Program Profile: Spring Grove
The Evolution of a Champion
When Spring Grove football coach Zach Hauser took over the Lions’ football program, he was just out of college, and the program was coming off a three-win season. Four years later they evolved into a state tournament team. They seemed to be on their way to multiple championships, but because of a huge 9-Man hurdle in their own backyard, the program was forced to continue its evolution. Now, the program is coming off back to back championships and is poised to stay one of the best programs in the state for years to come.
Hauser grew up in nearby Caledonia.
“Football has always been my favorite sport to play,” Hauser said. “I have an older brother who is seven years older than me. He was a quarterback for Caledonia. I always looked up to him. I got into sports by watching and learning from him.”
A successful playing career looked like it was a foregone conclusion.
“I started as a junior as a safety and also played some wide receiver,” Hauser explained. “I had been a quarterback my whole life, but we had a quarterback who was a three-year starter who was a year older than me, so I switched positions my junior year. I was going to be the quarterback my senior year, but I suffered a spinal cord injury the first week we could have contact. I had a head to head collision where I was left temporarily paralyzed from the neck down for forty-five minutes.”
In an instant, Hauser’s football path drastically changed.
“The doctors never let me play football again. What really shook me up was not being able to be out there with my teammates. I was a seventeen or eighteen-year-old kid who couldn’t be out there with his buddies who I had worked hard with in the offseason, hoping to accomplish some goals that we had set for the season.”
Hauser was relegated to watching practice and games from the sidelines the rest of the season. Although his playing career was over, his career in football was just getting started.
“I started coaching youth baseball when I was fifteen, and I am coaching my own kids now. Going along with teaching I knew coaching was going to be good for my career, so I have just stuck with it since I had a job with the park and rec when I was fifteen years old.”
Hauser continued to coach even through college.
“For a while, I coached youth football in Caledonia while I was in college at Wisconsin-La Crosse. After I graduated with a Phy. Ed and health degree, I subbed for a year and then got hired at Spring Grove.”
Hauser was hired as a teacher and an assistant football coach.
“I had never watched a 9-man football game before. I didn’t call the offense or the defense,” Hauser said, “I oversaw the JV team and scout team defense – those types of things. It was a good experience not to take over right away. I was able to collect some things that I liked about the program and see some things I would want to change. I got to learn the 9-man game.”
Hauser was hired as the head coach one year later. He lacked experience but had played under two coaching legends.
“Carl Fruechte would be my number one influence for sure. He does an amazing job with everyone he works with. You can tell how much he cares about each athlete that comes through there, and it shows in how hard they work for him. I teach in Caledonia and have a couple of boys going through the program right now. It is great to be around Coach Fruechte and have my kids be doing some of the stuff I was doing when I was younger too.”
“Kris Fadness – who is the Austin boys’ basketball coach now – was my basketball coach,” said Hauser, who was cleared to play basketball but not football after his injury. “When I was a sophomore, we won the state championship – it wasn’t because of me, we had a great senior class – but he was a great coach in how he went about his business during practices influenced me as well.”
The evolution begins
The Lions’ program needed some changes before it would become one of the most consistent programs in the state.
“We struggled and went 2-7 my first year as head coach,” Hauser explained. “We won our first two games against a couple of teams out west kind of from weaker competition, and then we lost every conference game the rest of the way. Our third year we went .500 and won a playoff game. They were little stepping-stones each year. Our fifth year, we went to State.”
The long-term improvement of the program started from day one. When Hauser took over, one of the first things he did was put a focus on youth football in Spring Grove.
Zach Hauser photo from Bluff County Reader“You could just tell we were struggling with blocking and tackling with our younger guys,” Hauser recalled. “That showed through our upperclassmen as well. The first thing I did was do some fundraisers for some cheap pads. Our youth program has been pretty strong ever since.”
The next step was to focus on the junior high program.
“At the time, our junior high program was combined with Mabel-Canton, so our kids got bussed to Mabel-Canton every day. They were coached by the junior high coaches there who did a great job, but they were running all their plays. Kids didn’t run any Spring Grove offense until they were in high school. It took some time, but we got the junior high program going in Spring Grove. Getting the youth program going and getting the junior high program back in Spring Grove were two big steps toward the success we have had.”
His former coach also had a hand in Spring Grove’s continued improvement.
“Caledonia had a nice blueprint of how Coach Fruechte was doing things,” Hauser explained. “I got a weight program going, and I had a good class that dedicated themselves to the weight room. The next class followed, and I think once you get the ball rolling and kids realize the results you get from lifting it speaks for itself. It is expected of them, and they go in there and work hard, and they see the results on the field and the basketball court and everything.”
Things didn’t get rolling right away. The young coach had to find schemes that would work for the program.
“We started as a run heavy team,” Hauser said. “I continued to do the offense we had had there when I was an assistant. We ran the Wing T. After a few years we were kind of a Wing T, Power I formation, play action team kind of like Caledonia. Over the course of the last five or six years, we’ve been completely spread.”
The defense – and new coach – also went through many early starts and restarts.
“I was trying to figure things out as a young coach, and we dabbled in playing a four-man front or a three-man front and even a five-man front. When you are losing games, and things aren’t working, you just keep trying new things and usually when you are doing that you are creating confusion with players who are already struggling. I wasn’t helping them out, but I thought I needed to keep trying things.”
About three years in, Hauser found a defense that worked.
“I really liked the idea of a 3-3 stack for stopping the run. It focuses on a lot of slanting that causes a lot of confusion amongst the offensive line. At the time, most of the teams in our league were run-heavy offenses. We had been giving up 300 yards a game on the ground and since we went to this, the combination of our athletes being in the weight room and being dedicated to football we cut our opponents rushing yards in half. We have been running the same basic defense for the last eight or nine years.”
It didn’t take the program long to become a powerful program.
“The first time we went to State was in 2011,” Hauser said. “I remember talking to those kids as freshmen. They were a big group, and I told them if they stick together and work hard, you might be playing in the state tournament one day. They did everything they could over the next few years to make that happen.”
Hauser thought he saw success coming just before the state tournament run.
“The year before we went to State, we ended up being the two seed in the playoffs,” Hauser told northstarfootballnews.com. “We beat Lanesboro during the regular season, but then they beat us on our home field in the playoffs. They ended up taking second at the state tournament. Starting with that loss in 2010, we haven’t lost to a team that hasn’t made it to the state title game.”
Rivalry forces continued evolution
Although they were having success, an opponent forced the Lions to make offensive adjustments.
“The running game was our bread and butter and how we were winning games,” Hauser explained. “We thought this was what could get us to a state title. It turned out Grand Meadow was better at that than we were,” Hauser admitted. “They were more physical, bigger, and stronger than us at that time. We knew we couldn’t keep banging our heads against the wall. We were playing Grand Meadow tough, but we lacked the ability to be more creative.”
“Our offensive coordinator – Kody Moore – had a lot of good ideas in the passing game and the offensive line coach and I do a lot with the run game,” Hauser continued. “It was a combination of a lot of guys who put in a lot of time and love the sport. The spread gives you more options and gets more kids involved and uses your athletes better. Spring Grove had a good tradition of good basketball teams, so when we could use some of that height and speed that we had; it put the defense on their heels.”
Grand Meadow was about to start their historic winning streak. Just before, the Lions’ and Superlarks’ rivalry began.
“When our rivalry started, we weren’t very good for those first three years,” Hauser said. “By the next year, we would have some battles every time we played them. They would come down to the last few minutes of the game. The year we first went to State, we beat them twice. The next year we beat them in the regular season, but then they beat us in the section championship at our place. It was up to nine straight losses to them – those were our only nine losses. The kids, all they could think about was beating Grand Meadow, that was their goal. To lose nine times in a row, it started to wear on the players and the coaches. ‘Are we ever going to be able to get this done?’. It was a good feeling to beat them on our field two years ago (in the section semi-finals) and then when we beat them in the regular season (in 2018) it was the first time I had ever beaten them on their field in the twelve years I had been coaching.”
Two years ago, the Lions won their first state title.
“The first year we won it, the group of seniors were just grinders,” Hauser said. “They had it in their mind that they were going to win the state championship, and nothing was going to stop them. The team was made up of mostly seniors with a few key juniors.”
Hauser and his staff had been grinders too and cherished the first title, but like most coaches, the Lions’ head man’s thoughts went to his current and former players.
“I was happy for the players and all the hard work they had put in. I also felt bad for the players who came before and came so close all those years. We had teams just as good as the first state title team. Some were just as talented and worked just as hard. I felt bad for those teams who worked that hard, put in the time but just couldn’t get it done.”
This season, the eventual repeat champions had some familiar faces but a whole new look.
“Coming back, we were looking at three guys coming back as starters from the championship team,” Hauser said. “We picked up three players that hadn’t played football in a long time. All three of those players started and were huge contributors along with the younger guys.”
Evolving into the future
They lost three key players off the back-to-back title teams but should be solid again in 2019.
“We lost a big group of seniors, but our offensive line will have all but one person back. Wyatt Murphy is our center, and Kyle Haugen will be back starting on the offensive line. Tristan Hammel has a lot of experience for us and will probably step in at guard. That is huge for us. Tyler Kersten will be back at running back. He has quite a bit of speed, and he might play wide receiver and pair him with Caden Grinde who has good size at receiver. Chandler Bergrud is going to be a senior, and he will be our quarterback. (Former quarterback) Alex Folz would get busy in the summers so Bergrud has had good experience at camps being the starting quarterback as well as seven on seven where he has been the guy working with our players.”
Chandler Bergrud photo from postbulletin.comHauser has a solid core of coaches to help him prepare the new team for the upcoming season.
“Moore is in the school and can communicate with the players during the day. He is our offensive coordinator and calls the plays. Aric Elton is our strength coordinator. He also coaches our linebackers. We have a couple of line coaches that work together as a team – Kaare “Butch” Sanness and Don Hagen have been our line coaches for the past five or six years.”
Elton was a senior on the first State team. He was a tackling machine as a player and is a big reason the weight training program has grown.
“Our guys are in the weight room basically year-round working with Aric,” Hauser said. “Having a guy like that has been huge for our program.”
On the practice field, the football classroom is almost as important as the practice field.
“We try to make everything as game-like as possible,” the former Caledonia Warriors multi-sport athlete said. “I preach to the guys we want to do everything like we are playing a game or are preparing to play a game. The other thing is we watch a ton of film with the kids – our film and our next opponent’s film.”
Before the kids see any film, the coaches need time to break it down. When is it the best time for the coaches to break down film at Spring Grove? While future Lions are learning the game.
“When I first got the youth program going it was the varsity guys and me,” Hauser said. “We would do some stuff on Saturday mornings. The second year we got into a league and got some more coaches working with the kids after school. For our kindergartners through third graders – we have a tradition on Monday. The varsity runs the kids’ practice. It is a good opportunity for those kids to start liking football. These guys they look up to are working with them. The coaches then use that time for game prep for the next week. When they are done with the youth practice, the varsity guys come in, and we do film work with them. Getting the kids to like football and having their role models helping them – we have K-12 school, so the young guys see the varsity guys walking the hallways with their jerseys on Fridays. It is neat that they work with those guys on Mondays and they know their names.”
As Hauser started to know more names of people in the Spring Grove community, the easier his job and the better the program became.
“As a beginning coach I didn’t feel like I could ask for anything – I just had to do everything on my own,” Hauser said. “I wish I would have known earlier to use the resources. There are people there who want to help. They maybe just don’t know where you need it. I found people I could trust to run the youth program – people doing the right things with the young guys. They don’t just teach the kids; they teach the younger dads. The booster club is so supportive of all the sports in Spring Grove.”
Be it X’s and O’s, working with the kids or working with the community, Hauser has evolved as a football coach. Along with their coach, the Lions’ football program has evolved too – evolved into champions.