Sports

A trial by fire

By Matthew Semisch

03/31/2015

Going from being a big fish in a small pond to being in the inverse situation doesn’t seem like an easy adjustment to make.
Then again, though, fish are subject to natural selection, too, and some thrive where others don’t.

The metaphor extends to small-town high school athletes. The cream of the smaller-class crop rises to the top, but there’s no guarantee it’ll stay there at the college level.

Emerging football talents from smaller schools aren’t immune to this. It’s something that Hunter Braaten, a former all-state quarterback for Westhope-Newburg-Glenburn (W-N-G) had to deal with once his high school career came to a close.

Calling him a once-in-a-generation player for the Sioux probably won’t prove to be off the mark. Braaten put up video game numbers behind center for W-N-G, and he was also named all-state in both basketball and golf in his senior year at Westhope Public School.

His Sioux credentials were then and still are indisputable. So much so, in fact, that Minnesota State University-Moorhead (MSUM) sought and won his pledge to play college football for the school.

He put pen to paper last spring to declare his intent to become a MSUM Dragon. What he knew that that also meant was that he would soon face stiffer competition than North Dakota’s lower high school classes ever put in front of him.

Braaten’s new coaches in Moorhead had reservations that he could handle the big leap right away. It didn’t take long, though, before the once-big fish made them change their tune.

A QUICK STUDY

MSUM head coach Steve Laqua is a Cavalier, N.D., native who first found out about Braaten through a high school classmate.

Bob Beaudrie was Braaten’s head basketball coach for Westhope-Newburg (W-N), and Beaudrie sold his old school chum on what Braaten was like away from the fields of play.

“Bob’s character reference was really the big piece,” Laqua said, “because he spoke so highly of Hunter and who he was as a person and how he’d be a hard worker and the kind of guy you want in your program, and that means a lot to us as a (coaching) staff in our program.

“I know that, as a coach, every time I’m in a high school, I’m asking everybody that I come across, whether it be a custodian or a cook or a teacher or the office ladies or whoever, ‘What do you think of this guy when he doesn’t have his football helmet on?’

“That’s an important piece of the recruiting process for us,” Laqua continued, “and everyone I talked to in Westhope had nothing but great things to tell me about Hunter.”

Braaten was clearly seen as a mature young man off of the field. An athlete’s off-field development isn’t always on the same level as what he or she is like on it, though, and it was with that in mind that Laqua thought it would be a good idea to redshirt Braaten once he arrived in Moorhead.

Redshirting in college athletics involves a student-athlete sitting out for a season without that counting against his or her playing eligibility. For example, a redshirt freshman could spend five years - or more, in rare cases - with his or her team instead of the standard four.

ROLE REDEFINED

At first, Braaten agreed to take the redshirt year. Just days before MSUM’s season-opener at Upper Iowa on Sept. 6, however, the redshirt label was removed.

“A week before our first game, Coach Laqua and our wide receivers coach came up to me and asked if they could pull my redshirt,” Braaten said. “I agreed to that, and they said I would get playing time right away that way, so I took the chance. 

“They thought I was ready for it, and I’m glad they saw that in me.”

“We had figured that we would redshirt him for a number of reasons,” Laqua said. “Small-town player, needs some development, and playing wide receiver and he’d never played before at that position, so we naturally thought we’d redshirt him. 

“The thing is, though, he was picking things up so quickly from the first day of practice, and I remember that first day because we had (local television crews’) cameras there and I stepped off to the side and told a media guy that, ‘You know, this kid had never played wide receiver before and that’s something that it sometimes takes guys two years to get used to.’

“There’s something to him that he kept playing well enough that he was going to be a guy that could play,” Laqua continued, “and he could contribute right away, and we made that decision just on how fast he was developing.”

Braaten didn’t start for the Dragons in the 44-36 loss to the Peacocks in Fayette, Iowa. He did get into the game, though, and finished it with three catches for 28 yards.

Two weeks later on Sept. 20, when MSUM visited Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) rival Wayne State (Neb.), Braaten scored his first collegiate touchdown.

Early in the second quarter, with MSUM leading the Wildcats 18-9, Dragons quarterback Jake Hodge found Braaten over the middle of the field. Braaten then took the ball into the end zone for a 29-yard score.

He kept improving as the season went on, appearing in all 11 games for the Dragons (4-7) and starting in four of them. He ended the season with three touchdowns and 243 receiving yards on 16 catches.

“He continued to play more and more as the season went,” Laqua said last week ahead of the start of MSUM’s spring practice schedule on Saturday in Moorhead. “You could see him becoming more comfortable with our offense and the speed of the game.

“It was a good first year for him and I’m excited to see him in spring ball,” Laqua continued. “I know his 40 (yard dash time) is down almost half a second from where he was in high school, so it’s exciting to how he’s developed, and we’re looking for big things from him as we move forward.”

WORK TO BE DONE

There’s plenty of work for MSUM to do before it opens its 2015 season at home to Winona State (Minn.) on Sept. 3. Until then, Laqua expects Braaten to take on more responsibilities.

“He’s a guy that’s a natural leader and he’ll be a year older and more experienced,” Laqua said, “and he’ll be one of those guys for us that has a calm head, takes on leadership roles and faces adversity well, and he’s such a complete player and person that I know he’ll be able to do that.”

For Braaten, it’s also about working up from a backup role to a starting one for his team.

“I just want to keep competing, keep getting better,” he said. “I’m trying to get that No. 1 starting spot for next season, and that’s what I’m working toward. 

“You’re competing every day, every practice for your spot, and it’s something where you can’t really take a day off, and I’m working hard to get to that spot I want to be in.”