergraduate education.  

“I squeezed four years of college into six and two-third years,” he quipped.

While in school he coached youth sports, including those on which some of his eight siblings played. “I fell in love with it,” he said.

Dreier taught social studies, history and physical education until retiring from teaching a decade ago. His coaching style is hard-nosed on the court and studious off the court.

“I think first and foremost is that he fine-tunes everything, he looks at details,” said 27-year-old Joey Dreier, one of Mike and Vonnie Dreier’s three sons and one of his dad’s assistant coaches, along with Margaret Essler.

“It's pretty amazing,” Joey said. “He will see one or two girls out of position and he’s able to point that out to them and have the girls be able to hear that and understand it. I think back to my childhood; he has his office downstairs and he was up until midnight or one o'clock in the morning, looking at tape and breaking it down to be ready for practice the next day.

“It's pretty crazy how, even after 40-some years, it's still the same energy and the same stuff that he brings day in and day out.”

Basketball is a family affair for the Dreiers. Vonnie is the official scorekeeper for most home games, Matt is the head girls coach at Annandale (also in the Wright County Conference) and Tim, who lives in Las Vegas, makes it home for games when he can.

Mike Dreier’s teams have played in 19 state tournaments, winning championships in 1997 and 2002 and finishing as the state-runner-up six times. The Wildcats have won 20 games or more in 34 of the last 37 seasons, including one stretch of 21 years in a row. They won 22 of 23 West Central Conference titles from 1982-2005 and 29 conference championships overall, including five in their current conference, the Wright County.

New London-Spicer went to state in Class 2A last year, losing to Providence Academy in the semifinals. That team was led by five seniors, three of them standing six feet or taller. This year’s team is younger and smaller.

“I’m totally pleased with how we’ve done so far,” Dreier said. “It looked like it was going to be a building process, and maybe it still will be, but they’ve just come on and played with a lot of confidence and determination. These kids have waited for their turn to get on the varsity floor.”

Dreier’s milestone wins have come like clockwork: No. 500 in the 2001-02 season, No. 600 in 2004-05, No. 700 in 2009-10, No. 800 in 2013-14 and No. 900 in 2017-18. He has plaques to mark them all but pays little mind to such things.

“To be honest with you, the only time I think about it is when somebody mentions it,” he said. “It isn’t anything I’ve ever aspired to try to do. It’s been an awful fun ride getting to where we are and seeing where we’ve been.”

Earlier this season, Dreier was named a recipient of the John Wooden Legacy Award by the National High School Basketball Coaches Association. He learned about the honor in an email and never mentioned it to anyone, including his family.

Joey said, “I saw the news somewhere and I said, ‘Dad, what is this that you’ve got going here?’ It’s something that he's not going to go and tell anybody about. It's all because of the team and the teams that he has around him and the positive attitudes, the work ethic that they all have.”

Mike Dreier agreed that what he values the most are the kids he has coached.

“That’s a big part of what’s it all about, the relationships you develop. No doubt about it. It’s really special, the relationships with the kids. When you work with a group of kids, it’s amazing how close you can become to them. Year after year, it exponentially expands and it’s great.”

He has no plans to retire, saying, “I’ve never thought that long-term about it, as long as I’ve got kids who respond and are trying to get better and parents who aren’t a pain in the butt and a supportive administration.”

Current senior Nyla Johnson, one of many second-generation family members to play for Dreier, said seeing their coach near 1,000 wins is special for everyone.

“It's such a surreal moment to be a part of because it's such a long legacy of Coach Dreier. We're just super excited to be a part of it and share that with him.”

Another senior, Isabelle Schmiesing, was asked about the Wildcats’ formula for success. Anyone who has seen them play understands her answer.

“He really emphasizes rebounding and defense,” she said. “We've always talked about how offense wins games but defense wins championships. And I think that's definitely showed in his record. He's just a big defense person and I'm big defense person myself. So I love that way of coaching.”

Dreier’s 999^th win came Thursday night in a 67-47 decision at Glencoe-Silver Lake. No. 2 on the girls basketball coaching list is Myron Glass of Rochester Lourdes, who retired in 2014 with 719 victories. Third is New Prague’s Ron Gunderson, who had 684 when he retired in 2017. Next, at 661, is current Norwood Young America coach Gary Lembcke.

Glencoe-Silver Lake coach Jeff Monahan said there are few surprises when the Wildcats are the opponent.

“We know what we're going to get every time,” he said. “Mike’s always so classy. He respects our team, too. I always enjoy playing them. They're always rated really high and it helps our team, too. But it's a challenge. You want your teams to compete, and I think there have been times where, going in, we maybe don't think we can win. But I tell the kids that you’ve got to fight, but have fun playing them.

“We always enjoy traveling up there and he's always a phone call away to help me, which is the best.”

Dreier’s booming voice has been heard from the bench in countless gyms around the state, and it can be intimidating.

“When I was younger, I was terrified,” Schmiesing said. “But as I got older I learned that you’ve got to listen to what he says, not necessarily how he says it.”

Mike and Vonnie have two grandchildren, with a third coming soon. The players said they love to see those toddlers in the gym.

“When his granddaughter comes to practice, when she comes to hang out with us, his face lights up,” Johnson said. Schmiesing wore a big grin, saying, “It’s a whole different side of him. He runs over with a smile on his face.”

The gym in New London will be crowded Tuesday night. As is customary when Dreier has reached a milestone, former players gather to talk about their own teams and cheer for the current Wildcats and the coach they all know and love.

 “He wants the best for us out on the court and has our best interests in mind,” Johnson said. “We know that he cares about us.”

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

 

John’s Journal: Chatfield’s Fryer Is Heart Of The Arts Winner

Nicholas Fryer remembers like it was yesterday. He was in middle school when high school students from the Chatfield High School speech team visited Nick’s English class to talk about the activity. He was hooked.

“I really did not know what the speech program was,” Nick wrote in an email conversation. “I knew that I wanted to participate in speech when they gave the preview of poetry, because poetry was very appealing to me and I really loved reading poetry, as well.” 

I interviewed Nick via email because he has dealt with hearing loss since birth. Now a first-year student at Winona State University, Nick graduated from Chatfield last spring. His high school arts career was bookended by two key events: Speech students visiting that day in class, and his first appearance at the MSHSL state speech tournament near the end of his senior year.

Nick put in six years of dedication to speech despite obstacles that may have derailed others, and for that accomplishment he has been named the MSHSL Heart of the Arts Award winner. The award was created by the National Federation of State High School Associations to recognize individuals who exemplify the ideals of the positive heart of the arts and represent the core mission of education-based activities.

“He had to work much harder than my other students on things they took for granted,” said Chatfield speech coach Rachel Schieffelbein. “He has cochlear implants, but still struggled with being able to hear and articulate the correct pronunciation of certain words, with enunciation, and with being able to properly control his volume, often coming in too loud. He worked, without complaint, for six years.”

Nick took part in other high school activities, including theater, choir, yearbook and art club. His accomplishments are remarkable considering that his hearing problems were obvious when he was just a baby. His cochlear implants, along with years of therapy, the ability to read lips and an unwavering attitude of determination, have taken him far.

“People who don’t know him don’t realize he’s deaf,” said Nick’s mother, Julie Fryer. “He worked so hard on speech therapy as a young child. For us it’s just another day in the life.”

Joining the speech team as a seventh-grader, Nick had to work much harder than other students when doing things they barely thought about.

“He became a captain on the team and helped other students who joined the program," Schieffelbein said. "He was someone I could always count on to keep things upbeat, show up for the work with a smile on his face, and not get down when things didn't go his way. And it was years before his hard work started to pay off.”

In the poetry category of speech competitions, contestants choose poems from published works. The ability to interpret meaning and emotion through honest facial and body expression is key during a 10-minute presentation.

Nick’s work began paying off when he collected ribbons at speech competitions when he was a junior at Chatfield. That season was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic and his senior speech season was held in a virtual format since in-person gatherings were off limits.

“That brought with it a whole new slew of issues,” Schieffelbein said. “Trying to practice over Zoom, making it so much harder for him to understand us, his coaches, was a huge challenge. It also often felt like starting over, working on volume control. But he never complained or showed his frustration. He just kept working and kept cheering on the rest of his team as he watched them succeed. He was beyond thrilled just to make it to sections, and watching him make it to state was one of the biggest highlights I've had as a coach. I've never had anyone more deserving of moving on.”

Nick wrote, “I knew speech was going to be challenging as a deaf person, and one of those challenges was my pronunciation of some words or sentences in the poems I was reciting. I really wanted people to hear me clearly in the poems that I was reciting, and it definitely gave me anxiety for sure. At the beginning of my time in speech, I had a hard time with it. I overcame that challenge by repeating words or sentences over and over again daily in every practice session with my coaches.

“My coaches were determined to help me and we never gave up and every time I practiced more, I gained more confidence in myself. All of that hard work really showed off in the 2021 speech season and I was very proud of myself for being dedicated and never giving up.”

Before the 2021 speech season began, Nick sat down with Schieffelbein and assistant coach Stephanie Copeman. He laid out his goals for the season, including his hopes of reaching the state tournament.

“The moment I realized that I was going to compete at state as a senior was overwhelming and joyful,” he wrote. “I felt relieved because it showed me that the past years of my hard work was finally paying off. It was great seeing it achieved. It also taught me that when you put your mind to something, you can do anything in this world.”

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

John’s Journal: Adapted Floor Hockey Is A Hit In Mankato Debut

 

MANKATO – The first goal in the history of the Mankato adapted floor hockey program was a beauty, as was the celebration, as was the entire first game ever.

Mankato, with athletes from Mankato East and Mankato West, played host to the team from Stillwater/Mahtomedi on Monday inside the little gymnasium at Franklin Elementary School, which has stood in a quiet Mankato neighborhood since 1928. A large crowd of fans watched from balcony seats, and they saw quite a show.

The game’s opening goal came quickly. After Mankato junior goaltender Jacob Watson made a couple of sharp saves, the puck was knocked to the opposite end of the floor. It found its way to the stick of Mankato ninth-grader Shanti Esters, who gave it a whack and saw it bounce off the goalie’s pads. Shanti gave it a second knock with the same result, and the third time was the charm. The puck went in, the crowd went wild and Shanti began a celebratory run down the court.

She was so excited, and rightfully so, that she lost her footing at midcourt and went down. Her big smile, shining brightly through her facemask, never wavered as she tumbled. And after landing, she posed. Yes, she posed, putting one arm behind her head, sticking up one knee with that perfect smile on her face. It was magical.

“That first goal today and the celebration, it was probably one of the best things I've seen in my 19 years,” said Mankato East activities director Todd Waterbury, who helped shepherd the team into existence. “It was just a lot of fun with the joy around here, a lot of positivity.”

Shanti scored again in the third period, setting off another round of cheering. The game went the way of Stillwater/Mahtomedi, which won 17-2, but the outcome was much less important than the event itself.

“I really truly didn't know how it would go. But our kids did great,” said Mankato coach Dylan Boettcher, 28, who attended Franklin and played hockey at Mankato East. “They exceeded my expectations. Honestly, the scoreboard doesn't necessarily show it; Stillwater is a great team, it looks like they've been playing for a long time.”

The crowd was hockey-flavored, including a whole bunch of players from the Mankato West girls hockey team, as well as some from the Minnesota State Mankato women’s squad. Between the second and third periods, anyone wearing a hockey jersey was invited to come down to the court and try to make a shot from one end to the goal on the other end. The hockey-playing girls from West, using a different kind of stick and a much lighter puck than they are used to, didn’t have tons of luck but they sure had fun.

The Mankato athletes wear uniforms that are black and gray, just like the combined East-West girls and boys lacrosse teams. They looked awfully sharp. The pregame period was filled with music on the little gym’s PA system … the tunes included “Sweet Caroline,” “Ice Ice Baby” and “Party in the USA.” It was good stuff.

All the players from both teams were introduced before the game began; athletes waved their stick in the air and some waved a hand to their families sitting up above. The Guns N’ Roses classic, “Welcome To The Jungle” played as the game began.

After the clock ran out on the first adapted floor hockey game in Mankato history, the teams lined up for a postgame handshake line, just as in every other high school sport. They thanked the officials, Ryan Swafford and Aaron Anderson, who are veteran hockey officials working their first adapted floor hockey game.

The hockey players from Mankato West came down once more and gathered with their counterparts on the floor hockey team for a photo. They held a sign that read “Let’s Go Mankato.”

Boettcher gathered his team around him, telling the kids, “You guys did a great job. Have a good night with your families.”

Dylan’s wife, Heather, watched from the balcony in a chair that included this hand-written sign: “Reserved for coach’s very pregnant wife” … the word “very” was underlined. A cesarean procedure was scheduled for the next day, with Dylan and Heather looking forward to welcoming their first child.

East and West already have adapted bowling programs, with floor hockey the district’s first adapted team sport; the MSHSL also sponsors adapted programs in soccer and softball. The Minnesota Association for Adapted Athletics pioneered those activities in the state, and they came under the MSHSL umbrella in 1992. Programs are offered for Cognitively Impaired (CI) and Physically Impaired (PI) students. The Mankato team is in the CI division.

“It’s important to me to make sure it’s a big deal,” Dylan Boettcher said. “I’m hoping this can be a jump start for adapted sports in Mankato. I’ve fallen in love with the people involved in activities for special needs kids.”

Waterbury offered an apt summary of the new program, saying, “The opportunity is what we're all about. That’s what the League's about, it's what our district’s about, to increase the opportunities for those who don't have a lot of chances to be involved in an activity.

“I just think it's the best thing we could do. You saw the people here today. Not only our school community, but the college representation that was here and all the other folks. It tells you the importance of it and what a big deal it is.”

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

 

John’s Journal: Game Night At Roseau’s Hockey Cathedral

 

ROSEAU – The chapel was quiet a couple hours before services began. A few older congregants had already gathered on a frigid January evening, sitting on wooden benches and chatting in a warm space above ice level, occasionally turning their heads to look through windows that offered a view of the frozen, reflective worship space.

As more and more folks arrived, a theme was clear. Some wore the green and white of the Roseau Rams, with others draped in Warroad Warriors black and gold. The towns are only 22 miles apart, within earshot of the Canadian border, and high school hockey is a binding agent, a cultural touchstone and darn near a religious experience.

On this Tuesday night, the most famous hockey rivalry in Minnesota was on center stage for the first time this season. Even though some fans live in one town and are employed in the other, hockey draws a clear line in the ice. That was evident as Warroad fans grimaced upon paying for admission and having a big green Roseau Ram stamped on the back of their hand.

“We’re small schools and we’ve had hockey forever,” said 81-year-old Bob Lund, father of Roseau head coach Greg Lund and assistant Bill Lund. “It’s our game.”

Bob was sitting on a folding chair that was placed against the boards near the entry, a high honor for someone who has seen it all through the years. Bob was a youngster when Roseau Memorial Arena was built in 1949; he remembers the days before plexiglass when the boards were topped with chicken wire, and when gravel, instead of concrete, provided the base for the bleachers.

The lobby areas of the arena are a Roseau hockey Hall of Fame. Walls are covered with framed photos of all the greats in Ram history who went on to play hockey in college, the NHL and the Olympics. Also displayed are team photos, state championship trophies and all manner of wonderful memorabilia.

The hockey rivalry between Warroad and Roseau is special. Boys in both towns have been smacking pucks with sticks for more than a century, and the first official high school game between the two was played in 1945, the same year as the inaugural MSHSL state tournament. On this glorious Tuesday evening in early 2022, the Rams and Warriors boys would meet for the 179^th time.

Both programs are familiar throughout Minnesota. Roseau has been to the state tournament a record 34 times, winning seven state titles between 1946 and 2007. Warroad has made 22 state appearances and has won four crowns, most recently in 2005.

In pregame discussions, one thing was clear: When Roseau and Warroad meet on the ice, you can throw out the records. Over the years, surprises have happened more times than anyone can remember.

“That's the thing, every year it doesn't matter what our records are,” said Warriors coach Jay Hardwick, a 1998 Warroad graduate. “It's still going to be a great hockey game.”

This was one of the biggest games in the state this season, and certainly the biggest in Roseau County, home of both towns. Warroad came in with a record of 11-0 and holding the No. 2 ranking in Class A. Roseau was 11-1 and ranked eighth in Class 2A.

Warroad had recorded one-goal victories over Mounds View, Bemidji and Grand Rapids, with its other eight wins coming by margins between two and 12 goals. Roseau lost to Andover 4-3 in its second game of the season before starting a 10-game winning streak. Among the teams the Rams defeated were Minnetonka, Moorhead, Grand Rapids, Rogers, Bemidji and Mahtomedi.

A good-sized crowd watched the junior varsity teams play before the Zamboni groomed the ice for the night’s main attraction. Hometown radio crews sat at a table a few rows behind the penalty boxes, Jon Michael from Warroad’s KQ92 next to Jason Merritt and Tracy (Bobcat) Ostby on Roseau’s WILD 102. The exquisite Roseau High School pep band, under the direction of Chris Barnes, pumped out great music. Among the orchestra members were a few junior varsity hockey players, hair still wet from showering, dressed in game-day suits and ties.

Game No. 179 in the series stayed true to the predictions. Surprises can indeed happen, and on this night good things happened for the visiting Warriors. The teams played a fast and scoreless opening period, and the first massive roar from the overflow crowd of more than 3,000 came with Roseau on a power play in the second period.

When Warroad’s Ryan Lund swiped the puck, raced down the ice and scored a shorthanded goal, the Warriors student section waved black and gold pompoms and screamed, the sound reverberating off the ancient and arched and sacred wooden beams in the ceiling.

Matt Hard scored to make it 2-0 Warroad late in the second, and Murray Marvin-Cordes got two in the third period before Daimon Gardner closed out Warroad’s 5-0 victory. Warriors goaltender Hampton Slukynsky stopped 28 shots; Roseau goalie Carter Christianson had 22 saves.

The game showcased plenty of talent, including four of the state’s top scorers. Roseau’s Max Strand ranks third with 44 points, Warroad’s Gardner and Jayson Shaugabay are tied for seventh with 36, and the Rams’ Noah Urness (31) is tied for 10th.

Roseau had been shut out by Warroad only four times previously in all these years. Tuesday’s result made the all-time series standings look like this: 105 wins for Roseau and 69 for Warroad with five ties.

Despite the loss, Greg Lund appreciated the importance of the rivalry.

“This is what everybody looks forward to,” he said. “We saw what happened here, it was a huge, huge game for everybody and the fans love it.”

Before the teams took the ice, Hardwick had asked the Warriors if they were nervous. A few heads nodded affirmatively.

“I said, ‘You know what? It's OK to be nervous.’ I told them I've played in these games, a couple of them for section championships, and I've coached in 20-some of these and I still get nervous. But that's OK because it means you care and it means something to you.”

Roseau has an MSHSL enrollment of 348 high school students and Warroad has 295. With Roseau opting up from Class A to Class 2A, the two teams no longer play hammer-and-tong battles to decide which one wins the Section 8 title and goes to state; they faced off in Section 8 playoff games 23 times between 1947 and 1998.

“These are always great games, and there’s a lot of respect for each other,” Bob Lund said, sitting along the boards in the rink where he watched his kids and grandkids skate. “I wish we had 20 games like this every season.”

After graduating from Minnesota Duluth in 1966, Bob coached hockey in Silver Bay for two years before returning to his hometown. The family business is a furniture and carpet store … and hockey.

A newer rink, known as the North Rink, is attached to Roseau Memorial Arena. (There is a third rink in town, Roseau Sports Center.) Some of the locals joke about the North Rink being a de facto day care center, where kids can be dropped off at any time of day or night. Hockey is so big in Roseau that each youth team has its own locker room at the North Rink, meaning families don’t have to lug equipment back and forth from home. Kids also are allowed to run a tab at the well-stocked concession stand, with parental eyebrows sometimes rising when they stop in to pay off the balance.

During Tuesday night’s game, youth hockey players dressed in blue jerseys wandered through the crowd selling 50-50 raffle tickets. As is the custom, youth teams are not allowed to wear Roseau green and white … they earn that right when they reach high school hockey. A lot of cash was dropped into the 50-50 bucket, with the winner taking home more than a thousand dollars.

After the final horn, the Warroad fans celebrated and the Rams faithful shook their heads and reiterated that you just never know what might happen when these teams meet.

The 180^th game in the series is scheduled for Jan. 25 at the Warroad Gardens arena, built in 1993. There is talk of, at some point in time, having the teams from Roseau and Warroad schedule their two regular-season meetings on a back-to-back, home-and-home Friday and Saturday.

No matter the schedule, the Warriors and Rams will continue to skate under the historic wooden ceiling in Roseau, building memories and making history in one of Minnesota’s hockey cathedrals.

From his folding chair on the glass, Bob Lund looked around the arena and smiled at what has been built ... architecturally, athletically and spiritually.

“It just might last forever,” he said.

--See more photos on the MSHSL Facebook page.

--More on the Warroad-Roseau hockey rivalry: https://www.roseauhockey.com/page/show/2283012-roseau-warroad-rivalry

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

John’s Journal: A New Coach Gets Victory No. 1

 

On the penultimate Preps Today with John Millea podcast of 2021 my co-host, Minneapolis Star Tribune sports columnist Jim Souhan, asked if I had any final thoughts before we ended the show. My mind immediately went to the future, and I expressed optimism for 2022. (You can hear that podcast – Episode 180 -- here: https://www.mshsl.org/podcasts/preps-today-john-millea)  

That sense of optimism grew even stronger, and brought back ties to the past, after I attended a boys basketball game at Mounds View High School on Friday evening. The game was really fun, it was fast-paced, and the visiting Forest Lake Rangers came away with an exciting 65-57 win.

Before going into details of the game, let’s go back in time to the 1950s. A gentleman using a cane stood in the doorway to the gym on Friday and watched the action. He graduated from Forest Lake in 1959 and coached the boys basketball team at Mounds View for 45 years before retiring in 2012.

His name is Zigurd “Ziggy” Kauls and he is a member of almost any Hall of Fame you can imagine. The Mounds View gym bears his name: Kauls Court. Ziggy won 739 games with the Mustangs and stands fifth on the all-time Minnesota boys basketball coaching victory list.

Another name from way back was on the minds of a few people at Kauls Court on this night. Bob McDonald began his coaching career in 1955 at McGregor and became a legend at Chisholm, coaching for 59 years overall and winning a state-best 1,012 games. Bob was 87 when he died in October 2020.

The rookie head coach at Forest Lake is Kyle McDonald, one of Bob’s grandchildren. Kyle played basketball for his dad, Mike, the longtime coach at Cambridge-Isanti. His big brother Rhett did the same and is the head coach at Duluth East. Since Cambridge-Isanti did not have a game Friday night, Mike and Dayla McDonald came to Mounds View to watch their son’s team.

No matter the outcome, history would be made in one of two ways:

--The Mounds View Mustangs came into the game with 999 victories since the program began in the 1954-55 season.

--Kyle McDonald was hoping to notch his first career victory after the Rangers opened the season with three losses.

The second scenario played out, and it was historic. Kyle’s first win as a head coach came 66 years after his grandfather’s first.

When I interviewed Kyle after the game, the first thing he did was exactly what his father and grandfather would have done: He paid respect to the opponent.

“First, all the credit in the world goes to Mounds View,” Kyle said. “They’re a solid team, the atmosphere was crazy tonight.”

Indeed, the Mustangs are solid. They brought a 5-1 record into the game. Mounds View senior Dylan Wheeler made history in the final minute when he made a free throw for his 1,000^th career point. Dylan, who led the Mustangs with 16 points, is a prime example of the team’s rich history; his dad, Shell Wheeler, played for Ziggy, as did his uncle Rich. Older brother Mitchell played for current coach Dave Leiser (an assistant to Kauls for 21 years) and graduated in 2018.

Mike McDonald watched the game from the second row, close to the scorer’s table. During a timeout in the second half, one of the officials walked over to Mike and said, “The kid can coach.”

Yes he can. And he’s proud to be part of the first family of Minnesota basketball.

“Grandpa was watching over me tonight and I felt it all the way through the day,” Kyle told me afterwards. “And to have my mom and dad here means the world to me. They’ve been by my side all the way through.”

Kyle played college basketball at Wisconsin-Eau Claire, then was a member of his dad’s coaching staff for one year before becoming an assistant coach at Forest Lake for a year. He was named head coach last May. He is 24 years old.  

“Basketball is a really big part of our lives as McDonalds,” he said. “Our life revolves around it because of one man and that was Grandpa. We love the sport, but more importantly we love the people around it. And we love creating relationships and that's exactly what Grandpa did. And every single McDonald strives to be like him.”

Owen Waldoch, a 6-foot-6 sophomore, led Forest Lake with 22 points. Nolan Dumonceaux, a 5-11 sophomore guard, scored 20 and 6-2 senior Nick Bartlett had 14.

There will be plenty of McDonalds gathered at Augsburg College in Minneapolis in late December, when the teams coached by Mike, Rhett and Kyle compete in the eight-team Augsburg Holiday Tournament.

Kyle is thrilled to be in his new role.

“Honestly, it's a dream come true,” he said. “I remember talking to my dad and my brother less than two years ago and they asked me where my dream job is. I said it was Forest Lake. It’s where I always wanted to be. I had great respect for them when I was in high school. And it's just been a dream come true, being the head coach here. These guys work their butts off and I couldn't be more proud of them and our staff.”

As I wrote above, I am extremely optimistic about 2022. Seeing coaches young and old do good things, watching kids work together and compete, knowing the importance of history and seeing positive examples everywhere I go in our great state, it’s impossible to not be optimistic about the future, into 2022 and well beyond.

Happy New Year.

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

John’s Journal: New Coaches, New Energy

 

In the second game of the season for both teams, the Irondale boys basketball team traveled to Anoka for a non-conference contest last week. It wasn’t a highly anticipated matchup, considering that the Irondale Knights went 1-18 last season and the Anoka Tornadoes finished 0-19.

That combined record of 1-37 is in the past now, and both teams have new leadership in first-year head coaches who bring energy and solid basketball  backgrounds – including college coaching experience -- to their new positions.

Irondale coach Trent Davis and Anoka coach Jesse Jefferson are both 31 years old. They are Minnesota-born but spent time in other states before returning. Both work with students in non-classroom roles at their schools; Jefferson is a student achievement advisor at Anoka and Davis is a behavior specialist at Irondale.

“It’s impactful. It feels good,” Jefferson said of his job away from basketball.

Jefferson was born in Minneapolis and moved to Georgia when he was 12. He played on a state-tournament basketball team at Sprayberry High School in Marietta, Ga., and returned to Minnesota as a player at Bethel University in St. Paul from 2011-13. He was a junior varsity coach at Coon Rapids from 2013-17 before becoming a member of the coaching staff for the Bethel men’s basketball team.

He’s in his fourth year working at Anoka, and said he had never really thought about becoming a high school head coach until he had spent some time there.

“I worked at the school for a few years and fell in love with the school and the kids,” he said. “I wanted to change the basketball culture.”

Davis was born in Waterloo, Iowa, and grew up in Apple Valley. He attended St. Bernard’s High School in St. Paul, playing basketball there on teams coached by Ed Cassidy that went to state tournaments in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Among his teammates were future Minnesota Gopher Trevor Mbakwe and Jordair Jett, who was the Atlantic 10 Conference player of the year at St. Louis in the 2013-14 season.

“We had some good teams,” said Davis, who played basketball at Wisconsin-Superior and became an assistant there after graduating in 2014. He coached girls basketball at Gateway High School in Kissimmee, Florida, for two years before returning to Minnesota. He spent the last three seasons as an assistant coach at the College of St. Katherine in St. Paul.

“It’s a pretty wonky coaching background,” Davis said. He added that one thing he learned while coaching in Florida was the importance of a basketball team with support that included a program to teach the game to kids before they got to high school

“That made me come up with the idea that if I ever take a high school job again, I would want more support,” he said.

Davis said he has found that at Irondale, calling it “the perfect opportunity. I always wanted to stick with college basketball, but if I had the chance to coach in high school I definitely wanted it to be a team with kids coming up.”

Four Knights are averaging double figures in scoring, with D.J. Anthony at 15, Dane Dedominces at 14, Drake Gomez at 12 and Jordan Tieh at 10.

At Anoka, Jay Nyamari leads the team with a 22-point scoring average, Keenen Rodriguez is at 14, Peyton Podany at 13 and A.J. Howze at 10.

Unlike Jefferson, who has been at Anoka for several years, Davis is new on the scene at Irondale this year and learning about the school and the students.

“I’m trying to get to know the players on a game level at this point,” he said. “We want people to talk about Irondale with a positive aspect and we want our players to be good young men, which starts in the classroom. We want them to go to class, do their job and be students first.”

Both coaches stress the importance of culture on their teams, and both know that expectations – at least on the outside – are not high this season.        Anoka is in the Northwest Suburban Conference and Class 4A Section 7. Irondale plays in the Suburban East Conference and Class 4A Section 5.

“We have high expectations for ourselves and I think we can compete to win our section,” Jefferson said. “We want to compete in every game.”

Davis said, “I’m not sure how far we will go. We could end up in the middle of the pack in our conference, which is tough with teams like East Ridge and Cretin-Derham Hall, Mounds View and others. We’re trying to take it game by game because it’s so new to me. … We really want to get Irondale basketball on the map and get people talking about us.”

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

John’s Journal: Mankato East Remembers Pal Kueth

 

The Mankato East boys basketball team was on the court Saturday at Hopkins High School, meeting South St. Paul in one of 15 games on two courts as part of the Breakdown Tipoff Classic. The court was standard, with two hoops, out-of-bounds lines, free throw circles, etc. But it wasn’t quite the same as the Cougars’ home court.

New this season at Mankato East are two initials, a P and a K, inside a black circle in one corner of the court. They are in memory of 2021 grad Pal Kueth, who died suddenly at home on Sept. 11.

Pal’s initials were placed at the spot from where he launched a game-winning three-point shot at the buzzer to give East a 45-44 win over crosstown rival Mankato West last March. Everyone who was there will remember it forever.

“That's just a moment we'll never forget. It was crazy,” said East senior Puolrah Gong after the Cougars lost to South St. Paul 66-62. “I remember the play exactly. A kid missed a free throw, B.J. (Omot) got it, passed it to me and I couldn't get the shot off. I passed to Pal and he hit the shot, like he always did.”

A photo of Pal’s initials on the court was posted on Twitter recently by the East activities account (@Mankato_East), with these words: “Remembering Pal Kueth this season...the initials PK mark the spot Pal shot the game-winning three-pointer against Mankato West last season here at East. We miss you Pal.”

“He was an all-around leader and an all-around great person,” said Gong, a 6-foot-7 forward. “He was fun to be around, always smiling. Always. He really taught us a lot. He means a lot to us.”

Omot, a 6-8 senior who led the Cougars with 19 points Saturday, said, “If you were having a bad day, you’d just look at him and he made you smile. He was just that type of person. It was really tough losing him.”

Coach Joe Madson said, “We loved him. Pal was a great teammate, a very unselfish player who always had a smile on his face. He loved basketball. We want to remember him. He went way too early.”

In a game story about Kueth’s big bucket against West last year, the Mankato Free Press’ Chad Courrier quoted Pal: “I trust everybody on my team, and I know they could make a shot if we need to. But my teammates trusted me, and all I had to do was make the shot.”

The Cougars remember Pal with fondness and will keep him in their hearts throughout this season and beyond, on the court and off.

“I think it makes us play harder now,” Omot said. “You just want to do it for him, because he's one of us.”

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

John’s Journal: Moorhead Is 2021 Sack Hunger Champion

 

The Minnesota State High School League is proud to announce that Moorhead High School is the champion of the third John’s Journal Sack Hunger campaign, in which schools all over the state are encouraged to collect non-perishable food items for those in need.

The Sack Hunger campaign began in 2018, when Spring Grove High School was the champion. Owatonna High School won the Sack Hunger campaign in 2019 and the drive was not held in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The effort returned this year and the Moorhead Spuds went above and beyond to feed those in need. Moorhead High School and other buildings in the district collected canned food as well as monetary donations. A total of 15,846 canned items was collected by the Spuds, along with more than two thousand dollars in funds to feed the hungry.

Moorhead’s effort was part of the annual Fill the Dome campaign in the Fargo-Moorhead area, with the goal of filling the floor of the Fargodome with food donations for those in need. During Fill the Dome’s 14 years, four million meals have been provided to help feed hungry children, seniors and families in the region. Students also have collected more than $690,000 during that time. Fill the Dome is led by Great Plains Food Bank in Fargo-Moorhead.

Fill the Dome has been happening in the Moorhead community since the beginning in 2007. At Moorhead High School, teachers and classes are encouraged to compete to bring in the most food, with a pizza party being awarded to the "winning" class. They have created a culture that supports this community food drive and they have worked hard over the years to raise awareness about hunger and food insecurity.

The Fill the Dome project at Moorhead High School is coordinated entirely by two student council members, who attend meetings throughout the summer and fall to coordinate and plan the food drive and the community activities associated with FTD. They also work with other schools in the district to encourage their food-drive plans and gather all the food at the end of the designated time. 

This year's student leaders at Moorhead High were Evie Kenkel and Megan Wilke. Congratulations to them!

The Sack Hunger campaign is a partnership between the MSHSL and Second Harvest Heartland to fight hunger in Minnesota and the upper Midwest.

According to Second Harvest Heartland, more than half a million Minnesotans are now facing hunger, including 200,000 kids who are going to bed hungry, and 63 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, when one unexpected expense can mean choosing rent over meals.

 

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

John’s Journal: Basketball Is A Family Affair At NRHEG

 

Every time the girls basketball team from New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale Geneva hits the road for a game, they are driven by someone special. The Panthers may be the only team in Minnesota with a bus driver who also won back-to-back state championships as a head coach.

John Schultz stepped down after 11 years as head coach after NRHEG won Class 2A state championships in 2013 and 2014, completing three consecutive trips to state. Those teams were led by Carlie Wagner, who is the second-leading career scorer in state history (behind Braham’s Rebekah Dahlman) and went on to play at the University of Minnesota.

Schultz is retired from teaching but remains busy working as a substitute teacher and bus driver, including his duties with the basketball team (and the volleyball team in the fall). Onika Peterson, who was one of Schultz’s assistants, became head coach when he retired. She was more than happy to add Schultz to her staff a couple years ago.

There also was a family dynamic to his return to the bench. John’s daughter Sidney, a varsity player since seventh grade, is a junior who reached the 1,000-point milestone last week.

The Panthers won at Blooming Prairie 68-44 on Tuesday night to improve to 3-0 on the season. After chatting for a few minutes on the court afterwards, John Schultz excused himself because he had to warm up the bus for the trip home.

“It's amazing,” Peterson said. “Why would you not want him on your staff? All the experience he has, having the state run and back-to-back state titles.”

Sidney was a little kid when the Panthers had their championship run, and she was on the inside of it all.

“I was at all the practices,” she said. “I always tried to listen in on everything and take it all in as much as I could. I tried to learn from everything they did.”

Another key player on those teams was Sidney’s sister Jade, who now is a special education teacher at Maple River (while she misses a day of teaching this week, the substitute teacher will be her dad).

John has lots of wonderful memories from the Panthers’ state tournament experiences, including taking the court at Target Center.

“When we walked into Target Center for the very first time and that place was packed, that was breathtaking,” he said. “But the biggest thing was those kids. I had them from third grade on and they were the toughest kids I’ve ever seen. They were so fine with their roles, it didn’t matter what it was; they were so happy and proud of what they did for the team. We didn’t talk about scoring because everybody knew that we would score, we worried about defense and rebounding and things like that.”

The current players also had John Schultz as a coach before he returned to the bench. He worked with Sindey’s class beginning when they were in third grade, which helped make his return to the varsity staff seamless. John’s career record as a head coach is 225-58.

“He has a lot of knowledge and the girls are obviously comfortable with him since he's coached them for so many years,” Peterson said. “And it's always great to have another set of eyes, and more experienced eyes when he's coached way more games than I have. It's been really, really great.”

Sidney Schultz is the 13^th girls player from New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva to score at least 1,000 points. The list is a who’s-who of talented athletes, led by the top three of Carlie Wagner and her younger twin sisters, Maddie and Marnie. Jade Schultz is No. 5 on the list and current senior Sophie Stork is No. 12.

Sidney is a 5-foot-5 point guard who is talented, relentless and poised.

“She's an absolutely hardworking, extremely driven athlete,” Peterson said. “I want to call her a bruiser, but she has more finesse than that. But she's just tough and she has been that way since she was in seventh grade. She works extremely hard, she attacks the basket really well. She has a good three-point shot and as a point guard she sees her teammates well. She gets knocked down, she hops back up, kind of shakes it off and starts sprinting the length of the court.”

Sidney wore a big smile when posing for a postgame photo with her dad.

“I’m very used to it,” she said of being coached by her father. “It's actually comforting. I'm always looking for him to be there on the bench, cheering me on, and he's always there.”

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

 

John’s Journal: “The Other Side of Glory” Is A Glorious Read

 

I am in the midst of reading a Hemingway novel and it involves some heavy lifting. That fellow believed in using a massive amount of detail in his writing and it takes commitment – at least for me – to conquer those 470 pages. I will get there, but in the meantime a book arrived in the mail that I have been looking forward to reading.

In 2011, Carl Pierson wrote “The Politics of Coaching: A Survival Guide To Keep Coaches From Getting Burned.” It’s basically a manual for coaches, explaining lots of circumstances that coaches face and offers methods for dealing with them. I found it to be very well done.

Pierson’s next project, which I just received, is “The Other Side of Glory: A Team’s Quest for High School Girls Basketball History.” It is a compelling read about the Waconia Wildcats in 2019-20, the first season after Pierson stepped down as the team’s head coach.

While on a weekend family trip to Iowa, I began reading the book on Friday night and I didn’t put it down until I finished the last of its 242 pages. It is fast-paced, fun and extremely insightful.

I found it fitting to have read the book in Iowa, where I grew up watching high school girls play six-on-six basketball. (If you’ve never seen it, go to YouTube and type in “Iowa six on six girls basketball” and prepare to have your mind blown.)

Iowa girls began playing six-on-six in the 1920s and never stopped. In fact, for most of the 20^th century, including during my formative years, the Iowa girls state basketball tournament was bigger than the boys tournament and the state’s best female players were household names statewide. In Minnesota and most of the rest of the country, girls sports were shut down long ago and revived only with the passing of Title IX in 1972.

Pierson – a social studies teacher at Waconia High School, member of the Waconia City Council and executive director of the Minnesota Girls Basketball Coaches Association  -- does a great job of describing the history of Minnesota girls basketball, specifically in Waconia, where teams had so many state tournament near-misses over the years that the term "curse" was used. The book is a start-to-finish chronicle of Waconia’s 2019-2020 season and the Wildcats’ dream of becoming the first girls basketball team in school history to reach state.

Pierson offers plenty of superior behind-the-scenes storytelling and drama, from the locker room to the practice floor to bus rides and beyond. The book also includes lots of play-by-play details from games, which sometimes are literally basket-by-basket breakdowns. There are several references to officials and controversial calls (oddly, none of which apparently worked in the Wildcats’ favor).

There are precursors to this line of books, of course, most notably Buzz Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights” in 1990. Another one I enjoyed was Joe Drape’s “Our Boys” about a Kansas football team and published in 2009. I have seen very few books chronicling a season for a high schools girls team. If “The Other Side of Glory” is breaking new ground, it’s doing so in an impressive way.

There was something in the book that caught me by surprise: No players are identified by their real names. Instead, Pierson used the nicknames that all members of the team went by: Bird, Mel, Raptor, Salsa, Scrunchie, Snake, Ozzie, Rookie, Dozer, Sauce, etc. This was a bit disconcerting, at least for me, and seemed to make the individual players somewhat less genuine and human. Head coach Dusty Niebauer, assistant coach Ashley Westphal and school administrators are identified in full, but the players are basically anonymous to anyone not familiar with that specific team.

To be honest, I just don’t know what to make of that. I found it difficult to identify with the players when I didn’t know their names. I can’t imagine “Friday Night Lights” without fully identifying everyone in the story and going into depth on each of them, on the field and off. In reading “The Other Side of Glory,” I would have liked to learn more about the key players; basic things like their future goals, their parents’ professions, the size of their families, the classes they liked and disliked … just more depth into their lives. 

That being said, Pierson is the perfect person to tell this story. The father of two young children, he stepped down as the Waconia coach after the 2018-19 season, which ended in a heartbreaking one-point loss to Cooper in a section championship game. I wrote about Pierson’s teams on occasion over the years, including a stretch when his players, undersized but quick, raced up and down the court, shot threes with abandon and averaged nearly 95 points per game.

After Pierson stepped away, 15-year assistant Niebauer took over in 2019-20. Pierson knew Niebauer and the players very well and tells a tremendous tale of their season.

The foreward is written by University of Minnesota women’s basketball coach Lindsay Whalen, whose hometown of Hutchinson is 35 miles from Waconia. She wrote: “My journey and the journey of the Waconia girls basketball team shows us that if you persevere through adversity, stick together as a team, work through conflict, and have passion for the game you love, then anything is possible.”

That indeed is the great lesson of Pierson’s book.

With that, I’ll take some deep breaths, pack a lunch and get back to Hemingway. I don’t believe I’ll enjoy old Ernest as much as I enjoyed “The Other Side of Glory.”

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