How could the memories not filter through Ron Stolski’s mind today?

The Brainerd High School football coach will pass out equipment to his 2011 team in preparation for Monday’s start of conditioning drills.  Today is also Stolski’s 72^nd birthday and the start of his 50^th season coaching high school football.

The self-described “Polack” from north Minneapolis has won 330 games, more than any Minnesota prep coach ever.  Someone might guess that he would smother his players with ego, praising his own accomplishments.  But that’s not Stolski.

What Stolski will emphasize with this year’s players is something he’s been asking his teams for awhile now: “What will you settle for? How will you be remembered?”

He will tell them to accept only a “best effort, and the score will take care of it self.”  With his teams, that’s usually a winning result.

Three of the last four years the Warriors have made it to the semi-finals of 5A, the big school class usually dominated by suburban or city behemoths like Eden Prairie, Wayzata and Cretin-Derham Hall.  Brainerd, a school that sits in the lake country of central Minnesota, even beat mighty Eden Prairie with a 93-yard drive last year in the playoffs.

The Warriors finished 11-1 and Stolski’s record sat at 330-148-5.  He’s still looking for that first state title after 49 seasons, but whether he wins one or not, the victories are sure to pile up for awhile longer.

What do the record and all those wins mean to him?  “It means I’ve been coaching for a long time,” he said. “That’s all it means to me, to be very honest.  We tried hard and learned a lot along the way.  Good staff and people.”

Stolski never expected to win so many games.  “The thing I am proud of is the 330 has been accomplished at five different schools,” he said.  “You look at most other (win) leaders and it’s been at one or two schools.”

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For Stolski the journey started in 1962, fresh out of Macalester at age 22 and with no high school head coaching experience.  He told a funny but true story about his first job in Kensington, Minnesota, a small town of only a few hundred people.

He drove a “junker car” to the interview in Kensington wearing a powder blue suit first worn in 1956 for his junior prom.  He was married, had two kids, needed a job and preferred to start his football career as a head coach, not an assistant.

Nothing had ever prepared Stolski, the city kid, for what he experienced in Kensington.  The first person he saw in the school building was dressed in a suit.  Stolski assumed the guy was the superintendent, the man he was to interview with.  No, the suit was worn by the janitor.  Then this gentleman appears with patches all over his jeans and an extension cord coming out of his pants.

Meet the superintendent.  The man who would hire Stolski had a heating pad attached to that extension cord and was soothing his hemorrhoids.

The superintendent asked him if he wanted to see the football field.  “The grass was up to my armpit,” Stolski recalled.  “He said, ‘We mow it in the fall.’ ”

The field didn’t look 100 yards long to the young coach.  “We never measured it,” said the superintendent who Stolski now includes among the best leaders he’s ever known.

The Kensington football team hadn’t scored a touchdown ─ never mind won a game ─ in five years.  The school played eight-man football and there were 21 kids in the senior class.

“I had never seen eight-man football,” Stolski said.  “Three kids came to the first practice.  There were no goal posts up.”

In his first season Kensington lost the first three games on the schedule.  Then Kensington won 56-0 over Brandon, setting off a celebration that included tearing down the goal posts and free hamburgers at a diner.

Stolski went 3-5 the first year at Kensington, 7-1 the next.  He moved on to Slayton for one season, to Princeton for six and Park Center for four where he started the football program and coached future Twins catcher Tim Laudner.  Then Brainerd called and he liked the idea of pursuing not only his passion for football but also his recreational loves of hunting and fishing.

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Stolski has been in Brainerd since 1975.  He and his wife Sharron have four children and 17 grandchildren.  He’s a legend in Brainerd and known across the state in prep athletics for his work on behalf of the Minnesota Football Coaches Association.  He’s the organization’s executive director and keeps a busy year-round calendar with those duties and coaching the Warriors.

He used to teach high school English and his communications skills have much to do with his success as a leader.  He won’t hesitate to write a note of praise to someone, or send a letter to the parents of his football players.  He often speaks to groups and gave a moving eulogy two years ago at the funeral of Don Swanson, a close friend and former high school football coach at Patrick Henry High School.

Stolski is inspired by former teachers and coaches like Swanson, and the late Tom Mahoney from Fairmont who he describes as his “most influential” mentor during his professional life.   He can’t offer praise quickly enough, too, to his own football assistants who “have been with me forever and are so valuable.”

But the man who first influenced Stolski was his dad, John Stolski, a working class man who labored during the week at a southeast Minneapolis grain elevator and on weekends as a bouncer at a bar.  He taught his son life lessons including the importance of treating people with respect.  “He was the wisest man I ever knew,” Stolski said.

Stolski played park board football in Minneapolis and knew at an early age, even before his football careers at Patrick Henry and Macalester, that he wanted to coach.  He didn’t have the athleticism to go far as a player, but thought he could help others achieve their potential.  “When you choose a life in coaching, you choose to try to make a difference with the people you touch,” Stolski said.

At 72 the commitment to coach is still there.  On Monday he plans to tell his players ─ young enough to be his great grandsons ─ that he has as “much fire in his belly” as he did way back in 1962 while driving up to Kensington.

How will he know when it’s time to retire from coaching?  “I will coach as long as I think we’re still doing good things for kids,” he answered.  “When we’re not doing good by kids, I will walk away.”

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