By Tom Schardin, Staff Writer

Paying his dues as an assistant coach, it’s now John Biezuns turn to call the shots.

The 1994 Prior Lake High School graduate is getting ready to embark on his first season as a head high school football coach, taking the reins at Robbinsdale Cooper in New Hope.

Biezuns takes over a Cooper program that went 2-7 overall last fall, 2-5 in the North Suburban League.

“Being a head football coach has always been a dream of mine,” said Biezuns. “I’ve waited for this opportunity. I think I’ve been on about 12 interviews over the years for different head coaching jobs. And I always was told, ‘You’re a finalist.” Finally, it worked out for me. I’m very excited.”

     John BiezunsBiezuns was a three-sport athlete in his Laker days, wrestling and playing baseball, along with his time on the Prior Lake gridiron as an offensive lineman. He played Division III football for four years at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls where he was a team captain his final year.

Following his playing days, he spent a year at River Falls as graduate assistant coach, and then went on to DeLaSalle where he coached the offensive line for five years.

The last three years, Biezuns was at St. Paul Arlington High School coaching the defense and special teams. The team struggled, winning only two games last year.

Biezuns said if he didn’t get the Cooper job, or the job at Minneapolis Edison, in which he was finalist for, he would have taken a year off from coaching. He didn’t agree with how things were run at Arlington.

“To be honest, it just wasn’t very organized and that was frustrating for me,” said Biezuns. “I learned what not to do when I was there, so overall I can take away some positives from that experience.”

Biezuns has added some of his former River Falls teammates to his staff at Cooper. The one thing he wants to get through to his new team from the get-go is the value of team building.

“That’s the biggest thing we are going to do,” said Biezuns. “Win or lose, we will do it as a team, together.”

Biezuns has spent much of the summer at Cooper, running clinics, passing camps and helping student-athletes in the weight-lifting program. When practices start Aug. 11, he feels his summer programs will have his team ahead of the game.

At Prior Lake, Biezuns said there were two coaches who had an impact on him – Darwin Busselman in baseball and Darrell Barlage, who was the offensive line coach on the football team.

“They were very instrumental in getting the most of out of their players, especially myself,” said Biezuns. “They were the only two coaches that watched me play in college. I was able to take from that and apply it into my coaching philosophy. I think that it’s important to follow the success of your players.”

On the field, what will be Biezuns’ defensive and offensive philosophies?

On defense, the approach will be pretty straightforward.

“We are going to play the Arizona flex defense,” said Biezuns “It’s predicated on hustle. It’s about swarming to the ball and getting turnovers. It’s a defense where you don’t have to be big up front. You just have to plug holes.”

Offensively, Biezuns will try to take advantage of Cooper’s athletic ability. The school may have struggled on the football field last year. But the basketball program went to state and some of those same athletes are on the football team.

“We think we’ll be able to spread the ball around and little and take advantage of some of our athletic ability,” said Biezuns. “But we also will run the football. We ran the wishbone in college, so there may be a little of that in there too. We are going to try to be diverse.”

Whatever happens to Biezuns’ team on the field this fall, he knows he must accomplish one thing. That would be increasing the numbers in the program. To do that, he has to shake hands and be a positive influence on and off the field.

Last spring, shortly after he was hired, Biezuns spent some time in the school lunchroom getting to know the students and introducing himself.

“I want the kids to believe in me and believe in our program,” said Biezuns. “That’s the first thing a good program needs to do – have the kids believing.”