School district hires Schroeder, Klaphake

by Dennis Dalman

editor@thenewsleaders.com

Now that she’s back on her home turf, NaDean Schroeder is happy to be the new activities director for the Sauk Rapids-Rice High School.

She will replace Luke Lutterman who held that job for three years before he, too, returned to his home turf as principal of a middle school in Dodge Center.

Schroeder was raised in Maple Lake and earned a communications degree from the University of North Dakota-Grand Forks, as well as a master’s degree in sports management from St. Cloud State University.

In a case of like father, like daughter, Schroeder’s father, Dave, was also an activities director of Maple Lake schools for 25 years until last spring. Now, NaDean will be able to visit her parents more often and friends she grew up with in the Central Minnesota area. For the past four years, Schroeder was an assistant athletic director at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. From that city, it was almost an 11-hour drive to her hometown of Maple Lake.

She said she is happy to be home, and happy she’ll be able to work with and develop young people at the high school level. She said she is also happy her father will continue to be her mentor and inspiration as he has been all of her life.

Schroeder, a 2001 graduate of Maple Lake High School, has had extensive experience in sports activities and sports management. She managed a men’s golf program, amdwas for two years an assistant sports information director for media and public relations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

She also served as regional communications officer and development coordinator for the Minn-Kota Region of the American Red Cross, and was assistant athletics director of media and public relations at Minnesota State University, Moorhead.

Klaphake

The hiring of Schroeder is the second major change in athletic personnel in recent months at Sauk Rapids-Rice High School. Earlier this summer, Phillip Klaphake was hired as the high school’s head football coach and also to serve as the middle school’s activities director.

Klaphake will replace former football coach Bill Magnuson, who resigned to become an assistant coach at Pequot Lakes High School. As middle-school activities director, he will replace Rich Spiczka, who served in that position and who was also the school’s basketball coach. He, too, resigned to coach basketball, also at Pequot Lakes.

A 2009 graduate of Princeton High School, Klaphake earned a degree in health and physical education and then a master’s degree in education administration. While at SCSU, Klaphake was a star quarterback who holds several records for the SCSU team. During the past year, he was defensive-back coach for Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.

Klaphake and his wife, Allie, now live in St. Peter, but they plan to move to the Sauk Rapids-Rice area as soon as possible.