Ryan Niemi takes over Devil football program

IRONWOOD - Football and being around the athletic fields at Luther L. Wright High School have been two constants in Ryan Niemi's life.

Now he'll get the chance to combine the two as he was hired to be Ironwood's new head football coach after Dan Niemi recently stepped away from the position.

"I've played here, coached here and live in town," Ryan Niemi said. "I actually thought about coaching here back when I was in high school. It's a real big honor to be in this position."

Ironwood athletic director Gordy Erickson said Niemi was selected from a pool of seven candidates, two from out-of-town. He said Niemi had "earned" the head coaching job.

"Ryan has helped out the Ironwood football program for 20 years," Erickson said. "Sometimes he was paid and other times he volunteered. He paid his dues and earned his way. It's his time. Now he needs to get a good staff around him to help him."

Niemi's start in Ironwood was as a player and a darned good one at that. He was brought up to the varsity as a sophomore in 1991 and immediately became a starter as an offensive and defensive lineman. When he grew to be 6-2 and 275 pounds and liked knocking people around on the football field, not many opposing players wanted to mess with him.

He was an all-conference player in his junior year and in his senior year he was selected to all-conference, All-U.P. and All-State teams.

As a senior, Niemi lined up across from Tom Burke, a top-notch defensive end from Northwestern, who played for the Wisconsin Badgers and for four years in the NFL. In the first half, Niemi dominated Burke to the point the Northwestern coaches switched Burke to the opposite side of the line and away from Niemi in the second half.

It is said that teams take on the personality of their head coach. If that's true, then the Red Devils will be one tough team because Niemi demonstrated his toughness playing through pain and injury.

As a senior, Niemi suffered a torn labium and torn rotator cuff in his shoulder. Surgery seemed to be the answer, but Niemi knew the surgery would end his high school football career.

The only other answer was to wear a shoulder harness, but Niemi was never comfortable playing with it on and would take it off in games. But with his shoulder no longer protected, it would dislocate during games. Niemi would run to the sideline, have it popped back into place and return to the game.

"I was afraid not to play," Niemi said. "We were in a winning program and everyone wanted to play. So I just blocked out the pain. The most painful part was when the shoulder was put back into place."

Niemi learned a lot of his football being a volunteer coach for eight years in Ironwood and helping coach "offensive line stuff and defense." He was also the offensive coordinator during Dan Niemi's five-year tenure as head coach.

But Ryan Niemi insists the coach who had the most influence on him as he learned to coach was Don Holst. Holst was a long-time football, basketball and track-and-field coach in Ironwood when Niemi was an athlete.

"He (Holst) had great organizational skills and was very technical in his coaching," Niemi said. "He didn't care who you were or where you came from. If you could play, he'd find you a position. And he came over and gave me an old football helmet, so I got my first Ironwood football helmet when I was five years old."

In Niemi's time as Ironwood's offensive coordinator, the Red Devils qualified for the MHSAA playoffs twice, but in the last two years, Ironwood's football program has fallen on hard times and posted a 1-17 record.

Niemi did not accept his first head coaching job under any false pretenses. He is aware that rebuilding Ironwood's football fortunes will be a big challenge, but he welcomes the challenge of returning Ironwood to the times when he played and the words playoffs and Ironwood were used in the same sentence, while the Red Devils also battled for conference championships.

"I'm looking forward to it and I want to get the ball rolling and start going full throttle as soon as we can," Niemi said. "The No. 1 objective is to change the kids' thought process, their frame of mind. When we had our good teams in Ironwood, they believed they could beat every team they played. We have to work real hard to get the kids to buy into that again. We have to learn how to win again and expect to win again."

Niemi also disputes the perception that Ironwood's pool of talented football players has dried up.

"There's a lot of talent in the school," Niemi said. "Some of them just aren't playing. We have to get them to give football a try. We had a football meeting and 56 signed up to play."

Niemi knows all 56 won't make it to the opening game of the season, but he would like to build up the varsity and JV teams to where both have about 26 players on the roster.

"There's 22 positions and 22 potential starters," Niemi said. "I know there will be kids going both ways, but I'd like to increase the number of players actually playing out on the field."

Niemi knows the players in Ironwood's football program need to be bigger, stronger and faster. He is also working on developing a weight-lifting and conditioning program that is uniquely designed to benefit each individual sport at Luther L. Wright.

"I'd like to make every sports program in the school better," Niemi said.

Niemi has set some high goals and expectations he would like his Red Devil teams to live up to.

"I don't want the football program to just exist," Niemi said. "I want to put us back in the playoff picture year in and year out."