Reusse: Woodbury native Blake Rohrer’s viral reception lifts Wisconsin-River Falls to D-III title game

There was some intriguing sports activity taking place in late November at the four-year state university in River Falls, Wis. In checking on the actual proximity, note was taken that St. Croix and Pierce Counties are two of the 15 counties alleged to make up the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul region.

This required a call to Jay Kolls, recently retired as a KSTP-TV reporter, a former partner on a short-lived radio show, a devotee of the Packers and a longtime resident of Hudson.

“What do they think over there about being lumped in as an entity with 13 counties on this side of the border?” he was asked.

Kolls: “Only statistically, and only in the eyes of the Metropolitan Council, could we be considered an entity. We live in Wisconsin for numerous reasons. And not being surrounded by Vikings fans … that’s a big one."

The distance from the midway area of the Twin Cities to the Falcon Center, the hub for Wisconsin-River Falls athletics, is 33 miles. And with Minnesota’s population base next door and reciprocal tuition, there’s a close division among the two states in the number of enrollees at the school.

“It’s crazy on campus on a day when the Vikings and the Packers are playing,” football coach Matt Walker said. “Students are crowded into different areas. Lots of insults flying. Good-natured.”

Pause. “Mostly,” Walker said.

As the top level of both the WIAC and Division III gained more powerhouses dedicated to football, UW-River Falls fell far behind with dilapidated athletic facilities and paltry funding for programs.

Then the Falcon Center opened in 2017, and Walker was given the funding to put together more than a minimal staff. Now the Falcons have done what was deemed impossible at the start of this decade.

They came into the Division III playoffs as WIAC champions. They then obliterated Chapman, overpowered St. John’s, blew away Wheaton (Ill.) and, on Dec. 20 at Ramer Field, in front of a cold, jammed-together, frenetic-for-four-quarters crowd, something special happened.

A semifinal shootout with Johns Hopkins was tied at 41-41. The Falcons wound up going for it on fourth-and-12 from their own 49-yard line with a little over three minutes to play.

Even Dan Campbell doesn’t do that. Quarterback Kaleb Blaha’s run came up 3 yards short, but the home team forced a three-and-out and got the ball back after a punt ... on its own 4-yard line with fewer than two minutes left. The play that soon occurred drew 700,000 viewers to a video on Instagram within 24 hours.

Rohrer was a basketball standout and late-arriving football player at Woodbury High School.

“What’s it take for you to get from your parents’ home to campus … 20 minutes?" he was asked.

“Not even that,” he said.

Rohrer was on a “choice” route. Go up or in.

“I was getting man-to-man, and the safety started to roll over, and I couldn’t wait for the ball to come to me. The safety thought he was going to get a pick. I went in, he came flying by, and all of a sudden all I could see in front of me was grass,” he said.

The Falcons (13-1, with the only loss at UW-Oshkosh) advanced to the D-III championship game for the first time in program history, and will face defending national champion North Central (Ill.) in the Stagg Bowl on Jan. 4 in Canton, Ohio.

Rohrer finished with nine catches for 236 yards and three touchdowns against Johns Hopkins. That put the 6-foot-3 junior from Woodbury at 55 catches, 11 touchdowns and 1,111 yards on the season, with an average of 20.2 yards per reception.

Do you realize, young man, you’re having a much better season than Justin Jefferson? Nine more touchdowns, 194 more yards and 7.5 more yards per catch.

Rohrer laughed and said: “Believe it or not, I have a photo with J.J. from this summer at the Vikings complex. There was a player-led route-running seminar … J.J., Adam Thielen, T.J. Hockenson. J.J.’s human. I did see him drop one.

“Great guy. Lot of D-II, D-III receivers there, and the Vikings were all great to us.”

“Blake was a basketball stud even as a freshman at Woodbury,” said Andy Hill, the Royals football coach. “We finally got him out for football and then it was the COVID. He did play seven games in the spring. Right away, we saw all the things you want in a receiver: Tall, fast, athletic, instinct for the ball.”

Rohrer was hoping for better basketball offers out of Woodbury. He spent a fall semester as a student only at Grand Canyon University in Arizona. He quickly got bored without athletics and landed at UW-River Falls.

Basketball was his first choice. Football has become his best choice.

“It was 2023, Kaleb was running the offense, and it took me a while to catch up,” Rohrer said. “We did get to be close friends over the summer.”

How was that? “We bartended together downtown at the Tarnation Tavern,” Rohrer said. “Little place. It’s a townie-type place. Lot of nice people.”