Becker’s Lundeen Still Winning Games And Impacting Lives After 55 Years As Coach
The Becker Bulldogs will play against Marshall Thursday morning in a semifinal matchup of the Class AAAA state football tournament at US Bank Stadium.
Roaming the sidelines in blue will be Dwight Lundeen, the man who has coached the program since it began in 1970. He has racked up 410 wins as the coach of the Bulldogs, placing him second of the state of Minnesota's all time list and has led the team to 20 state tournaments.
"It's unique that I am the only coach (Becker) has ever had, it's been a nice journey and I've been blessed with a lot of great coaches and great players," Lundeen said. "I'm in my third generation of kids, I had your grandpa, I had your dad and now I have you... you aren't getting away with anything!"
Despite such frequent trips to the state tournament, including three championships, Lundeen says it is still very exciting to make it this far into the postseason. It is Becker's first trip to state since 2021.
"We had a great time three years ago (at state) and we have some kids now who were dressed then at that time and they committed to getting back to state this year," Lundeen said. "We had a great game in Brainerd last week that put us into the semifinals and we are excited about it."
Almost everything you can imagine about football has changed since Lundeen's first season in 1970, but he has been able to not only adapt to the changing landscape but has embraced it fully.
"It still comes down to blocking and tackling, whoever does that the best will probably win," Lundeen said. "Technology is amazing... the game is over at 9:30 and all 80 of our kids will have the next three games of our opponent on their iPad when they get home, they'll have our game.
"We have a 42" tv on the sidelines during the game and can instantly look at a play and can tell what happened on that play and it's such a great, great teaching device. So, that has changed tremendously from my 55 years where we went from 8mm film three days after we played... that wasn't real helpful."
Lundeen gives a lot of credit for his success to his assistant coaches over the years. He says a lot of them have been around since that first state championship team in 2006 and/or the more recent 2014 and 2015 title teams, calling them 'seasoned, veteran tournament coaches.'
Lundeen says he has no current plan to retire from coaching.
"I don't have to win 'x' amount of games or accomplish this or that," Lundeen said. "It's a purpose thing. Right or wrong, when you are the football coach in the community you have a platform and my purpose is so much greater than my goal.
"My goal is to win every game that (I) ever coach, and we've been very successful, but my purpose is so much greater and if you don't get those confused you can stay with it for a long time, because the scoreboard can be very brutal sometimes, you lose some tough games like we did the last couple of years in the section finals, but the scoreboard doesn't define who we are or what we are trying to do, which is impact young people."
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