high schools

If you want to play a joke on a certain group of track coaches, all you have to do is holler "Hey! Coach Andring!" and watch four heads swivel.

On this sunny Thursday at the Tiger Relays, held at Stewartville High School some 15 minutes south of Rochester, the Andring brothers brought their teams together for the only time this season. Here's the lineup card:

• Mike, 29, is the boys' and girls' coach at Plainview.

• Cory, 28, is the coach for boys and girls, working mostly with the girls, at Dover-Eyota/St. Charles.

• Tim, 26, is an assistant who coaches the boys at Dover-Eyota/St. Charles.

• Jared, 24, coaches the boys from Zumbrota-Mazeppa.

All four were multisport high school athletes at Dover-Eyota, which operates cooperative teams in track and cross-country with nearby St. Charles. The Andrings -- and four other siblings -- grew up on a dairy farm between Dover and St. Charles.

"That might be one of the reasons we all did sports, because it got us off the farm," Jared said with a laugh, which is not a rare thing to hear from the Andrings.

"We like to have fun," Cory admitted.

Three of the brothers are married, and Mike will join that club this summer. Tim is the only father, as evidenced by the cute little 4-year-old tagging along with him at the Tiger Relays: his son, Carter.

Carter knows how to push his uncles' buttons. Thirty minutes before the meet started, he had persuaded Cory to give him a bottle of juice, and before long, Carter was digging through Uncle Cory's equipment bag and finding a treasure trove of candy.

The brothers went to different universities (South Dakota, Minnesota, Winona State and Wisconsin-La Crosse), and Mike was the only one to compete in collegiate track. Mike and Jared are math teachers, Tim teaches first grade and Cory is a substitute teacher and works for his dad, Don, who runs an electrical business, as well as the farm.

Among the four, Mike has had the most coaching success. He coached the Plainview Gophers to Class 1A boys' state championships in 2002 and '03, as well as true team boys' state titles in '02 and '03 and second-place finishes in '04 and '05.

"Technically he has the bragging rights, but nobody lets him brag too much," said Angela Andring, Jared's wife. She fits into the family scheme quite well; as Angela Klatt, she was an all-state sprinter at Eagan High School and an All-America at Wisconsin- La Crosse, where she and Jared met.

"Once the track season starts, it seems like that's all they talk about," Angela said, standing trackside. "They have fun, but they're all intense."

That was clear on this sun-splashed Thursday. As Mike watched his long jumpers perform, he took every opportunity to lend advice from behind a chain-link fence.

"Boom! Pop the knee!" he hollered to one of his athletes, demonstrating with an upraised knee of his own. A second later, Cory was standing on the infield, urging on one of his girls as she motored down the backstretch: "C'mon Jackie! C'mon Jackie!"

Even though they coach at three different schools, the Andring boys don't let competition come between them.