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Cretin-Derham Hall, Shakopee are rebuilt football teams on edge of state quarterfinals

By Star Tribune, 11/02/17, 8:57PM CDT

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When Shakopee and Cretin-Derham Hall meet Friday, they will be trying to get back to the state quarterfinals under program-building coaches who were last there with different schools.


Cretin-Derham Hall football coach Brooks Bollinger worked with his team during practice Tuesday October 31,2017 in St. Paul , MN. ] JERRY HOLT ï jerry.holt@startribune.com

With friends such as Cretin-Derham Hall legends Matt Birk and Tim Rosga and another former Raider standout for a boss in Phil Archer, second-year coach Brooks Bollinger knows well the football program’s tradition.

There’s no escaping high expectations at home, either, with wife Natalie Roedler Bollinger, a 1998 Cretin-Derham Hall graduate. The Raiders haven’t reached the state quarterfinals since 2011 — an eternity for the once-elite program.

“Certainly the pressure is there,” Bollinger said, then joked, “I don’t want to be sleeping on the couch.”

He is serious about building the program with the values that helped him end a 24-year state tournament drought at Hill-Murray in 2011.

“All my focus from Day 1 has been enhancing the experience of our kids,” Bollinger said. “People think it’s coach-speak but I’ve seen it and lived it so many times — that’s what creates winning football.”

Tim Rosga, a 1995 Cretin-Derham Hall graduate who later played with Bollinger at Wisconsin, said the former Badgers’ quarterback “has a real good understanding of the blue-collar attitude our C-DH teams had.”

Led by Matthew Cunningham and James Williams, who Bollinger hailed as “two of the best high school captains I’ve seen,” the Raiders recovered after close losses against Totino-Grace and Blaine, won their past four games, earned a No. 1 seed and were randomly chosen to receive a first-round bye.

A year ago, Cretin-Derham Hall lost in the section final to 10-time state champion Eden Prairie. Playing a Shakopee team with much less pedigree doesn’t give Bollinger any added confidence.

“There are about three or four teams that are a little bit better and then everybody else has enough talent to beat you in any game,” he said.

Birk joked that he and other alumni “will evaluate [Bollinger’s] lofty coaching salary after this season to see if he needs a raise or pay cut.”

“I only give Brooksie a hard time because I know what he’s about,” said Birk, a former Vikings’ teammate. “I feel like he was put on this earth to be a high school football coach.”

Archer, who keeps a Class 6A playoff bracket in his athletic director’s office, considers Bollinger the right coach at the right time.

“It’s a great matchup of a school’s values and a person who can pull them out of the kids,” Archer said.

DAVID LA VAQUE

Three years into his tenure as the head football coach at Shakopee, Ray Betton finally can start sweating the small things.

Before that, there were too many big things to worry about.

“When you build programs, there are so many things that need to be done,” Betton said. “The little things that programs like Eden Prairie do? You can’t focus on those because you’re trying to build something bigger. We were still trying to develop things like common sense, football IQ.”

After consecutive one-win seasons, Betton’s system is starting to pay off. The Sabers are 5-4 and coming off a 27-8 victory over Eastview in the first round of the Class 6A playoffs. It was their first postseason victory since 2010.

Betton has developed a reputation as a program-builder. He was a head coach at Simley, amassing a 24-16 record over four years, before spending a year as the first head coach for then-new East Ridge in 2009. He left to take over Holy Angels in 2010, compiling a five-year record of 35-19, before leaving for Shakopee.

“I love Holy Angels, but we didn’t have a feeder program,” Betton said. “I wanted a 6A program that had some opportunity for growth but was willing to go through some lean years. Shakopee was a great fit. The community loves football.”

Given the growth of the area — high school enrollment is up 50 percent in the past decade — Betton saw plenty of potential. What he didn’t expect was a marked lack of size needed for a successful football program.

“There weren’t a lot of big kids in Shakopee. It blew my mind,” he said with a chuckle. “I thought there might be some 6-4, 260-pound kids just walking around the halls but that wasn’t true at all.”

Betton, who holds the title of district integration supervisor for excellence in equity in the Shakopee school district, traversed the halls at the high school, selling the football program.

“I asked every boy in the school to come out for football,” he said. “I was going to lunch tables, everything.”

After two rough seasons, things at Shakopee are trending up. Players have adjusted to Betton’s rule and guidelines for how he wants them to present themselves and they’re more comfortable with the demand of his read-option offense.

“You can see it now,” Betton said. “They get it now. And they’re starting to get all the little things you couldn’t do before because big things had to be taken care of.”

JIM PAULSEN

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