Quad City’s Hvistendahl Open For Another Season
Michael Vergane
Sunday March 25, 2001
The Steamwheelers, like every other returning team in the af2, will be missing key starters from 2000. Some roles will get filled. Others will be a problem spot all season.
In 2000, Scott was part of the af2’s most explosive offense. Hvistendahl, King, Patterson and Jeremy Wilkinson were the wide receivers. Billy Dicken was the quarterback. And as a group, Dicken hooked up with those four for 82 touchdowns.
This season, only Hvistendahl returns. And although Scott will not be counted on to take the place of King or Patterson, it is not as if he couldn’t be a ‘go to’ man.
In fact, during his college playing days he was ‘The’ go-to man.
Hvistendahl broke the All-Time NCAA All-Division career record for receiving yards (4,696) held by Jerry Rice. He even broke Rice’s record with an injury. Scott tore his ACL and played the final two games of his career hurt.
“I knew I did something to it”, said Hvistendahl. “But we didn’t find out until a week before Christmas that it was torn. So I actually broke the record with the torn ACL. Right before New Year’s Eve I had reconstructive surgery and then took 6 months to recover.”
Scott comes from Randolph, Minnesota, a small town that had 22 students in his graduating class. A good athlete would obviously be overlooked by college recruits at a high school that size, so he decided to go to Division III Augsburg College in Minneapolis when their head coach showed interest in him. It was there that he met Frank Haege.
“Coach Haege was my wide receiver coach my sophmore year and then was our offensive coordinator my junior and senior seasons. I really enjoyed the way he ran things. He is very firm about the way things are done, yet he is still a player’s coach.”
Much like the record setting offense the Steamwheelers displayed last year, Frank Haege’s offense at Augsburg College moved the chains. Enough so that Scott caught 84 passes for 1,328 yards and 15 TD’s his Junior year and 112 passes for 1,860 yards and 15 TD’s in his Senior year. That was enough for Hvistendahl to win the Gagliardi Award as the NCAA Division III Player of the Year in 1998.
After graduation and rehabilitation, Haege contacted his ‘go to’ guy at Augsburg and quickly signed Scott to a contract with the Quad City Steamwheelers.
Along with Shon King and Xavier Patterson at wide receiver, the trio was a perfect combination of speed, strength and consistency. Each man had his role.
“It worked really well because we all have our own abilities. Shon (King) was the fast guy who could score on any play. X (Xavier Patterson) was the big stocky with the speed to break it. My job was to get open when they were covered and catch the ball. We were able to move guys around where all three of us were coming up the middle. We really wore down defenses that way.”
For Scott Hvistendahl, his role will remain the same this season; get open and catch it when it is thrown to him. It worked 54 times last year for 661 yards. He is hoping for even more this season.
Michael Vergane was a writer for ArenaFan Online from 2000 to 2002.
