Program Profile: Pierz Pioneers
For nearly twenty years, the Pierz Pioneers have been a force on the football field in the state of Minnesota. For all those twenty years, head coach Leo Pohlkamp has been at the helm. After last season’s state semi-final finish – their sixth straight trip to State – Pohlkamp decided to retire. Stepping into the large shoes of Pohlkamp will be long-time Pioneers’ assistant coach Dan Saehr.
While it is always hard to follow a coaching legend, Saehr has many things going in his favor. One of the biggest is a student body that sets high standards for the football program – standards they continue to live up to.
Starting young
Although there were questions if Saehr was going to get on the football field at all, more than almost anyone, Saehr knows what is important in the Pierz football program.
“I wasn’t sure if my parents were going to let me play football,” Saehr said. “I only had one kidney. After talking to a few doctors, they let me play, and I played quarterback under Leo Pohlkamp. I was going to play college football at Central Lakes College, but I hurt my arm.”
Although his playing career ended with high school – his coaching career was about to get started.
“I was eighteen years old, and I started coaching. I have to give a huge thanks to Coach Pohlkamp for getting me into it. Leo asked if I wanted to come help at a scrimmage,” Saehr said. “I went to help, and I had so much fun. The rest is history. I have been coaching in Pierz ever since. I was an assistant under Leo for seventeen years.”
Pohlkamp saw something in the former quarterback.
“I had and still have a ton of passion for football,” Saehr explained. “I watched a ton of film with kids after practice and had volunteer coached for four or five years, and I had no problem with it. To me, it was fun. I am assuming he trusted me because I went through his program and I think he knew I – and a lot of the assistant coaches – had a lot of pride in Pioneer football. He loved having his own people on his staff, so like he used to say he doesn’t have to coach his coaches.”
Where Saehr ended up on the Pioneers’ coaching staff made as much sense as bringing an 18-year old kid on as a volunteer assistant, both moves could not have worked out better.
“We do offensive breakdown and defensive breakdown, and with our size school we do both,” Saehr explained. “We don’t have 150 kids on the team. In high school, I would go with the defensive backs. I loved it because there is so much strategy on that side of the ball.”
As a quarterback, Saehr did not see much time in games on the defensive side of the ball.
“I played very little defense in high school, but two or three years after I started helping, I started working with the defensive backs,” Saehr said. “When I was twenty-two years old, Leo asked me if I wanted to be the defensive coordinator. I jumped at it. I had helped on that side of the ball – working with the defensive backs – and I have been defensive coordinator ever since. Leo always let his coaches coach, and I was fortunate to be on the other end of that.”
Playing and coaching under Pohlkamp nearly his entire life, Saehr was bound to pick up a few things from his coaching mentor.
Dan Saehr and Leo Pohlkamp photo from Castbox“The biggest thing I learned from him was the importance of the kids being good people. He took a ton of pride in his program. He wanted to win, but he preached to the kids about being good people. To be an athlete and to be a good person, you need to be disciplined, you have to work hard, and you have to do things the right way. At a young age, a lot of people get caught up in winning, but he put an importance on being a good person. If you do that a lot of other things take care of themselves.”
“In 2003 we went to the state semis, the year after we won the state title and since then we have been fortunate to make some special runs to the state tournament,” the former Pioneers’ quarterback said.
Much of the program’s success goes to Pohlkamp, but the football program is truly a team of the community.
“It has been a community effort,” Saehr explained. “When you have a great leader at the helm like Leo Pohlkamp, he got everybody involved. He instilled a type of pride in the community all the way to the elementary kids. They all take pride in Pioneer football. Year in and year out the expectations are so high now that kids expect to get to the next level and the last fifteen years – the runs that we have made – when you go farther, you get to practice more. If you play in the state tournament, you are guaranteed four more weeks of practice. The underclassmen also get four more weeks of practice. If you get a senior who has played on two really good teams – he might have had an extra month or two of practices.”
If it ain’t broke, tweak it, don’t fix it
“We have always been a run-first offense,” Saehr said. “We feel like we are going to run the ball until someone stops us. We’ve changed up formations over the years based on our talent, but we also believe if we are hanging on to the ball, the other team can’t score. On the defensive side, we have changed many times because of the evolution of offenses. When I first started coaching, almost every team played power football, so we played a 5-2 defense. Now we have gone to a 3-4 and sometimes a 4-4. We try to be aggressive on defense and try to be in attack mode.”
The schemes may have changed slightly over the years, but on the practice field, the emphasis has stayed the same.
“Do your job and be disciplined. We say that over and over,” Saehr said. “If you do that and play hard and get beat; we tip our hat to the opponent.”
“We emphasize the little things. They matter so much – especially in big games,” Saehr continued. “Things like as an offensive lineman – getting their head on the right side of a guy. As a quarterback – carrying out their fakes; running backs finishing a run or a lineman finishing their block. Your defensive back jumping a route. I could go on and on, but it is the game within the game. They are things that nobody sees unless you watch it on film. We stress and praise kids for doing the little things. If you are going to stress it, you have to praise it.”
The football program also praises the three-sport athlete.
“We encourage kids to be three-sport athletes,” Saehr told northstarfootballnews.com. “In the summer we do very few football things. We have been fortunate to have some good teams in other sports in Pierz. We do a two-day camp, and the kids have their own captain’s practices, but Leo always believed not to overdo it because you want kids coming in excited and fresh in August.”
Although the kids don’t focus on football in the offseason, that doesn’t mean they are not gaining valuable experience that will help the team once they are back on the football field.
“We focus on getting kids out for football, getting kids in the weight room and getting kids to be three-sport athletes,” the St. Cloud State graduate said. “When you have a kid who in eighth grade goes to the state tournament in wrestling, and then a few years later he is playing in the section football playoffs, he has been there and done that already. If kids are in pressure situations when they are younger – when they are older – it is not stressful anymore.”
The emphasis on the overall athlete starts at the youngest levels.
“Pat Watercott has been the junior high coach for something like 25 years and does an excellent job. He gets kids excited about playing football,” Saehr said. “He encourages them to come to the games on Friday nights. We have a 3rd-6th-grade program. They practice four of five times during the season and the last practice they get to play at halftime of one of the varsity games. We have never put elementary kids in pads. We didn’t want kids to be intimidated at a young age – having a 60-pound kid playing against a 160-pound kid. The biggest goal is to get kids excited about playing high school football.”
The town of Pierz is excited about high school football too.
“The community is a great place to live and raise a family in,” Saehr – who is also the head baseball coach – said. “The community is very supportive. Yes, they have high expectations, but those expectations are good for everybody. They come out on Friday night. We have volunteers grilling hamburgers at games. During the week, people are asking about the team and are very football suave. We have a lot of parents who used to play for Pierz whose kids are playing now. That helps carry on the tradition we have had.”
The community of Pierz has had a tremendous athletic tradition – not just on the football field.
“We had a stretch three or four years ago where we had three or four kids that competed in ten or eleven state tournaments. That was the kids’ expectations. It is fun to be around. Other kids see that, and they don’t all have the same success, but the kids and the community have so much pride in our programs.”
Following a legend
There is a saying in the coaching world that says something like this, ‘you don’t want to be the guy who follows the guy. You want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows the guy’. There is no doubt Pohlkamp was the guy in Pierz.
“Obviously I have huge shoes to fill, and you don’t come in and fill them in one year. I just have to be myself. I am not going to come in and make wholesale changes. We have a system that works. I am going to make a few changes, but the majority of what we do is going to stay the same. There is pressure, but I truly don’t feel it because we have such a good support group of coaches. Leo is going to be there if I need help. I think you have to do what you do.”
Part of the reason Saehr – who used to teach in the school system, but for the last three years has been working with his dad who runs a gravel company – says he doesn’t feel pressure is because of his coaching staff.
Image from mnhshp.com“There has been a consistent coaching staff. Leo had been there as an assistant and a head coach for almost 40 years. Rich Sczublewski has been there for nearly as long as Leo. He helps with our special teams and our kickers. He also works with the JV, but he is one of those guys that you can bounce anything off him at any time. Coach Sczublewski is very good with kids. Dave Rocheleau (who is also the Pierz athletic director) has been there for twenty-plus years and is our offensive coordinator and line coach. I believe he is one of the best line coach in the state. No matter how many kids we graduate, our line has been good year in and year out. Four of us have been here and been together for almost twenty years. A handful of assistants have been here for another ten years. That makes it so much easier because everybody already knows what is going on.
“Jim Strohmeier – was a coach at Central Lakes College ” Saehr continued. “He is a very knowledgeable guy. He is an offensive guy, but he helps all over. Corey Egan – I was fortunate enough to have coached him, and now he is coaching and teaching at the school. He is a very good football mind and great with kids. Andy Leidenfrost, Scott Saehr, Jeremy Monson, Scott Herold, and Andrew Bowman are also coaches in the program and take a lot of Pride in Pioneer Football. The kids feed off the passion from our coaches.”
Like most seasons, the coaches will have a solid group to build around this fall.
“We have a talented senior class coming back. They are good kids and hard workers. Peter Schommer, Isaac Otte, Zach Traut, and Matthias Algarin are our four captains. They are all great kids. They are not all vocal leaders, but they all lead by example. The captain talk after every single game and every single practice, and that is between them and the players. It gives those guys some ownership. We have several other seniors and even some juniors who are going to be good leaders for us.”
They are leaders who understand the legacy they are in charge of continuing.
“We always tell kids the expectations are high,” Saehr said. “The kids before you set those expectations for you, and we hope that they can fill those shoes.”
Few student bodies have been able to continually fill those shoes as successfully and for as long of a time as the athletes in Pierz. They continue to set the program’s standards high for each other and keep meeting the challenge.