Frank Haege - A Look Ahead - Part 2
Michael Vergane
Sunday March 11, 2001
Mike Vergane – Your father (Art Haege) is now the Head Coach of the new af2 Iowa Barnstormers. You have coached against him before so that is not new, but you have never gone up against him as an opposing head coach. Describe your differences in style.
Frank Haege – Personality wise, he is more of an old-school, hard-nosed kind of a coach. Where I am more of a new generation, analytical type of a coach. We both believe in structure, organization and discipline. And we are both firm beleivers that 99% of the game is how good your players are, and the other 1% is coaching.
Offensively, we both know that you have to throw the football to win, but you also have to be able to run it when the time comes. And defensively, we both do just about the same things.
Mike Vergane – What was your father’s speciality as an assistant over the past few years in the AFL?
Frank Haege – He was mostly a defensive coordinator and a linebacker coach. With the Barnstormers, I think he will run the offense. He has done it before. I played split end for him in college when he was our Offensive Coordinator and we ran a ‘BYU West Coast” offense. He believes like I do that the head coach should run the offense and have more control of the game. Especially in Arena Football, the offense dictates so much of the game.
Mike Vergane – The af2 rules do not allow for a true running back position. Do you believe the three former IFL teams (Peoria, Lincoln and Wichita) will try to bring more of a IFL styled ‘balanced attack’ into the af2 this season?
Frank Haege – I think they know they have to throw it more to win, but they’ll probably try to mix it up more than Arena teams would traditionally. And if they get the right athletes, who knows. They might be able to do some of those things. It seems like those teams are signing their players from last year, but you won’t know until the last minute who you are really going to have.
Mike Vergane – What do you know about Gary Porter, the new Head Coach of your division rival Peoria Pirates?
Frank Haege – To be honest, I was trying to recruit him to be a quarterback here. He played for Bruce (Cowdrey) last year in Peoria. And during the off-season I was calling him and recruiting him while he was coaching NW Missouri State. He told me he had an opportunity to be a head coach, and I said ‘that’s fine but I’m going to keep recruiting ya’. Because you never count on anything until it happens.
Mike Vergane – What was his style as a quarterback?
Frank Haege – He was a good Arena QB. He was a ‘pocket passer’. He could get in the pocket, make the read and buy a little time. He threw an accurate football. He’s the kind of QB I look for – a ‘pocket passer’.
Mike Vergane – You are fornutate to have your top two assistants, Brian Schwartze and Chuck Goodwin, returning this season. Talk about their contributions to the Steamwheeler’s success.
Frank Haege – When Brian Schwartze came in to interview last year, I never knew him before. He had worked at Drake University and applied for the assistant’s job. I immediately liked him. He did a fantastic job for us coaching the Offensive line and the special teams which were both very sucessful.
Mike Vergane – I really expected him to get one of the expansion jobs as a head coach.
Frank Haege – He was just a seasonal coach last year and he was looking at other jobs in the off-season, so we had to create a full-time position for him. We promoted him to an assistant head coach and are glad to be able to keep him.
Another guy who did a really nice job for us is Chuck Goodwin and we’re glad to have him back, too. He is another ‘seasonal’ guy cause he teaches at a local community college (Illinois Valley Community College) so it works out pretty well for him. He coached with Peoria in the IFL (in 1999) so he had a few contacts with a couple of their players.
Mike Vergane – Talk a little bit about the players coming back on your Offensive and Defensive lines.
Frank Haege – Coming back we have Spencer Stevens who is solid at Center. Damon Williams is one of our better Defensive End/Tight Ends and Corey Brown is back who is one of our better Guard/Defensive Ends. So our first group is pretty much back. Obviously we lost Sean McNamara (Houston – AFL) and Jammar Ward (New York – AFL) so that will hurt us a bit.
Also coming back from last year’s team is Chad Buntin who can play the line and FB/LB. And Jessie Eaton is back at Center.
Mike Vergane – One of the team’s unsung heroes is back this year at the FB/LB spot.
Frank Haege – We’re thrilled to have Frank Carter back. He’s bigger, faster and stronger this year so he is ready to go. And we signed Matt Hughes from the University of Iowa (6’3 245lbs). He was the Defensive MVP in the IFL last year, so he should help us out. Rusty VanWetzinga who played a lot at the FB/LB spot is retired. But we do have Josh Fourdyce returning who played several games for us before he got hurt.
Note – Due to the constant change of af2 rosters during the pre-season, some of Coach Haege’s comments on the remaining positions were no longer timely when this article was posted.
However, at the Quarterback position it can be said that replacing Billy Dicken will fall upon the arms of two men. One of those is Billy Dicken’s back-up from last season, Mike Gluski.
Gluski appeared in 12 games and finished the season completing 54 of 80 passes for 696 yards. He finished with an amazing ratio of 18 TD’s and no interceptions and actually had a higher QB rating (134.17) than the af2 leader Billy Dicken (128.31).
The other QB battling for the starting job is newly signed Jay McDonagh. McDonagh is a Western Michigan graduate and played for Madison in the IFL last year leading them to an 11-6 record. While at Western Michigan, McDonagh led the Mid American Conference in 1994 in total offense with 2364 yd’s a game.
Michael Vergane was a writer for ArenaFan Online from 2000 to 2002.
