Coach Mike Studt to retire from coaching afterm 32 years, 25 as a head coach.

The teaching/coaching bug bit me pretty early in life. It was solely due to highly influential teacher/coaches during my Mount Vernon school years. I felt like coaches Ringgenberg and Bellamy in football and Landis in basketball all taught me skills on how to live and handle my life, both by example and their teaching/coaching efforts. Coach Thatcher and coach Peters are a couple of others I’d include in that influential group. To be sure, I had educators and my large family influencing my decision to go into teaching and coaching, but there was never any doubt for me about who I wanted to emulate- my coaches!

My football coaching career started in 1976 as the head coach at New Hartford (before they joined with Dike).  I spent 2 years there, finishing 2nd in the conference year 2. That got the school a trophy for their trophy case, which hadn’t been done there in football for quite some time. I was only a ¬Ω time teacher/ full time coach at New Hartford, so I took a full time teaching position in Newton and coached sophomore football for 3 years.  We won a class 4A state title there in 1981! What an experience! My next stop was BCL, which became BCLUW during my tenure there.  Our teams qualified for the state playoffs twice at BCLUW, reaching the quarterfinals in 1989, before falling to eventual state champion Center Point. I left BCLUW after 11 years, moving to Earlham, looking to teach/coach at a bigger school! Unfortunately, a consolidation between Earlham and a neighboring district fell through, leaving me with a teaching/coaching job at an even smaller district! We reached the playoffs once and won/shared two district titles! 

I then retired from coaching for the first time to be an administrator. I filled that role for 8 years before retiring and getting bit by the coaching bug again! I assumed the head football coaching duties at East Marshall for 3 years. I would like to say we got better every year I was there, but our overall records didn’t indicate that. After going 3-6 and 4-5, we failed to win a game that last year. There were close games, but no wins. Granted, we were playing with about 20 juniors and few seniors, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Family matters required me to leave the football job at East Marshall, retiring once again from coaching the game! 

Well, kind of retiring from the game! I started doing some substitute teaching in the Marion area and found myself informally assisting my son-in-law with the football program on Friday nights at GMG in Garwin. After a year of doing that I received a phone call one late July afternoon from Duane Orr asking me to help him out here in Mt. Vernon because he had had an assistant coach leave the system! So, wanting to help out Caoch Orr and my home town program, I acquiesced and came out of retirement once again. I was lucky enough, and truly thankful, to be retained by Coach Pedersen when he came on board a year later.

 I now find myself in a position of transition when I’d like to spend my falls without obligation and feel the football program at MV will be best served by my moving on. It’s been a great experience to be a part of the program here at MV. I hope the new facilities and district improvements get approved and the pieces continue to fall into place for the football program. I am fortunate to be going out at the top of Class 2A football in Iowa!   

It’s never been about the wins or losses. It’s been about learning how to deal with what life throws at you and being a good person! I always wanted players to want to be a part of my program because of how they were treated and highly valued as people/players. And, yes, I had girls in my program toward the end of my career!  :>)