Joey Andreasen has coached as many as three sports a year for much of two decades, and on Monday he officially decided he would step down from his primary role as Osakis’ varsity wrestling coach.
The job as a head coach at the varsity level requires a lot of effort on the mat and behind the scenes. Andreasen resigned at the Osakis School Board meeting on April 13 and is ready to let somebody else take over in that capacity.
“It’s obviously difficult because I’ve been coaching two or three sports for 25 years,” he said. “Throughout the year, I was kind of contemplating that it’s time to slow down...I think it’s time to look back and reflect, slow down and enjoy life is kind of where I’m going.”
Andreasen said he still plans to coach junior high football, but any goals of getting back into varsity coaching are not on the horizon.
“You never say never, but as of right now, I’d say this is probably it,” Andreasen said. “The time and energy that it takes to run a successful program is a lot. I’m almost 50 years old. I’m not sure I’m willing to do that, but you never know.”
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Andreasen’s wife, Marceia, owns Kindred People in Alexandria, and they own another business in Fargo. Both also have jobs at the school, with Joey being a second-grade teacher in Osakis. He said he is excited to spend more time in his classroom instead of having to rush out for games and practices throughout the year.
“On top of it all, I’m becoming a grandfather in May, so that kind of puts things in perspective as well,” he said.
Andreasen’s first head-coaching position in wrestling came in Mayville, N.D. in 1996. He moved back to Minnesota and coached at Wheaton and at West Central Area for a while before his two daughters started playing basketball.
Andreasen served as the assistant girls basketball coach at Ashby under John Kent before the Osakis varsity wrestling position opened up. Andreasen led the Silverstreaks for nine seasons and was proud of the accomplishments the program racked up over his tenure.
“We had 10 state place winners in nine years. From 1939 to 2011, they only had eight, so that was quite an accomplishment, I thought,” he said. “We had a school-record five state entrants in 2015. We had three section champions in 2014 and 2017. We had 22 state entrants in (nine years), and they had like 30 in the entire time before that. I thought we were doing pretty well.”
Team accomplishments also included winning the conference tournament in 2014 and winning the South half of the conference in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
“There was a lot of success there,” Andreasen said. “Obviously, the last couple of years we haven’t had the kind of success we had. Things go in cycles, and there’s a lot of really good wrestlers coming up. I have no doubt that they are going to be successful again. They’re doing a really, really great job with the elementary, and the assistant coaches are awesome. I have no doubt in my mind that in four, five years, they will be right back where we were.”
The Silverstreaks struggled with participation numbers in recent years. The inability to fill lineups made for a lot of forfeits at weight classes and trouble matching up in duals. Andreasen posted a career record of 92-127 after Osakis finished this year at 5-18.
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“Wrestling in itself right now is difficult at times,” Andreasen said. “One thing we always talk about is all the pairings going on. The last three years in our conference, the teams that have placed seventh, eighth and ninth have all had the smallest enrollment, and everyone else in the conference is paired. They just have more kids to choose from, and that’s not a reason to make an excuse because there are a lot of small schools that do really well. The fact is around the country, it seems to be the trend when you have a couple down years, people panic and they want to join forces.”
Andreasen lauded the effort of the kids in Osakis’ program all season. Individually, senior Nate Kulzer (29-11) finished third at 132 pounds at the Section 5A meet. Logan Grove (113 pounds), Kale Drevlow (145 pounds) and Jacob Taplin (106 pounds) all finished fourth.
“The kids worked extremely hard,” Andreasen said. “The one thing you coach for is to see those kids be successful and buy into what you’re selling. Every day in practice, they worked their tails off. Even though we didn’t have great numbers, I always told the kids that there weren’t kids who worked harder than our kids. Every coach says that, but I believe it was true.”
Gaven Cimbura (120 pounds), Carsten Jacobson (138 pounds), Tyson Hagedon (152 pounds) and Nathan Bjerk (182) added top-eight finishes at sections. Kulzer and Bjerk are the lone seniors of that group, giving whoever coaches Osakis next season a nucleus to build around.
“I really believe the elementary coaches are doing an amazing job,” Andreasen said. “I think this is just going to be a little lull here. They’ll be back to being competitive and having strong numbers again in a short time. It’s just going to be a few years, and we knew that.”
