Brothers

Isaac Kolstad helped lead Minnesota onto the field at Blakeslee Stadium

Sitting down to blog about what happened at Blakelee Stadium during our season-opening game two weeks ago on Sept. 4, the biggest challenge the writer faces is to adequately convey the feeling of emotion that was felt that night.

How does one describe a five-hour lump in the throat that started from the moment you saw Isaac Kolstad in the parking lot adjacent to the football field?

Having not seen him since before that fateful night in May when he suffered severe head trauma in an assault that took place in downtown Mankato and although you've read the updates on his CaringBridge site, your frame of reference is skewed by the last time you saw him play football for Minnesota State.  That would have been back last December when the Mavericks hosted St. Cloud State in the second round of the NCAA play-offs. Isaac had nine tackles in what would be the last game of his college football career.

Isaac starred at Mankato East High School and after heading to Fargo to play for North Dakota State, he returned to his hometown where he was a three-year starting linebacker for Minnesota State. He completed his Maverick career with 182 tackles while becoming a leader on a team that ascended to the top of the NCAA DII heap.  The Mavericks rode an undefeated regular season and a #1-ranking into the postseason before falling to SCSU in that play-off game. He graduated last Christmas and began working for Fastenal here in town.

Given where he was initially after the incident (on life support and in a coma for three weeks), his recovery has been nothing short of unbelievable. "He wakes up every morning saying, 'I want to go home. But I know I have to get better," said Molly, his wife, who spoke at a pre-game press conference. "It's a miracle, that's all I can say," said Molly.

Isaac continues his  rehabilitation at an in-patient facility in the Twin Cities and his speech therapy is a work in progress.

As the game neared, Isaac helped lead the team toward the field, walking onto the natural-grass turf as they always do on the northwest, scoreboard end of the stadium. The team surrounded him and one of the players (I think it was senior wide receiver Keyvan Rudd, who led the chant), began getting the team fired up.  Since the team had engulfed him in the center of the group, we lost sight of Isaac.  But one of our videographers had a camera mounted on the end of a monopod and in the video you can see Isaac chanting along with everyone else.

The crowd, our largest ever for an opening game, was loud.  So loud you felt like you could reach out and touch it. It felt like a living thing. There was electricity that made the hair on your arms stand up and your heart was pounding so cartoonishly hard that you began to look for Jeff Chambers, the school's athletic trainer. Just in case.

Then the players did something they've never done.  Led by Isaac, who was arm-in-arm with his teammates, the Mavericks went to the center of the field.  They never do that. Not pre-game. This was something unplanned that just happened organically.  The crowd continued its ear-busting drone and I took a quick glance at the St. Cloud State sideline.  The Huskies, like everyone else in the stadium, were applauding. Again, impossibly, the emotion goes up another notch.

I had two thoughts at that point.  Number one....there's no way we're going to lose this game.  And number two....Isaac is with his brothers. He's home and it feels incredibly right.

The win was never in doubt, with the Mavericks rolling over SCSU 31-0. It ended when the players accepted the Travelling Training Kit as victors and headed straight to sideline where they presented it to their smiling brother.

I can't wait to see Isaac again.

#22Strong

Proving Ground: Gretta, Brittany, Dax & Michelle

While MavBlog isn't necessarily all about the transactions agate one will see online or in the local paper, it does provide the opportunity to keep everyone aprised as to where staff affiliated with Minnesota State Athletics, both past and present, is coming and going.

This is one of those posts.

First off, Gretta Arvesen. The former Minnesota State women's soccer assistant coach, who joined Peter McGahey's staff at Central Michigan when he went there from MSU in the spring of 2013, has been named head coach of the women's soccer program at St. Cloud State. Arvesen was a member of MSU coaching staff beginning in 2008 and helped the Mavericks get to four NCAA tournaments, while winning a pair of league titles. SCSU's announcement regarding Gretta's hiring appears HERE.

There there's Brittany Henderson.  A Milwaukee, Wis., native, Henderson was named MSU’s Senior Female Athlete of the Year for 2009-10 after a track & field career that saw her rack up 14 All-America placings. The owner of three school indoor records (60m, 200m, 4x400m) and three outdoor school records (100m, 200m, 4x100m), she was a four-time indoor conference champion and won four conference outdoor crowns.

After earning a master's degree in sociology, Henderson joined the MSU athletics department when she was named Academic Coordinator in August of 2012. She recently took a position with George Washington University Athletics where the Colonials are members of NCAA Division I and the Atlantic 10 Conference.

A former undergraduate and graduate assistant with MSU Athletic Communications, Dax Larson has been named Director of Sports Information & Media Relations at Colorado State-Pueblo.

Larson, a Bloomington, Minn., native who earned a master's degree from Minnesota State in 2009, has spent the last five years as the Assistant Director of Athletic Media Relations at Bemidji State.

And Michelle Beck, who has served as MSU Athletics Director of Marketing and Special events the last year and half, has been named Assistant Commissioner for external relations and marketing with the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference.  In that role she will help build the NSIC brand and work with league marketing initiatives and corporate sponsorships.

"I absolutely loved coming up through the program," said Beck, a Chaska, Minn., native who started as an intern with the department's marketing operation before becoming a graduate assistant with the Mavericks which led to a full-time marketing position at Drake. She returned to Minnesota State Athletics in 2012.  "I feel fortunate that I was able to have gained a lot of different knowledge at every step along the way in Mankato and had a great experience in all of my roles with Maverick Athletics. We work in a family-oriented and supportive environment here. The coaches are at each others games and the adminstrators are at all the events. That's not typical at a lot of places."

Beck looks at the NSIC opportunity as a natural progression in her career. "I'm very excited to be joining the NSIC office. It's certainly a new challenge, but I'm looking forward to being able to work with all 16 of the institutions in the league to help enhance the student-athlete experience."

It's great to be a Maverick!