By John Rittenhouse
A former Luverne High School football player has been chosen to replace Joel Swanson as the program's head coach this fall.
During a recent meeting, School Board members approved Todd OyeÕs contract for the head football coaching position.
Oye, a 1990 LHS graduate, will accept the post and will take over the program starting next month.
"History is kind of repeating itself," Oye said from his home Sunday. "My senior year of high school was the first year Swanny became the head coach. Now heÕs going, and I'll be head coach for my first year. ItÕs kind of neat."
Considering his past playing and coaching experience, Oye is the logical choice to take over for Swanson, who accepted a teaching and coaching position at North Branch High School after serving as the head LHS coach for the past 13 years.
When Oye was a varsity player at LHS, he received the opportunity to play under two successful coaches who helped make the program competitive.
As a junior in 1988, Oye played for the last Cardinal team to be led by then head coach Bob Osterday. He played the same positions as Jim Remme, one of Southwest Minnesota's top players who enjoyed an outstanding college career at South Dakota State University, so OyeÕs playing time was limited as a junior.
That changed in 1989 when he was a senior member of Swanson's first team.
Oye was a starting member of Luverne's offensive and defensive lines that season, earning all-conference, all-area and all-state honorable mention honors for his performance in the trenches.
The son of rural Hardwick's Bruce and Marilyn Oye continued to play football at two different colleges after high school.
Oye attended the North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton in 1990 and 1991, starting as an offensive lineman in all of the games the Wildcats played during his two years at the school.
After graduating from NDSCS in 1992, Oye attended Southwest State University in Marshall. He was a starter on the offensive line in all of the games the Mustangs played in 1992 and 1993.
Oye graduated from SSU in the spring of 1994 and returned to Wahpeton, where he coached the NDSCS offensive lineman that fall.
In 1995, Oye served as the freshman coach at Rochester Mayo High School before moving to Rochester Century the next year, where he served as the varsity football program's offensive assistant coach for three seasons.
Oye returned to Luverne with his wife, Carrie, for the 2000-01 school year. The Oyes have two daughters. Madilyn is four and Jocilyn is 2. Todd has instructed seventh-grade geography while working as a defensive coach for the Luverne football program's sophomore team for two years.
"When I was in Rochester, I really wanted to come back to Luverne and coach with Swanny," Oye said. "It definitely was one of my goals to become head coach some day, but I'm surprised it happened so fast. I thought I would work under Swanny for 10 years or so and take over whenever he wanted to get out of it."
Unlike Swanson, who will be surrounded by strangers when he begins his North Branch coaching job, Oye will have the benefit of working with a familiar coaching staff.
Terry Althoff will remain as the program's defensive coordinator, a position he manned when Oye was a player.
Being in the program the last two years gave Oye the opportunity to work with Al Brinkman and Mike Wenninger, who have been LHS program assistants longer than Oye has. Wenninger will work with the quarterbacks and defensive backs. Brinkman will work with the running backs.
Like Swanson, Oye will work with the offensive and defensive linemen. He also will be calling the offensive plays.
Cardinal fans can expect some changes in LuverneÕs on-field strategies this fall, while other things will remain the same.
"I'm pretty excited about this," Oye said. "We'll be doing some things noticeably different than we have in the past, but weÕll also be running a lot of the offensive and defensive sets we have been. There is a lot of pride in the football program here, and we hope to keep that going."