Sports

DCB set to lose couple of assistant coaches

By Matthew Semisch

12/09/2014

Starting early next year, Dakota College at Bottineau (DCB) will be without two veteran members of the school’s athletic department.

On Dec. 1, Northland Community and Technical College (Minn.) announced that it had chosen Travis Martin to restart the Pioneers’ football program.

Football at Northland came to a halt a year ago amid issues the school faced regarding housing and Title IX regulations. Title IX is the portion of a 1972 civil rights law that states that no person can be legally excluded from school programs for reasons based on the person’s gender.

A DCB alumnus, Martin has spent the last two years serving as the offensive coordinator for the Lumberjacks’ football team and the head coach of DCB’s baseball team.

His wife, Krista, is currently in her second season as an assistant coach with DCB’s women’s basketball and volleyball teams.

The couple will, however, be moving to Thief River Falls, Minn., ahead of Travis’s start date at Northland on Jan. 5.

For Travis, accepting Northland’s offer was a relatively easy decision to make. Although he attended DCB, he’s a native of Grand Forks, which is only an hour’s drive from Northland’s campus in Thief River Falls.

“I think it was in the middle of September that my parents mentioned that it had been in the Grand Forks Herald that Northland was bringing football back,” Travis said. “They asked if I’d heard about it, and I hadn’t, so I looked it up, and one of the things that excited me about it, with all of my family nearby, was the possibility of having my family come out to see me coach.

“I put my name out there and was just happy to get an interview to start with, considering I’m 25. I’d always wanted to get into a head coaching role, though, and (Northland) was perfect given the location.”

Krista, who with Travis is expecting the couple’s first child in the coming months, has also applied for work in Thief River Falls. She is not, however, expecting to take on a coaching position at Northland.

Both of the couple’s sets of grandparents live in Thief River Falls, which will provide the Martins with an already set support system upon their arrival in their new hometown.

“With my wife and I expecting our first (child) here in a couple of months,” Travis said, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation in terms of family living nearby. 

“We’ll live an hour from my parents in Grand Forks and about two minutes from both my grandparents and Krista’s in Thief River, so it’s going to be pretty great in that regard.”

Krista’s parents aren’t far away, either. They reside in Fargo.
Dano Fagerlund, who has served as Martin’s assistant baseball coach, will take over DCB’s baseball team on an interim basis.

Martin’s replacement on Wayne Johnson’s women’s basketball coaching staff has not yet been named.