COACH STIEG: YOUR FAITH JOURNEY CAN AND WILL CHANGE LIVES

Former SDSU football coach shares personal impact stories about how honoring his faith has made a difference in the lives of others

Those attending Sunday’s spring banquet hosted by the Menno chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) probably didn’t expect keynote speaker John Stiegelmeier to talk about the green beans he grows in his garden.

But that’s what the former South Dakota State University head football coach used to frame his message about being ambassadors for the Christian faith that he shared with the more than 250 gathered inside Menno’s city/school auditorium the night of April 7.

“Farming is part of my DNA,” said Stiegelmeier, who grew up on a wheat farm near Selby.

And while his career path took him in a different direction, farming “changed me,” he said. “It made me who I am, and so to hang onto that dirt and plant and harvest mentality, I have a garden.”

As part of the garden, Stiegelmeier plants two bean rows that are 30 feet long, and the massive bean hedge that becomes of it is invariably a challenge to harvest. Why? Because the plant and the fruit of the plant are the same color.

“So to find the bean is a pain in the you-know what,” he said. “So when it’s time (to harvest), you go in there and you get down on your knees and you’re scrounging around, and you get about halfway down and you look back and you see some you miss. That happens 100% of the time.”

That, Stiegelmeier said, “is a picture of your and my faith journey. When you look back in life — when you say, ‘Lord I’m yours’ and you put the day in the hands of the Lord — you you look back in life and you see the hand of God working through you. You see lives changed, you see events orchestrated by the Lord, and, once in a while, you see a miracle.

“That’s your bean row.”

The faith journey

Stiegelmemeir spent the bulk of his 35-minute address sharing with those gathered stories that have helped make up his faith journey — his “bean row” — and it was personal.

The coach shared a story that took place in the early 2000s not long after he took over as the head football coach for the Jackrabbits, when he got a note from his athletic director — his boss.

“He said come down and see me.”

Stiegelmeier said that when he got to the AD’s office the AD had on his desk what Stiegelmeier referred to as his MAD manual — his “Make a Difference” manual.

“It had everything in it about SDSU football,” the coach said, explaining that he expected to be complemented on the thoroughness and detail accounted for in his book.

Instead, the AD opened it up to a section titled “The Foundation,” which toward the back includes spiritual thoughts and Bible verses that apply to various adversities faced by his players, from lack of playing time to injuries.

“He said, ‘do you do this?’” Stiegelmeier said. “And I said, ‘Yes I do.’ And he said, ‘If you do that again I’m going to fire you.’

“And time kind of stopped.

“And then he said, ‘Do you do chapels?’ And I said, ‘Yes we do.’ A chapel for us is 20 minutes four hours before the game; it’s a church service. It’s church for our athletes. He said, ‘If you continue to do chapels I’m going to fire you.’ He said, ‘Any questions?’

“My dad taught me to honor authority, so I said, ‘No sir’ and I walked back to my office on the same path I took down,” Steigelemeir continued. “That walk was totally different, because it changed my life.”

The coach said when he got back to his office he wondered if this meant he couldn’t be the man and football coach that he thought God meant him to be.

“And I sat there and I sat there, and I don’t know how long it was but a peace came over me,” Stiegelmeier said. “I felt the Lord had me, and I leaned forward and I put my hands together on my desk and I prayed for my athletic director, and that started a series of prayers for my athletic director, and I didn’t get fired.

“Now I’m not a rebel, but I literally felt like the Lord’s plan was for me to be the head football coach at South Dakota State, and if that’s the Lord’s plan then I need to live his plan and I need to live my faith journey fully in that role.”

Another story. Five years before his retirement in 2022 Stiegelmeier said he was paid a visit by SDSU’s Title 9 coordinator, who pulled out his MAD manual.

“She said, ‘I want you to take this spiritual stuff out of this book,’” he said. “And I said, ‘Why is that?’ And she said, ‘The head football coach at South Dakota State is very busy and South Dakota State is a big deal and you’re risking a lawsuit.’”

Stiegelemer said he responded by telling her that, if he took that out of the MAD manual,  “South Dakota State football is not South Dakota State football. And she looked at me like I had no idea what I was talking about; she could not imagine that a person’s faith could be part of a football program — part of a university — but again I felt the hand of God and the peace of God, the Holy Spirit saying, ‘You got that,’ and we didn’t change.”

The coach said when he looks back at his bean row he sees that the Lord was with him during those times, and he sees the faces of his athletic director and the Title 9 coordinator, “so in some way the Lord working through me — my witness — said to them, ‘Maybe I should look into this. Maybe I should consider this faith journey.’”

Coach’s devotionals 

Sunday’s address by Coach Stieg included a story about how he came to have regular devotionals with his coaching staff more than 15 years ago at the urging of Bob Young.

Young, who coached at the University of Sioux Falls from 1983 through 2004 and whose name is today tied to the football stadium there, was a man Stiegelmeir respected immensely.

“I used to say that I wanted to grow up to be like Bob Young someday,” the coach said. “I can’t do that; I don’t have enough time to get to where Bob was in his faith journey. But it’s a good target.”

Anyway, Stiegelmeir said Young knew the power of a coach telling his staff that these devotionals were important so his staff could witness to the players.

“He was on me like I was a top recruit,” he said. “He’d call me, he’d write me a note, he’d stop by; he was always pestering me. Finally I caved in.”

But Stiegelmeir asked Young to lead the first one, and inside the old trailers that once sat on the east side of the football stadium at SDSU, over cheeseburgers from the dollar menu at McDonald’s, “Bob shared the Gospel.”

Afterward, Stiegelmeier said he ran into one of his graduate assistants, Brian Hook, who told him he had never heard that before.

“Heard what?” the coach said. “He said, ‘I’ve never heard anything from the Bible.’”

A year later, after leaving the program to be with his family, Hook called Coach Stieg and asked him to pray for his mom who had been diagnosed with cancer.

“I look back at my bean row and I see Bob Young standing beside Brian Hook,” he said. “Coach Young understood the power of sharing the Gospel, and had I not done that Brian may have gone home and never heard it.”

That was at the heart of Stiegelmeier’s message on Sunday night, targeted especially at the young people in the room.

“You’re going to have people beside you in your journey that have never heard it,” he said. “You’re going to have a person that you work beside, that you play beside, that you go to class beside, that has never heard it. And unless they know that you are living your faith journey, they are not going to hear it. And you can say that it’s somebody else’s job; the Bible doesn’t say that only a few make disciples of all nations, it says go — speaking to all of us. So be ready. Be ready when that happens.”

Stiegelmeir also talked about the greatest football player he ever coached, Josh Ranek, who played for the Jackrabbits in the late 1990s, went on to play Canadian football and once got on Coach Stieg’s case about now letting the players use profanity on the field.

Today, all those years later, Ranek occasionally comes back from his family’s home in Spearfish to lead chapel at SDSU, to preach to his football family.

“That’s a faith journey,” Stiegelmeier said, “and many of you are further down in yours than I am. And I want you young people to picture it — that the people around you know what you stand for. You’re the same in church as you are in the hallways of the school. And I don’t know if I planted the seed, but I’m going to be selfish and I’m going to look back and see Josh Ranek in my bean row.”

Coach Stieg also talked about a man named Bobby Bowden, a football coach at Florida State from 1976 to 2009 whom he heard speak at a FCA President’s Weekend in Florida years ago. Bauer told stories about how the Lord had impacted his career — just like Coach Stieg — and how at Florida State they did coach’s devotions — just like at SDSU.

But what was different, Stiegelmeier said, is that under Bauer’s leadership, everybody took a turn offering a devotional.

“And I thought, ‘If Coach Bowden can do that, Coach Stieg can do that.’”

Stiegelmeier set up a rotation and made it clear that the devotionals don’t have to be faith related — that it could be a motivational statement or approach — but that everybody was expected to take part.

“And it changed people’s lives.”

Among them was Luke Meadows, an assistant coach for the Jackrabbits who went on to coach at Florida Atlantic and is today the offensive line coordinator at Northern Illinois.

“He was unchurched,” Stiegelmeier said. “Didn’t have a faith journey. Lori and I flew down to see him in Florida; he picked us up and was driving us down to his place and he said, ‘Stieg, you want to see where we go to church?’

“That felt better than when I held up the national championship trophy in the last game of my career.

“The hand of God, working through you and your faith journey to impact the world we live in.”

Relationship with FCA

Stiegelmeier also talked briefly about his relationship with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes organization, which he said “changed my life, my family’s life and now my grandkids’ lives, and so I owe FCA and our Lord everything.”

The coach said it was 36 years ago that he went to a football clinic in Minneapolis and attended a free breakfast hosted by the FCA.

“I had never done anything with FCA,” he said, remembering that he filled out a survey asking about his experience with FCA “and it was quick — none, none, none.”

But at the bottom was a question about working a FCA summer sports camp, “and I was addicted to my job. My religion was football and I had a chance to coach another camp.”

After getting a call and an invitation from Mark Tiemann, the head of Minnesota FCA, Stiegelmeier and his family found themselves in St. Peter, Minn. at a summer football camp at Gustavus Adolphus College that doubled as a vacation for his wife and kids. But what he discovered wasn’t just another football camp, but devotionals and chapels and a praise and worship band and the words “praise the Lord” while he was in a huddle with the players.

“And I stepped out of the huddle and said out loud, ‘Where am I?’ And the Lord said, ‘Right where you need to be Stieg.’ I literally was so shook up that I went and stood on the sidelines for 15 minutes. Didn’t coach a lick.  My mind raced. I was so convicted.”

For 31 years before that, Stieg said he was a regular attendee at church and took his family every Sunday, “and when I walked out of church I was a football coach. I wasn’t a Christian. I wasn’t a Christian dad, I wasn’t a Christian husband. I had no idea what it meant to say, ‘I’m on a journey.’”

That night after that moment in the huddle, in an empty dorm room at Gustavus Adolphus, kneeling on a tile floor against a twin bed, “I started my faith journey at the age of 31.

“So Mark Tiemann, the head of Minnesota FCA years and years ago looks back at his bean row and sees this goofy young coach with a visor and a whistle and a confused look on his face saying, ‘Where am I.’ It was that call and that experience that changed my life.

“Young people; I want to challenge you to have a meaningful relationship with the Lord,” Coach Stieg concluded. “That you’re the same in youth group and FCA as you are in every avenue of your life. That people see that you’re living for Christ. And someday you’ll look back and you’ll see where it started, and you’ll see the people and events that have happened in your life — because you let the Lord work through you — and it will be a pretty cool feeling.”