Who is Kalen DeBoer? A collection of stories about the new Alabama football coach
Ken "SID" Kortemeyer still hasn't forgotten that beautiful spring day.
About 30 years ago, Kortemeyer was on the campus of the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota. Then the athletics director, Kortemeyer walked into the gym, where the office of football coach Bob Young was located. That day, Young was meeting with a recruit who was on campus for a visit.
"I'd like you to meet Kalen DeBoer," Young told Kortemeyer. "He's going to be something very special."
Somehow, the late Young knew. Somehow, he had an idea that DeBoer would go on to play four seasons at Sioux Falls, becoming an All-American wide receiver in 1996 while winning an NAIA national championship. And that DeBoer would become a coach, winning countless football games; DeBoer has a 104-12 record as a college head coach. And that the Milbank, South Dakota, native would one day coach in the College Football Playoff championship with Washington before becoming the Alabama football coach to replace Nick Saban on Friday.
"I'm not sure Bob was a prophet necessarily," Kortemeyer said, "but that prophesy certainly came true."
No one knows DeBoer better than those back home in South Dakota. So they've got plenty of stories to tell. Here is a collection of a few tales shared with The Tuscaloosa News.
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Roommate on the phone
Kim Nelson needed someone to coach his sophomore football team; he needed someone fast. He lost his sophomore coach at Washington High School late in the summer. It was Friday, and practices started Monday. Nelson had no coach.
"I was kind of desperate for a coach," Nelson said.
The good news was, he knew some people at nearby University of Sioux Falls. One person told him he should call Kurtiss Riggs, a former quarterback at USF who Nelson heard wanted to get into coaching and teaching.
So Nelson called him and hired him at about 11 a.m. that Friday.
The job offer wasn't a full-time teaching position, though. So Riggs called back in the afternoon. He had just accepted a full-time teaching job at another school, so he couldn't coach at Washington High School anymore. Nelson didn't blame him, but he still needed a coach. So he asked Riggs for help. Here's how the conversation went, per Nelson's recollection.
"Kurtiss, I need a coach for Monday," Nelson said. "Do you know anybody else from your team who might want to do some coaching?"
"Well my roommate is standing right here," Riggs said. "Kalen DeBoer. I think he wants to coach."
"Put him on," Nelson said.
Then Nelson talked with DeBoer for five minutes.
"Can you start Monday?" Nelson asked
"Yeah," DeBoer said.
"Can you come every day?" Nelson asked.
"Yeah," DeBoer said.
"OK," Nelson said, "you start Monday at 8 a.m."
DeBoer, fresh out of college, had been hired for his first coaching job. And his winning ways soon began. That season, the sophomore team won every game.
Snow punter
During one game in October 1996, Kortemeyer said a number of players developed hypothermia and frostbite.
"The worst conditions you could imagine," Kortemeyer said.
He tried to meet with the leadership for South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and game officials to talk about postponing the game until the next day, when the blizzard would be over. But Kortemeyer's attempts fell on deaf ears. South Dakota Tech wanted to play. “South Dakota Tech wasn’t bad, but South Dakota Tech’s only way to beat USF that day was to play in that blizzard," said Wade Merry, then a local sportswriter. "And it wasn’t fit to play. It was horrible.”
Yet the two teams played that day in Rapid City, South Dakota. The storm was horizontal. When the offense drove into the blizzard, the players couldn't really see. DeBoer, then a wide receiver, was part of that group. There were no face shields to help either. Punting became darn near impossible when going against the wind. It was so bad that Sioux Falls didn't punt in some fourth-down situations. That included going for it on a fourth down from its own 10.
Electricity in the stadium went out before halftime. So the scoreboard wasn't working. Without power, the door had to be left open to the locker room at halftime so that there was some light.
Neither team scored much. Moving the ball proved difficult. The snow often proved to be an obstacle. Except for the time it became helpful.
In the second half, DeBoer punted a ball that landed near the goal line. But there was no bounce. No roll. It halted immediately on snow. Soon thereafter, a Sioux Falls defender tackled a South Dakota Tech player for a safety.
Sioux Falls won 8-6.
All that and a bag of chips
Tom Frederick, the Sioux Falls play-by-play announcer, wasn't looking forward to the postgame interview.
DeBoer and Sioux Falls had just lost 55-0 to Carroll College in Montana. Then, to get to the postgame interview, DeBoer had to go up to the press box, an open press box at that, in Helena, Montana, in December where it was "colder than heck," Frederick said. Oh and one more thing — DeBoer had to climb a ladder to get to the press box where the radio crew sat.
Some coaches wouldn't take that whole scenario well. Then there's DeBoer.
"He wasn’t mad," Frederick said. "He wasn’t perturbed."
Instead, DeBoer sat down during the commercial break and munched on a bag of chips left over from the halftime meal. Once back from commercial, he answered questions for about 10 minutes.
"He wasn’t short with his answers," Frederick said. "He knew what they needed to do to go forward. They had to get better up front in the trenches and establish a ground game."
There was no cursing, either. DeBoer never did swear in all the interviews Frederick did before and after games with him. And Frederick never heard DeBoer cuss in any setting over the course of DeBoer's time coaching at Sioux Falls from 2000-2009.
"Easy to talk to," Frederick said. "Didn’t dance around the questions. Didn’t sugar-coat. Not a lot of coach-speak either. He spoke from the heart and told it as it was."
The reunion
Merry is now a golf coach at Sioux Falls, but when DeBoer was there, Merry wasn't part of the staff. He worked for the local newspaper. So he wasn't a teammate of DeBoer's, a coach or anything of that nature.
But you wouldn't have known it when Sioux Falls held a reunion in 2016 to celebrate the 2006 national championship team DeBoer coached, as well as the 1996 team for which DeBoer played. Merry hadn't seen DeBoer since 2009, when DeBoer left Sioux Falls for Southern Illinois. Time didn't change much, though.
"He comes up, puts his arm around me, gives me a big hug, wants to know how I’m doing," Merry said. "We talked about the old days and what he had going on. That made me feel really good. I was just a beat writer at the Argus-Leader. Just shows you what kind of a guy he is."
Outside in Nashville
A couple of years ago, Nelson met up with DeBoer at a national coaches convention in Nashville. They were walking outside the building when DeBoer spotted his agent.
DeBoer called him over. Then DeBoer introduced Nelson to his agent, explaining that Nelson was the guy who gave DeBoer his first coaching job.
"That’s the first time I had ever heard it like that," Nelson said. "I mean yeah, I guess I did, but it was because I was so desperate that I hired the first guy I could hire on the phone."
Little did Nelson know, he was hiring someone who would one day coach Alabama football. A guy who was going to win a lot of football games. A coach who was going to be something very special.
Nick Kelly is the Alabama beat writer for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network, and he covers Alabama football and men's basketball. Reach him at nkelly@gannett.com or follow him @_NickKelly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Kalen DeBoer: A collection of stories about new Alabama football coach
