Concordia Football Coach Returns To Rebuild With More Resources
ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- Shannon Currier was the head football coach at Concordia University in St Paul, left for several years and now is back as the head coach.
The job at hand for Currier: Trying to turn around the Golden Bears.
They started this season not on campus, but up north at Camp Ripley, where the coach wanted some solitude.
"The main reason is just to build a team because when we're on campus, we have kids in this dorm and another group in that dorm and some in their own houses. When you go to Camp Ripley they are all in the same building," Currier said. "We had six different barracks."
He did the same thing the first time he coached at Concordia. He's come back to a new program, different than what he left.
"I had two coaches. One was making $31,000 and the other was $19,000 that were full-time. Now I have four full-time coaches to provide assistance, so the program has come a long ways," Currier said.
Most notable, he's got a new stadium since he left. And that matters to a metro program.
"We didn't have anything like this before. We had rocks, grass and dirt, and this is how we practiced in the past. It looked a lot different," Currier said. "But yeah the facility is phenomenal because in the winter our players get a chance to practice in the dome."
This team has struggled to win games in the past few seasons, and the new and old coach needs to change the culture by making good decisions on scholarship football players.
"It's a business, it's supply and demand. The more guys you have as options to get at a spot, maybe the less money you can offer a particular player," Currier said. "So just in that whole process of running a business, we have to make good business decisions."
