MONDAY MOANIN . . . . .
Take note Detroit Lions - Ishpeming coach Jeff Olson's success was decades in the makin
Ishpeming coach Jeff Olson during the second half of the Division 7 title win over Detroit Loyola on Nov. 30, 2013, at Ford Field. / Jarrad
Meet Jeff Olson
Who: Ishpeming football coach.Age: 50.
Claim to fame: Has guided the Hematites to back-to-back Division 7 state football titles. Has lost only four games in the past four years. Has coached Ishpeming for 22 seasons.
The best football coaches teach their players how to follow intricate plans while ignoring pain. They are part psychologist, part strategist and part soothsayer.
We have notions about what the men who combine these traits ought to sound like. I suspect this is partly why Jim Caldwell didn’t stir up much anticipation last week when the Lions announced his hiring. Fans remember his stoic demeanor on the sidelines in Indianapolis.
Yet you never know when a coach lands in the perfect spot. It’s hard to imagine Jeff Olson thought he’d still be in Ishpeming when that high school hired him to lead its football team 22 years ago.
But here he is, the toast of the Upper Peninsula. Olson’s team won back-to-back Division 7 state titles the past two seasons. He has lost four games in the past four years.
He has done this with kids who aren’t especially big or fast or athletic, at least not relative to the competition. And he has done this from an iron-mining town near the shores of Lake Superior, a place that didn’t have a particular football tradition when he got there.
Olson figured out how to make the mundane meaningful. He convinced a few dozen teenagers that winter lifting and summer conditioning make a difference on Friday nights in the fall. And he held their attention in practice after practice, repeating the same plays, the same stance, the same technique.
“It’s not fun in practice going over and over the same things,” Olson said. “We try to have some fun. We aren’t afraid to make jokes.”
Olson wasn’t secure enough to bring so much levity to the routine when he was younger. He didn’t see the game as well when he started, either.
“I’m a little smarter now,” the 50-year-old said.
His run of success is a distillation of three decades’ effort. Toss out what doesn’t work. Refine what does. His teams were competitive when he took over in Ishpeming in the early 1990s.
“But nothing like we have now,” he said. “It takes a long time to build that up.”
No Lions fan wants to hear this football truism, of course. A half-century should be enough to build a winner.
Certainly high school football and the NFL have little in common. Top-flight players are essential in the pros. So is a quarterback. Talent isn’t as crucial in high school, where coaches like Olson can convince a community to turn its kids over to a program year-round. But the key is understanding players, whether it’s high school or the NFL.
Olson doesn’t run a complicated scheme as much as he teaches his kids how to recognize opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.
“I don’t think anyone around knows the game better than Jeff Olson,” said Dean Dompierre, a fifth-grade science teacher in the Ishpeming district and whose son played for Olson.
Dompierre taught most of the kids that went on to win state titles on Olson’s team. He also knew them as friends of his son. His relationship with his former students gave him more insight into the program than watching from the stands ever could.
“He’s like a second father to a lot of these kids,” Dompierre said. “I talk to them quite a bit. He expects a lot from them. He understands kids. He understands what motivates them. He helps them (become) more than what they think they can become. Once they realize he’s right, they will do anything for him.”
Two years ago, Olson’s son committed suicide after a long battle with depression. Daniel Olson was 19 when he took his life. He had been the quarterback on his father’s team as a senior.
That 2010 squad made the state title game, too, but lost by two points. When Ishpeming returned to the final at Ford Field in 2012, the players wanted to win it for the memory of Daniel, and for his father, their coach, who had showed them it was possible for a team from the woods of upper Michigan to get all the way to Detroit.
“I thought of (Daniel) a lot during that game,” Olson said. “His presence was there. He had something to do with (that win).”
This past November, when Ishpeming returned and beat Detroit Loyola for the second time, Olson said the experience was different. This time, the game was about his team, his coaches, and the foundation he laid over two decades.
“I looked in the stands, I studied Ford Field, I took it all in,” Olson said.
The year before, in his grief, he barely remembered the 8-hour bus ride home. Two months ago, he savored it, from the stop in Gaylord where the team and its two buses of fans met for a buffet dinner, to the caravan that began near Munising, along Highway 28, where a couple of sheriff’s deputy cars and local police and fire trucks led the team through its city.
From there, Olson and his team rode west, picking up more troopers and police in Marquette, and more Upper Peninsula football fans in their cars. By the time the team reached its high school in Ishpeming, a trail of supporters stretched back a mile.
“The whole U.P. celebrated,” Dompierre said.
Then tried to cram into Congress Pizza in downtown Ishpeming to toast the players and coach.
It’s easy to imagine a similar scenario playing out along Woodward if the Lions ever find their way out of the woods. On the surface, we have no reason to believe Caldwell’s hiring will be any different than any number of former Lions coaches who tried to do what Olson has done in Ishpeming.
Yet Caldwell seems to understand football players, and no matter what level, this is a most crucial place to start.
We have notions about what the men who combine these traits ought to sound like. I suspect this is partly why Jim Caldwell didn’t stir up much anticipation last week when the Lions announced his hiring. Fans remember his stoic demeanor on the sidelines in Indianapolis.
Yet you never know when a coach lands in the perfect spot. It’s hard to imagine Jeff Olson thought he’d still be in Ishpeming when that high school hired him to lead its football team 22 years ago.
But here he is, the toast of the Upper Peninsula. Olson’s team won back-to-back Division 7 state titles the past two seasons. He has lost four games in the past four years.
He has done this with kids who aren’t especially big or fast or athletic, at least not relative to the competition. And he has done this from an iron-mining town near the shores of Lake Superior, a place that didn’t have a particular football tradition when he got there.
Olson figured out how to make the mundane meaningful. He convinced a few dozen teenagers that winter lifting and summer conditioning make a difference on Friday nights in the fall. And he held their attention in practice after practice, repeating the same plays, the same stance, the same technique.
“It’s not fun in practice going over and over the same things,” Olson said. “We try to have some fun. We aren’t afraid to make jokes.”
Olson wasn’t secure enough to bring so much levity to the routine when he was younger. He didn’t see the game as well when he started, either.
“I’m a little smarter now,” the 50-year-old said.
His run of success is a distillation of three decades’ effort. Toss out what doesn’t work. Refine what does. His teams were competitive when he took over in Ishpeming in the early 1990s.
“But nothing like we have now,” he said. “It takes a long time to build that up.”
No Lions fan wants to hear this football truism, of course. A half-century should be enough to build a winner.
Certainly high school football and the NFL have little in common. Top-flight players are essential in the pros. So is a quarterback. Talent isn’t as crucial in high school, where coaches like Olson can convince a community to turn its kids over to a program year-round. But the key is understanding players, whether it’s high school or the NFL.
Olson doesn’t run a complicated scheme as much as he teaches his kids how to recognize opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.
“I don’t think anyone around knows the game better than Jeff Olson,” said Dean Dompierre, a fifth-grade science teacher in the Ishpeming district and whose son played for Olson.
Dompierre taught most of the kids that went on to win state titles on Olson’s team. He also knew them as friends of his son. His relationship with his former students gave him more insight into the program than watching from the stands ever could.
“He’s like a second father to a lot of these kids,” Dompierre said. “I talk to them quite a bit. He expects a lot from them. He understands kids. He understands what motivates them. He helps them (become) more than what they think they can become. Once they realize he’s right, they will do anything for him.”
Two years ago, Olson’s son committed suicide after a long battle with depression. Daniel Olson was 19 when he took his life. He had been the quarterback on his father’s team as a senior.
That 2010 squad made the state title game, too, but lost by two points. When Ishpeming returned to the final at Ford Field in 2012, the players wanted to win it for the memory of Daniel, and for his father, their coach, who had showed them it was possible for a team from the woods of upper Michigan to get all the way to Detroit.
“I thought of (Daniel) a lot during that game,” Olson said. “His presence was there. He had something to do with (that win).”
This past November, when Ishpeming returned and beat Detroit Loyola for the second time, Olson said the experience was different. This time, the game was about his team, his coaches, and the foundation he laid over two decades.
“I looked in the stands, I studied Ford Field, I took it all in,” Olson said.
The year before, in his grief, he barely remembered the 8-hour bus ride home. Two months ago, he savored it, from the stop in Gaylord where the team and its two buses of fans met for a buffet dinner, to the caravan that began near Munising, along Highway 28, where a couple of sheriff’s deputy cars and local police and fire trucks led the team through its city.
From there, Olson and his team rode west, picking up more troopers and police in Marquette, and more Upper Peninsula football fans in their cars. By the time the team reached its high school in Ishpeming, a trail of supporters stretched back a mile.
“The whole U.P. celebrated,” Dompierre said.
Then tried to cram into Congress Pizza in downtown Ishpeming to toast the players and coach.
It’s easy to imagine a similar scenario playing out along Woodward if the Lions ever find their way out of the woods. On the surface, we have no reason to believe Caldwell’s hiring will be any different than any number of former Lions coaches who tried to do what Olson has done in Ishpeming.
Yet Caldwell seems to understand football players, and no matter what level, this is a most crucial place to start.
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