by Dennis Dalman
Suspense has been rapidly rising about the outcome of a Jan. 8 college football championship game in Frisco, Texas, and among those in a state of eager anticipation is a Sartell family – Christy and Michael Schmidt and their children Shauna, 20; Kiley, 19; and Trevor, 16.
Shauna is a 2020 graduate of Sartell High School, now a junior at South Dakota State University, where she has a job as a student equipment manager for one of the teams that will face off in the Jan. 8 championship game: the SDSU Jackrabbits vs. the North Dakota State University Bison.
The game will be televised on ABC-TV beginning at 1 p.m. this Sunday. Shauna and her parents will fly down to Texas to watch the fast and furious competition as they cheer on the Jackrabbits.
The SDSU and NDSU football teams are long-time sports rivals, a fact that is raising the nerve-wracking suspense and anticipatory excitement about the big game in Frisco. Both teams are members of the Missouri Valley Football Conference, founded in 2007. It is the third oldest athletic conference in the nation. The game in Frisco is known as the Football Championship Subdivision. All 24 teams in that subdivision compete for the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division’s Football Championship.
What really makes the Jan. 8 game a nail-biter is that the NDSU Bison have won nine championships in the Frisco stadium since 2011. SDSU Jackrabbits will at long last have a chance to defeat the Bison and gain their first championship in Frisco.
Every year, just the Bison and Jackrabbits compete at what’s known as the “Marker” game in which the winner’s trophy is a border boundary marker. That game obviously increases the ongoing rivalry between the two teams.
Both teams were propelled to that national championship game in mid-December when the Jackrabbits defeated Montana State University and the Bison won over the University of the Incarnate Word’s Cardinals (based in San Antonio, Texas).
Shauna Schmidt is studying science and pre-physical therapy at SDSU, a highly rated school in Brookings, a city of 23,000 in eastern South Dakota not far from the Minnesota border. Schmidt plans someday to earn a doctorate.
“I’m super excited to go to the championship game,” Schmidt said. “It’s been a long season, and it’s so nice to get to this point. The Jackrabbits lost only once in the games leading to this one.”
The Jackrabbits’ season record is 13 wins, 1 loss – to the University of Iowa.
For the second consecutive year, in 2022 SDSU upset NDSU, which had been ranked No. 2.
Schmidt works behind the scenes for the team, along with a few other students under a head equipment manager. She and the other students prepare equipment, such as helmets, to make sure they are in top condition and well-fitting. They get everything ready for every game, including doing loads of laundry. The managers also attend every football practice, where they sometimes attend to sprains and other minor injuries of the players.
“I work about 35 hours – paid hours – every week as an equipment manager, besides doing my school studies, and that is why I don’t get home to Sartell very often. I haven’t been home since late July, but my family visits here sometimes, and we stay in touch all the time. I live in a townhome off the campus, which is nice.”
Schmidt is at every Jackrabbits’ game and travels with the team members to away games.
In the spring of 2022, Schmidt heard the football team needed student employees as equipment managers. She started that spring and worked again in the fall football camp.
In her senior year at Sartell High School, she worked as a student athletic trainer so she’d had some practice wrapping sprained ankles and other tasks. In high school, she was also a member of the softball team, but in 2020, the year of the virus pandemic, the softball season was cancelled, which was a heartbreaking disappointment to her and many others.
“I always liked football but didn’t know all the ins and outs of the game,” she said. “I’m the only woman on the SDSU equipment managing team, but women are just recently getting more interested in the job. More will be hired next spring.”
The SDSU football team reached the championship subdivision semi-finals three times – in 2017, 2018 and 2020. They advanced to their first national championship game on May 8, 2021 after defeating Delaware 33-3 in that national semi-finals. They played against No. 2-ranked Sam Houston State University in 2021 but lost 23-21.
The team’s head coach is John Stiegelmeier, who has been coaching for 26 years.
Jackrabbits in NFL
A total of 34 SDSU Jackrabbits have played for National Football League teams. Twenty-nine have been drafted in the NFL Draft process.
Those players include Jordan Brown for the Las Vegas Raiders, Dallas Goeder for the Philadelphia Eagles, Christian Roseboom for the Los Angeles Rams, Cade Johnson for the Seattle Seahawks and Pierre Strong Jr. for the New England Patriots.
Jim Langer, a former Jackrabbit, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987 during his time as a Miami Dolphins player. Born in Little Falls in 1948, Langer’s family moved to Royalton where he graduated from Royalton High School, then became a middle linebacker for SDSU in the late 1960s. Later he was a center and guard in the NFL for the Miami Dolphins and still later played for the Minnesota Vikings (1980-81). He retired after his time with the Vikings, worked as a broadcaster for the WJON radio station in St. Cloud, and helped with football broadcasts for the St. Cloud State University radio station.
Langer died, age 71, at his home in Coon Rapids on Aug. 29, 2019 of heart-related issues, according to his wife, Linda, the mother of their four children.
Shauna Schmidt holds with pride the South Dakota border-marker “trophy” after the South Dakota State University football team (the Jackrabbits) won the annual “Marker” game versus the North Dakota State University Bison team. The loyalties and rivalries among those two teams runs deep and fierce. They will face off in the national college football championship game Jan. 8 in Frisco, Texas. Schmidt, a 2020 gradate of Sartell High School, is an equipment manger for the Jackrabbits, along with the four others in the photo.
Jubilant South Dakota State University Jackrabbits celebrate after defeating the North Dakota State University Bison earlier in the season. The team members in the center are holding up the South Dakota border marker, the “trophy” for their victory. Those two teams compete annually in what’s known as the “Marker” game. They will compete again for the college national championship Jan. 8 in Frisco, Texas.
