On Saturday we went back to Cedar Rapids to catch a football game between Coe College and Central College and also to attend a 10-year reunion for the team that started SGI.
That team was the 2016 Coe College Kohawks who were the first team in Coach Tyler Staker’s Coe Head Coaching career.
Many of our key SGI team members and key supporters are Kohawks who played on the Coe 2016 team or were students at Coe or family members of some of the players.
Those young men and women who put in all those hours at the small college level is something we wanted to recognize, and this 2016 Coe College Football team was the impetus for the founding of SGI.
The 2016 Coe College team is the winningest team in Coe College History (The Kohawks have been playing football for over 135 years). At 11-1 and a NCAA D3 Playoff win no other Coe team has won 11 games in a season.
The Kohawks were led by Head Coach Tyler Staker in 2016 (Tyler took over for his legendary coaching Dad Steve that year). Coe also had legendary Defensive Coordinator Steve Atwater (who coached at Coe for 26 years) go into retirement on top as this was his last season before retiring.
It was one of those magical football years for small college team, and the friendships forged during that teams run became the core of the SGI idea. It was over a few beers reminiscing about the 2016 KoHawks that we decided man lets do this and start covering these small colleges in Iowa and athletes that don’t get the recognition they deserve.
It was great to see these young men many of them now fathers come back and celebrate 4 years of practice, workouts, and games and celebrate that brotherhood on a great fall day.
That is what Small College Iowa athletics is all about.
