Bollinger back in the game at Hill-Murray

Twenty-seven years later, the memories still stick.

Brooks Bollinger was 5 years old and just starting kindergarten when his family moved from central Missouri to Grand Forks for his father's coaching job at the University of North Dakota. From a small desk in a corner of his father's football office, he sat for hours and sketched out plays. He trailed his dad to the equipment room and to staff meetings. He roamed the sidelines for two-a-days. Once, he sneaked into a team photo.

Even then, it seemed natural. It seemed right.

"I kind of always felt like I was going to coach -- even more than being a player," he said. "I just kind of always thought of myself that way."

First Bollinger spent 10 years under center, playing quarterback for the University of Wisconsin and three NFL teams, including the Vikings. Now he is back to his roots, sketching plays in a coach's office of his own.

It was a hook and ladder of a career change -- fast and unexpected -- but Bollinger was ready for it. The head coaching job at Hill-Murray seemed natural. It seemed right.

"It's almost like I've wanted this ever since I can remember," Bollinger said. "I knew for a long time I wanted to be a football coach, and it's just time."

He takes the helm of a program that has had some success in the regular season over the years but hasn't reached the state tournament since 1987. But a culture of athletic success in other sports -- particularly boys' hockey -- permeates Hill-Murray. Bollinger's mission is to extend it to football.

• • •

Late one February evening, Hill-Murray athletic director Bill Lechner sat in his living room, poring over the 40-odd applications to replace head coach Vince Conway, the Pioneers institution who left the program after 32 years. Needing a break from the résumé-sifting, Lechner picked up a newspaper. There was an article about Bollinger's retirement, and it mentioned Bollinger still had a house in Eagan, where he had lived since 2006. Lechner was curious.

He called Tim Ryan, the cross-country coach at Hill-Murray -- and also, conveniently, the brother of Dennis Ryan, equipment manager for the Vikings. Dennis said he would call Bollinger. And the next morning, Lechner's phone rang. Four days later, Bollinger was on the Hill-Murray campus in Maplewood, weaving through snowbanked sidewalks.

Bollinger hadn't been looking for a coaching gig. He had imagined taking a year away from football and figuring out some practical matters -- income needs and career options -- but Lechner went for the hard sell.

"He put the heat on me right away," Bollinger said with a grin.

Bollinger talked it over with his wife, Natalie, and 24 hours after his campus stroll, he accepted.

"We wanted someone that people would talk about," Lechner said of the private school, which has struggled with getting the numbers necessary to field a great football team in the past. "We take pride in ourselves. We don't recruit. You don't get scholarships and company cars the way people say you do. If you want to go to Hill-Murray, your parents have got to come up with $12,000 and that's the way it is.

"We were teasing around school and I was like, 'You know what? We've got to get Brett Favre -- somebody so that when kids are in grade school, their families start saying, 'I'd like to go there.' "

Lechner paused and smiled. "And we didn't get Brett Favre, but we got his backup."

• • •

The rumor spread quickly. Then-junior tackle Dave Simmet heard it from group of outgoing seniors last spring.

"I didn't believe them at first," Simmet said. "I thought they were just pulling my chain. I was like, 'Yeah right, we're not that lucky.' "

Brooks Bollinger -- yes, that Brooks Bollinger -- was coming to Hill-Murray.

Lechner said the high-profile coach brought larger tryout numbers than in years past. The kids said even several hockey players -- guys who never before had played football because of the risk of injury -- showed up.

"It's all just high energy, high tempo," senior tight end Jay Zoborowski said.

Added Simmet: "I feel like he wants to be out on the field as much as we do. He's just like, 'Let's go.' It's awesome."

• • •

After he took the Hill-Murray position, the first person Bollinger called was his own high school coach, Mike Berg, from Grand Forks Central High School. That March, they each drove the 100-plus miles to Alexandria and sat in a booth at Perkins for four or five hours, talking.

"I want to strive to have that kind of influence on these guys -- that when they look back they say, 'High school football was an important and special time in my life,' " Bollinger said.

Bollinger tells his players to think of themselves as Pioneers. Not as a collection of wide receivers and linebackers, but as a unit.

"My biggest challenge to myself right now is I have a vision of what I want for these kids, what I want our program to be -- sticking to that regardless of whether everybody outside is praising us because we're winning games or upset with us because we're not," said Bollinger, who said he doesn't have a timeline for the big turnaround.

"Am I focused on winning football games? Yes. That's a big part of having fun in this game -- coming out on the right end of it. But that's not the most important thing today."

Bollinger looks back on the long summers of his childhood and sees something both intimate and larger than life. He has a 5-year-old son of his own now. And a 3-year-old. And a 6-month-old daughter.

He's exactly where he meant to be as a kid, sneaking into pictures to be a part of something much bigger.

"All of those guys were my heroes growing up," Bollinger said. "I think what I saw in my dad, what I want to get out of it, is the lifestyle, And that's not money or anything. But it's what I grew up around, and I like what it gives -- you're a part of the Hill-Murray family, and your kids are part of it, running around the sidelines and being around my players."