Category: Golden Gophers

 

Mike Grant’s football team almost made it to the 6A state championship game that takes place Friday night at U.S. Bank Stadium.  The legendary Eden Prairie coach who has won more state championships than any other Minnesota prep football coach won’t be watching, though.

To know Grant is to understand why.  He has considerable respect for the teams playing in the championship game, Edina and Moorhead.  His teams battled both this year and are peers in the powerful Metro-West District, but Grant is not so obsessed with football that he needs to watch the title game.

“Honestly, I don’t know what I will be doing (Friday night),” he told Sports Headliners. “I won’t be watching the game because we always see film of it later.  I don’t need to watch the game.  You know there might be an Antiques Roadshow (on TV) or something.”

Grant, whose time now could find him in the woods hunting deer, saw his Eagles get knocked out of the state tournament in the quarterfinals by Edina.  The Eagles had defeated the Hornets 40-19 in September but in the state tournament quarterfinals lost 23-21.

What happened the second time around? “I can tell you why, their quarterback,” Grant said.  “He had a great game.”

Mason West is a special talent, and the Eagles saw that with the Edina quarterback’s running and passing.  Grant called him the best athlete on the field when the Hornets won the playoff game November 7. Grant believes West decided he “was going to take the game over” and Edina rallied late to win on a field goal.

“…When you have the best quarterback, you have a great chance to win in the playoffs,” Grant said.

Grant, 68, said his team was good enough to win the state title but so were several others he’s coached over the years.  He believes winning state championships takes more than player talent and coaching, saying a team has to be “lucky, too, and you gotta get the right calls (from the officials.)”

Grant said he is proud of his 8-3 team and told his players if losing in the state tournament is “the worst thing” that ever happens to them, they’re in for a great life.

Grant is philosophical about the Edina loss and missed opportunity to play Friday for the state 6A championship.  The loss to him is not losing the game but rather “it’s that this team will never be together again.”

“We love these guys and we love being around them every day—our coaching staff does,” Grant said. “Love is not too strong a term.  Not being around them all week (now) is the hard part. …

“But we also look at it as…when you’re a coach, you’re also an educator and we have to help these kids learn to deal with disappointment in their lives.  There’s going to be disappointment in the rest of their lives…you gotta try and help them through it.  And you learn a lot in that, too.

“Yeah, we would have liked to have won. We feel like we could have won but we were right there.  It just didn’t (happen) this year.”

Gary Smith has been Eden Prairie’s athletic trainer for 29 years and worked with Grant every football season.  He knows Grant lives by the educator standard for his players.

“He is very knowledgeable in football, but he isn’t far away from real life, and he makes them (the players) think about going out and helping a neighbor rake and doing volunteer stuff.  He wants them to give back. And he really hammers that at them.

“And they find ways to (do that).  You want to get on his good side? Somebody tells him that (player) Joe Blow…’carried my groceries out.’  I mean just little things like that make him very proud.”

Smith has been with Grant longer than any other staffer.  They share the approach of minimizing the risk of injuries for players.  The idea is to have the players healthy for gameday. “We don’t get a lot of kids hurt in practice,” Smith said.

In 43 seasons as a head coach (nine at Forest Lake before Eden Prairie) Grant has won 401 games and lost 87.  The 400^th win was on October 24 and Grant became only the third coach in state history to reach that coveted total.

Grant was surprised word of the 400^th win got out.  “I wouldn’t have mentioned it because it’s about the kids.  When I woke up the next day, nothing had changed. My life was the same, so 400 is a number.

“Now what it represents is literally…thousands of people (who were involved), and I heard from a lot of people going back to my Forest Lake days. And they were all a part of these wins…thousands of kids and coaches and trainers and mangers and administrative help.  People that have been part of it.  So, you’re humbled by the fact that thousands of people are willing to—I don’t want to say follow you—but join in that long (journey).  You know there’s people that I hadn’t talked to in probably 30 years that were part of that (and reached out with congratulations). …”

Then Grant reflected personally on winning 400 games, saying it’s “significant to me,” because of his two treasured mentors, his college football coach John Gagliardi, and father Bud. Gags, the St. John’s coaching legend, won a college record 489 games. “John always knew how many wins he had,” Grant said while adding Gags would be excited for him.

Bud, who died in 2023, attended Mike’s games and was there when his son won No. 300. When the two of them left the game after the 300^th win, Bud speculated on how many wins he, Gagliardi and Mike have.  Bud won 290 games during his professional coaching career in Canada and with the Vikings so the right answer now would be 1,180.

Certainly, Bud would be proud of his son’s latest milestone. Among the legion of football folks offering props now is University of Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck.  “Congratulations to him. That’s a lot of wins.  Good for him. That’s a lot of time coaching, that’s for sure.  Talk about sustainability and the consistency piece, my hats off to him that’s for sure.”

Fleck met Grant years ago when he was an assistant coach recruiting for Northern Illinois.  The Eagles head man quickly earned Fleck’s respect because “he treats everybody the same way.”

Fleck represented a lower-level Division I program but when it came to appointments at Eden Prairie everybody followed the preset times.  Fleck said regardless of whether you represented a program like his, or one of the blue-blood programs, if “you had an appointment, didn’t matter who (else) was…there.”

When Grant won his 400^th career game the two coaches ahead of him in state career wins were Mike Mahlen of Verndale (440 career wins; 400th win in 2019) and Dwight Lundeen of Becker (416 career wins; 400th win in 2024).  All three are still coaching.

No other large school coach is likely to match Grant’s 11 state championships at Eden Prairie.  Grant’s 2020 team was No. 1 ranked and to this day he thinks the Eagles would have been state champions if not for the pandemic that cancelled the state tournament.

Why all the success?  Well, for one thing Smith said, Grant picks “really good assistants.” During his long career, Grant has successfully rebuilt his coaching staff and then he lets them coach.

“…Over the years, I swear, we won a lot of games that we shouldn’t because of the adjustments they make at halftime,” Smith said. “Being down, or being behind or something, they make adjustments.

“And he’s so knowledgeable about football that as an assistant coach you better know what your position people are supposed to do because if they’re not doing it, he’s going to call you out on it and ask why this guy wasn’t in that position for that play and stuff like that.  He still calls the plays for offense, but he knows what the hell is supposed to be done on defense, too.”

Eden Prairie’s enrollment has long been one of the largest in the state, creating a significant pool of talent for football and other sports.  But Smith said the school is now 51 percent minority enrollment and many of those students don’t play football.  Where the Eagles once had 125 to 150 youth out for football, those numbers have dropped.

Smith said Grant is talented at recruiting players, encouraging good athletes to come out for football and stay with the program.  The coach’s commitment to personnel will even lead to kids who play soccer and he can “try to find somebody that’s got a good leg” and make him the Eagles kicker, per Smith.  The young man’s priority can remain soccer, but Grant will teach him what he wants him to do on Friday nights.

Grant, Smith said, will find positions for his more talented kids to play both offense and defense.  A defensive tackle might become a running back near the goal line, trying to power his way into the end zone. And Grant finds roles for less talented players, making sure if you come out for the team and stick with him, he will find a way to get you in the game including on special teams.

In the games Grant’s teams aren’t predictable. They might try a fake punt from their own 20-yard line, or an unexpected onside kick off.  Grant may see opportunity when others see risk.

Grant makes his presence known to youth players in the community. “Mike is well aware of the feeder programs,” Smith said. “Unbelievable the number of visits to little league football.

“And they see who the coach is (at the high school), and there’s a lot of kids that grow up wanting to play for Eden Prairie football because of the success that they had over the years.

“I mean like I say, I’ve been there 29 years, we won 11 state championships…that’s a state championship one every three years.  That’s an unbelievable record. I don’t know if anybody will be able to beat 11 state championships in a big sport.”

Grant, whose last state title team was in 2017, expects four or five starters on both offense and defense to return next season.  He said the sophomore and junior varsity teams had successful 2025 seasons.  “We’ve got good kids coming,” he said.

Compete for that 12^th state title next year?  “We expect it every year,” said the man who joked recently he was “hunting chickens” when out in the woods looking for deer.

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