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Salmen column: “Average kids, impossible dream” sums up 98 championship wrestling season


By Brad Salmen

Enterprise Dispatch Sports Editor

Sportswriters are nothing if not stat and record nerds.

Stats, after all, are a numerical story of the game. In fact, there’s been many a time where I’ve pounded out gamers (game stories) with nothing to go on but a stat line.

In all my years in the business, however, there’s one stat line that always stands out.

I want you to find the individual records from the 1998 state championship wrestling season. Take a good look at it. What do you see? Is it not incredibly, oddly satisfying?

What those records show is a team that did not have a single, solitary weak spot in its lineup.

From top to bottom, at all 13 weights, the Chargers were rock solid. In fact, better than rock solid in most weights.

You just don’t see that on high school wrestling teams, even state championship ones. There’s almost always a couple of weak spots in the lineup.

Not the Chargers. Not in 1998. We knew we had a chance to win at each and every weight.

Those numbers, however, tell only a small part of the story.

They don’t tell the story of an unknown, unheralded group of “average” kids, who bonded together in pursuit of an impossible dream.

They don’t tell the story of a third-year coach who saw something in those kids, and pushed them to their limits every day to achieve that dream.

And they don’t tell the story of the most memorable state tournament performance in the history of the Minnesota wrestling.

By the end, those average kids had climbed from obscurity to taking down giants on the biggest stage there is.

It was, and still is, Dassel-Cokato’s only team state title.

In my mind, it will forever be their greatest.

***

To the outside world, there was no indication heading into the 1997-98 season that DC would be anything special.

In fact, in the previous season, not a single wrestler advanced to the state tournament.

But inside the wrestling room, it was a different story.

Coach Dean Jennissen made it a team goal from day one to win the state championship.

Now, I’m sure many coaches make that a team goal at the beginning of the year. If you’re going to set goals, you might as well set them high.

But Dean truly meant it.

Not many of the wrestlers took him seriously – at least, not at first.

But as the season progressed, and DC racked up win after win, the attitudes changed.

The first big win was against Hutchinson, a solid team ranked in the top-12. DC prevailed, 35-31.

The second was against Foley, ranked #4. DC again was victorious, 30-19.

That set up a match against the giant of the Wright County Conference – St. Michael-Albertville.

STMA had dominated the WCC for two decades. They were two-time defending state champions, they had a 102-match undefeated streak in the WCC, and they had defeated the Chargers 26 matches in a row.

At the time, I was in my first year of college, but there was no way I was missing the STMA match, held at St. Michael.

The atmosphere was unlike any other I’d ever been to, for any sport. The stands were so full, fans spilled out into every nook and cranny around the mat.

Every takedown, every move, every slap of the mat was greeted by ear-splitting roars.

The match was back-and-forth, with the big win in the lower weights coming from Luke McLean, who pinned a state entrant. DC won two of the three matches heading into the final match, where DC had their “closer” Jake Long at heavyweight, taking on STMA’s Jesse McLennan.

Long took an early 4-1 lead, but McLennan battled back with a takedown in the third period, nearly putting Long to his back, and sending the match into overtime with the score tied 4-4.

Long wasted little time in the OT session with a quick takedown, giving the Chargers a 28-23 victory and sending half of the estimated 1,400 fans into a frenzy.

In my mind, this was the moment it was official. This was the moment the Chargers arrived as a team to be reckoned with.

***

Unfortunately, the only blemish on the season came soon after the STMA win. DC fell to Paynesville, their hated section rivals, 27-24 at the Scott West duals.

But Jennissen and the staff weren’t worried following the loss. The Chargers were missing two key wrestlers, and a couple matches went unexpectedly in favor of Paynesville.

Jennissen knew his team would be ready if and when the team got another chance to face the Bulldogs in the section tournament.

That chance came in the Section 5AA finals.

DC breezed through their first two matches, defeating Annandale/Maple Lake and ROCORI handily to set up a rematch against Paynesville,, with a trip to state on the line.

This time, DC prevailed, with Long once again proving to be the hero at heavyweight.

The Chargers trailed the Bulldogs 24-20 heading into Jake’s match, with Jake needing at least a tech fall for the Chargers to advance.

Long came through with a pin, giving DC a 26-24 win and a trip to state.

***

I was there that night as well in Cold Spring, despite the match being a two-hour drive from my dorm in St. Paul.

I wasn’t the only DC fan to go to lengths to make sure I could be in attendance.

I used the word, “we” earlier to describe “our” lineup.

That’s because we truly felt that this was our team. As word spread throughout the season about this underdog wrestling team doing great things, the community jumped in with both feet to support the team.

That season, it didn’t matter if you were a hockey or basketball fan, and didn’t know the difference between a cradle and a granby. These were our boys, and we were proud of them. By the latter half of the season, DC fans were filling up every gym they competed in.

Every wrestler I interviewed talked about the incredible fan support they had throughout the season. And when I think back to that year, I remember the roars from the crowd.

Those roars continued to the old St. Paul Civic Center, home of the state tournament.

DC’s fan base was noticeably larger than every other team’s during the first round, in which DC dispatched Brooklyn Center easily, 61-8.

It grew even larger in the semifinals, when DC defeated Blackduck-Cass Lake-Bena 30-21.

And when the Chargers came out of the tunnel for their championship match against powerhouse Jackson County Central, the fans filled the Civic Center from floor to ceiling in the two sections behind the team.

“I remember running out after the boys for the finals against JCC, and feeling like I was going to throw up when the our crowd roared – it was that loud,” said Jennissen.

I’m not going to recap the championship match. Dean, who poured his heart and soul into that team (and all the teams he coached), poured his heart and soul into his first-hand story of the season, and any attempts I could make to describe it would not do it justice the way Dean did.

Suffice to say, when Long, yet again, slammed the door on the poor Huskies – who didn’t know what hit them – the Civic Center was rocking.

By that championship match, not only was what appeared to be the entire Dassel-Cokato community there for the team, but we’d picked up many fans from other teams who saw this classic underdog story, with a fan base that was having the time of their lives, and hopped on board.

I’ve been to over 15 state wrestling tournaments in my career, and I can safely say that the 1998 experience will never be duplicated. It was the talk of not only the wrestling community, but the Minnesota sports community as well.

***

Speaking of Dean, every wrestler I interviewed said Dean not only impacted them during the magical 1997-98 season, he also affected their lives.

Dave Salmen (full disclosure, Dave is my brother, as is Darren Salmen) summed it up thusly:

“I once read a leadership quote that said, ‘The first responsibility of a leader is to set expectations, and the last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.’

Looking back, I can see Dean embodied this quote perfectly.

From the moment you became part of the wrestling team, you were well aware what the expectations were. Everything from attending class, eating and drinking the right things, taking care of your responsibilities, and attending every practice was covered frequently. These expectations made sure we were all on the same page, and had a good foundation for success on and off the mat.

Lastly, Dean served the team like no other coach I’ve had. Whether it was having everyone set goals on the first day of the season, creating detailed practice plans, finding rides for guys who needed them, or having the wrestling club set us up with Shaklee supplements, Dean did what it took for us to be successful.”

Dean, for his part, credits his recently new-found faith for guiding him that season.

“I am a firm believer that God will meet you where you are in ways you’ll understand. God used wrestling to get to me in a very personal way. The whole 1997-98 season was really God’s way of showing me, ‘Dean, I’m real and you can trust me,’” said Jennissen. “I believe God guided me as a coach, as a husband, as a father and as a teacher so clearly that year and of course beyond.

“All through the season, I’d be worried. I was such a bundle of nerves inside because I felt so much pressure that this was “the year” we’d break through,” Jennissen said. “I even got checked out at the hospital for chest pains which only turned out to be acid reflux! My gut was churning, trying to make all of the right moves all season. But, God had my back all of the way.”

I didn’t have enough room to put all of Dean’s comments into these pages. I have posted his full, unedited remarks at hjblogs.com. I encourage you to read them.

***

As good as Dean was as a coach, the 1997-98 championship season would not have been possible without the commitment of a bunch of “average” wrestlers.

The word “average” is not meant as a disparagement to the wrestlers. It stems from a comment Jennissen received early in the season.

“One of our opposing coaches summed up this team pretty well with a comment that was meant as a slam, but really became our identity,” said Jennissen. “He described the ‘98 DC team as 13 ‘average’ wrestlers.

“Well, those ‘average guys’ made up one heck of a team.”

Twenty years later, those wrestlers recalled a chemistry in the wrestling room that turned into an unshakeable bond.

“We were truly a group of guys that worked as one, and pushed each other to our limits.  We had no superstar on the team, but every single wrestler was extremely good and able to pull off an unexpected win at any time.   Without fail, if one of us was to let a win slip away, another teammate would pick him up with a victory we hadn’t planned on,” said senior captain Jake Long. “Off the mat, we all were good friends as well.  Not just the wrestlers, but the parents and siblings as well.

“There were never any schisms, or talking down about one teammate or another, we all truly got along and cared about each other.  That, mixed in with a lot of hard work and some talent, can make a team extremely difficult to beat,” said Long.

Ben Meyer put it succinctly.

“We were really a team of misfits that didn’t do great by ourselves, but together you could not stop us,” he said.

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