foreign [Music] Lakeland Currents your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota.

Closed Captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjairport.org Hello, again everyone, and welcome to Lakeland Currents.

I'm Ray Gildow.

The program today is going to be about building community, and my guest is Mike Hijek who has been a very, very influential and effective leader in this particular program that we're going to talk about today, and one of the things that we want to stress is that what Mike has done for the Staples community can be replicated in other communities.

In fact, he's working with some other programs in some other bigger towns where they wanted to do something like this.

So, Mike, welcome aboard.

It's good to have you here.

Well, thank you Ray, thanks for the opportunity to talk about something that we're really proud of.

So tell me a little bit about your background Mike.

Well, I'm I'd say recently, but not recently, retired from Sourcewell.

When I retired it was called NJPA or the National Joint Powers Alliance, and I was the director of contracts and marketing and then I progressed to the director of strategic initiatives and kind of as my phasing out towards my retirement.

So, this type of thing was something that I worked with while I was at NJPA.

We would have great large vendor gatherings and we would put production type events together using similar formats to what we've done with the Hall of Fame program.

So we're talking about the Staples Hall of Fame, but we're also talking about how this Hall of Fame is building community pride in relationships, probably that you didn't even expect, is that fair to say?

Well, you know, living in Staples and then the Staples-Motley area there's always been that when you have a community that's that's trying to heal from consolidated school districts, there's always an element of healing that needs to take place between communities, and I always knew it was there and I'm sure everyone as well understood it was there.

And I could see, though, that if we would highlight and focus on the things that we all had in common, that we all valued in common, and that we all celebrated in common, that there's a chance that we could put behind us some of the friction that just swells up within communities, and it does in all communities across the country.

So it was there, but it wasn't the driving element , but it certainly has been one of the results.

One of the things that has impressed me about this program is how it's brought people back who have left the community or their families have left the community, and it's brought people back to share memories of really important parts of their lives that would never have happened otherwise.

No.

And, you know, every school has their times of glory, and those times when they celebrated together and those should never be forgotten.

And we have a tagline that we use within the Hall of Fame and it's called that "Time fades everything, except what you choose to value and recall."

So when you think about that, time is our enemy.

It fades our memories and so this Hall of Fame program has a way of bringing those memories back and almost rekindling them and celebrating them again and it's brought value to the community and it's been an element of building our community pride back, and not that it was ever really gone, but it kind of just starts to fade.

And I think it's fair to say that many communities large and small don't have a program like this.

It's kind of amazing when you think about it.

The ones that do, Brainerd does, and some of the other area ones do, and some of them are just are not, they're just kind of a process.

And, by the way, we do it at maybe at a higher level of production.

It really gets people behind it, and it draws attention and other communities realize that it takes a lot of work to get something like this started, and it takes a level of dedication and commitment and you have to stick to it.

It's not a program that you can start one year and then just not do it for a few years.

Once you start it, it has to keep, you have to keep going.

And it is kind of amazing that the number of schools that don't, even large schools that you would think would have a well-established program, don't.

I'd like to come back and talk about Cretin-Derham Hall in a minute, but before we do that, how did you start putting this together you and the board or whoever did this.

How did you get started?

Well, you know, it's like everything Ray.

It all usually starts with an idea.

Any program or initiative usually starts with an idea, and the idea kind of just got nurtured with a small conversation with a couple people, me and another two or three other individuals.

It was actually at an athletic event in Staples, and we started talking about the success that Staples and Motley have enjoyed over the years and what was the elements of that, what was the chemistry that made that a reality.

And the driving force that came to the surface every time seemed to be commitment, and the level of commitment that the coaches and the athletes had at that time and during those times of glory seemed to be very uncommon, and so the idea, the conversation continued.

Well, how do we get that back again?

How do we get that level of commitment back on the table and ingrained into today's athletes and into today's coaches?

And one of the ideas was the Hall of Fame, and I want to make this clear.

We didn't start the Hall of Fame, the Athletic Hall of Fame, to dwell on the success of our past athletes, coaches, and teams.

I mean, it's an important part, but that wasn't why we were doing this.

We really wanted to use that success to help motivate and inspire the next generation of athletes and coaches and teams.

Inspire them to take their athletics to a higher level of commitment, because commitment seemed to be what drives or drove our success in the past.

How do we get that commitment again back into the current athletes, into the current coaches.

And the Athletic Hall of Fame program seemed to be the foundation that we could do that with.

So you have a board, you have a board, right?

Yes.

Full disclosure, I'm on the board.

Right.

And you also have an effort to raise money, right, because none of this stuff is done without some cost.

How have you gone about raising money for this?

Well, first of all, we had to prove ourselves, that we're not a flash in the pan.

That this is here for the long haul.

I think you'll find that most financial supporters want to see something that has value and that it's something that has longevity and something that is gonna make a difference in the community and had to sell that.

Okay, well, first of all we had to prove that.

So our first program was pretty much on a shoestring, and we didn't even have the program printed.

We didn't have the funds to do that, and so it started with just minimal funds to get started because we had to prove that this was something that was valuable to the community, to the school, something that had value to the individuals that were going to be inducted.

And through some, just some very dedicated supporters kept, you know, kind of gave us financial contributions throughout the community.

We applied for a couple of grants through the foundation.

The Initiative Foundation was awesome, and I could go through the list of the supporters we have, but the key was we had to prove that this is something that's going to be here for more than just a short term.

So there's a lot of debate going on in parts of the country today that athletics really shouldn't even be in the schools; that it should be more like a club outside of the school district so the school districts don't have to finance it, the bus rides or the coaches and all that.

What's your perspective about athletics, because you have been an athlete in high school yourself?

Well, and, you know yourself as a coach an athlete, I think there's research and proof that athletics has value to developing character and leadership qualities in individuals, and those leadership qualities that move, they kind of translate into becoming better citizens in communities.

And athletics, you know, truly has a place in how our youth grow and how they develop into, you know, and develop into committed citizens of our communities.

They make better students.

I think that there's research on that.

Coaches make better teachers.

I think there's research that proves that, and right now the whole climate with athletes is kids aren't participating very much in athletics.

Number one you don't see the three sport athletes that we used to see.

And kids, they get into a sport and then they tend to kind of fade away after a while.

It's getting to be less and less common for a 30-year coach anymore.

Everything's kind of just changed, and we think that the level of commitment, if it gets re-instilled back into these coaches and athletes and then into teams through a level of commitment and dedication, that we can bring back some of the those qualities that we think are important in high school athletics.

So the very first event that you did, what was your approach?

How did you do that?

Well, you know, first of all, I mean it's I wanted to make this program, it was very important that we made it something that the community was proud of, so that they would go to it and say I'm coming back.

If you can't get people to come back you've lost them, and so it was very important that it be professionally done, and that's where I mirrored some of the things that I did before in my past, that brought some of those quality elements, and the little things that made a big difference.

And so not to get into a lot of details, but we did the little things that made a big difference.

We made the athletes and coaches feel proud of their past, and we made the community residents proud of our legacy of athletics.

We didn't make it.

We actually highlighted that, so that people had it when they left there was a feeling of community pride and it started to make a difference.

There's a a blended community we have now between Staples and Motley, and when we got together at the reception after the event, I noticed, and it was clear that the guards had dropped.

Any friction that maybe had existed in the past was fading and you'd see a lot of back slapping and there was people from both communities there, and it was just a blending of community pride that could not be denied, and it was a proud moment to be a part of it, to witness it, and it's just gotten better.

We just finished our third program this year and the Timbers Event Center was packed.

It was elbow to elbow and the amount of community pride that was just obvious in that room, you could feel it, you could feel it, Ray.

Now the first show, in the first program rather that you did, how did you decide who's going to be recognized?

Well one thing about when you do this, you have to do it to a level of integrity and it has to be fair, and so we put a lot of work into the ballot, into the nomination process, in how people get nominated.

You can't just say hey put him in the Hall of Fame or him or her.

They have to be nominated.

They have to be elected by the committee, and you know we selected a committee from both Motley and Staples residents in an age range from the younger and the elderly, from generations of athletics.

And so the process has to have the level of integrity that's impeccable.

And that's very important as we move forward.

And so the balloting was done and the elections were made, and we kind of identified early on how many inductees we're going to have.

Because one thing you don't want to do is have a program run too long.

Because that'll ensure they don't come back the next year.

So we made it clear that the speeches were not too long, and so all of those little things that are mistakes, that are made with other programs, we made sure we didn't make those.

And that started to help us raise funds and build for the next coming year.

Did you work with any other school districts that have had a track record of doing this before you guys started doing it?

You know when I looked at the bylaws, I did look online at some of the common bylaws, and we use Brainerd's as a foundation on the criteria to use, and I think that was probably the only information we used from another district.

What are the criteria on how what the athletes and coaches need to do, need to be?

One of the things you have to be out of, you can't be coaching or you must be out of high school for seven years.

Okay.

That was a kind of a foundation criteria.

So, traditionally a Hall of Fame is an area, and a lot of small school districts don't have an area they can dedicate to this, so you found a different way of recognizing these folks without taking up a whole lot of physical space.

Talk about that.

Well, we, technology is amazing and it continues to change, and one thing we found out real early, Ray, was we want to award the inductees a plaque.

And so and everybody the plaque to hang on the wall, but we also had to put a plaque in the school somewhere so that when people come in they would see who our inductees were.

So our first year we started, and we put plaques on the wall and I think we had nine or ten inductees, and immediately I could see we're going to run out of room, we're going to run out of room.

This is not going to work.

It's going to look cluttered.

And so we started talking to the industry on what to do about that, and many of the schools, not many of them, but it's kind of the latest technology is to use a digital media display and it's a touch screen, where it's a 65 inch touchscreen display that you walk up to, you touch it and up comes the Hall of Fame.

You can pick the inductee, and their entire career can be played right before you.

You can also click on that link from anywhere in the country or the world, for that matter, through the internet and access that, those inductees' athletic careers.

So that's been a huge step forward, but it took financial contributions, and it took.

What did that cost?

It was fourteen thousand eight hundred dollars.

I know exactly.

And we had some donors step up that believed in what we were doing and contributed, and we made the purchase and installed it just in the last three months in the Staples-Motley High School in the concession area.

And it's a tremendous asset to our school and to our program.

Now I know Cretin-Derham Hall and maybe another school or two found out about this.

Tell us about what happened.

We presented it, our athletic director Josh Lee presented our program at the athletic director's conference last spring and there was several in the room that were very interested in what we were doing because, like I say, many of them don't have a program.

They don't know really how to start or the finances it takes to do so.

And so, when he got done presenting it, I got calls back.

First one was from Blaine, which is Anoka Hennepin School District.

A big school district.

Big, huge.

And wanted to know, you know, how they could participate with what we're doing.

Cretin-Derham Hall is only in their second year, which is hard to believe, you know.

That's a private school.

A private school, but they have Joe Mauer, Matt Birks, and so.

But they still liked some of the things we were doing, and I remember, I recall telling the A.D, I said use what you want.

We create this program so that others maybe can take advantage of it, too.

And so Blaine is moving forward and going to use our program.

There's also several schools in the area here in our region that have shown interest on how to get started, and how they can leverage some of the things that we've already put in place.

Part of the big things is our ballot, all of our graphics, our bylaws, and then just the production of our event itself.

That's all in place, and we can easily hand that off.

How do you decide who's going to be the master of ceremonies and how do you decide the length of the program?

Well, I kind of, we've set a foundation that we don't want it to go any longer than two hours.

Okay.

And so we time just about everybody's, their bios are timed, and we give them only so much time to talk about in their acceptance speeches, so that we don't over exceed our time limit.

And then we have a reception that takes place afterwards, and we we don't want to make the event too long, then it cuts into the reception.

So it's, I would say, that it's all calculated down to the minute, and so we have ways of... You have a little gal with a wet towel.

She comes out with a referee shirt on, and she has a towel and she, when they were exceeding their time limits, she'll tap them out, and it's kind of humorous for the crowd, the attendees to watch, but it's effective.

And that again, as I mentioned before, the last thing you want to do is have people talk so long that we lose their interest and then they don't want to come back and so all of these things are an important part of a production.

How has this benefited the community?

The community pride rate is just noticeable how there's always an element between the school and the city and the community that could always be improved.

I'm not saying it's ever bad but it can always be improved, and the communication between the two can always be improved, and I think we've seen that bridge built stronger between the community and the school.

Other things that are really important that is the aging, the empty nesters in a community.

Their kids are out of school, and they have no connection with the school any longer and pretty soon they just kind of fade away.

This brings them back to the school for reasons, maybe it's their son or daughter that gets inducted or a relative of theirs gets inducted.

Many times it's the only reason that they have to come back into the school.

They don't go to the sporting events anymore because they don't have anybody, any kids in that.

So it's really helped connect the community back to its members.

And I just, this is a fact, too, and it's something every community wants- to grow their community with their business climate, with their get people to move into their area.

How do you get somebody to move to your community?

Everybody has choices nowadays.

They can choose to live where they want.

People tend to like to move into communities that are successful, and athletics is one of the areas of success, then the arts and academics and the theater and all the fine arts.

Those are all important elements of why somebody would want to send their children to our schools.

So they build their businesses.

They have a choice where they can do that.

When you build community pride in a Hall of Fame program there's a reason why people might want to start a business here.

So there's some business development elements and growing a community with people moving to your community, using the reason or the references of a Hall of Fame program or a successful athletic program in general.

This is done on a weekend and usually it's almost a two-day event for someone who's coming from a distance to the event.

So there's been a positive impact in the motels.

Oh, absolutely.

There's been a positive impact on the restaurants.

I don't know how many people you had this year, but it was packed, standing room only.

That's a huge financial impact to the community.

And what are some other ways you think the community can benefit from this?

Well, just the community pride is not automatic Ray, and you know this, and it must be earned and it must be nurtured and sometimes it takes the past and the current to come together to build the community pride that sticks, and it takes effort to do that.

We had people come from Texas and California and Florida and they'll be at the next one.

And so some of them say I'll never miss one of these, and so it gets people to reconnect with the community and all based on some of the past success that they lived through on their own over the years.

So there's a variety of community benefits.

I think that one of the main ones that just it minimizes the friction that may be existing, and it puts that all in the rear view mirror, and people forget about any disagreements that they have between the school and the community.

That's, I think, that's huge.

And it makes people proud to live in our community and when kids get out of school they have a choice.

They can move away.

But they can also stay here and raise their children here, start their businesses here, or commute to a job elsewhere and live in Staples and Motley areas.

So those are those elements that I think we're contributing to.

Staples and Motley are both small communities, but there's an amazing amount of state championships that have come from these two communities.

Could you just share a few of them?

Well, that's a part of our story and just over time and just the way time fades everything, really no one ever took the initiative to count how many state championships Staples had.

And through the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, we had a tremendous level of state level success.

So we took the initiative and started counting them and the initial number was 28 state championships.

And then it actually grew to 30, and now we're at 31 team state championships.

Also, at that time it was 63 state champions, individual state champions.

And just as impressive to me are the 59 runner-up individuals and the 13 runner-up state team championships.

We, Staples-Motley, there's not even a school close to us in all of out-state Minnesota.

The closest school to us has 17 state championships.

Wow.

So it's an amazing type of a statistic, and once that number kind of got out there, that helped build our community pride and got people to reflect on the past once again, and wow, I remember those times.

I remember that state tournament.

I remember those days of glory.

And so we built a sign, which took another financial commitment.

As you come into Staples, at the stoplights, you'll see a sign there that says 31 State Championships and it's all built around Cardinal pride, and I think the number right there is 65 individual state champions.

An amazing legacy of athletic success.

And you're talking about cross-country runners, you're talking about wrestlers, you're talking about tennis players.

Yeah, that is an incredible number, and I didn't realize that it was the most of school districts our size in the whole state.

Out-state it's higher than any other school district.

That's amazing.

And the other thing that's important, and people sometimes well what about academics, what about the fine arts?

The program that we developed, Ray, can easily be handed off to the fine arts, easily handed off to the Future Farmers, the FFA program.

Some of the the success that Staples-Motley has had in that area has also been amazing.

So it's not our area.

We're not going to do a program and include all those.

Somebody else has to pick that up, but we'll give them the program so that they can easily put a program together to recognize and honor those individuals that help drive that.

So what's your website?

How do people find out more information about this?

Well, we have a web page and Facebook's been really effective for us communicating all of our programs, and I don't have the web page link right on here.

Maybe it can be brought up on the screen.

Our web page will have our nomination form and it has some of our directories are all on there.

The link to our digital media display is on there available, and we're doing our best to try to get the word out, and we're not shy about being willing to share it with other communities, and we hope schools contact us and find out.

You have the event in the fall.

What are you doing the rest of the year?

Are you still working on things now?

Well, right now, the nominations are open from November 1st.

And anyone can nominate.

Anyone can nominate all the way through January 15th.

We shut off the nominations, and then we'll go into the process where we'll gather all their career data, and then it'll go to the committee, and then we'll have our ballot put out and we'll vote, and we'll select however many inductees we're going to have for this coming year.

And then we start gathering all of the photos and all of the career bios on each one of the inductees, and it's a year-round process.

We're getting better at it, and it's all about a process.

But it takes a lot to gather the photos.

We have a graphic designer, Pete Card Graphics out of Bemidji that does a tremendous and a wonderful job of pulling all of our information together.

We have a slideshow that's put together at the event.

So all those photos go into the slideshow.

That directory right there, that 16 page directory is a tremendous publication, and we do one of those every year.

We're also just, so you know, as we move forward, every five years we're going to do a hard copy collection of the five annuals.

Oh nice.

So we really are adamant about not letting people forget the legacy of our athletics because we think it's important for our community to not forget.

Because if we let it, time will fade it.

Well, Mike is in charge of this, and he will not take the credit for it.

He has a board, and there's other volunteers.

But every process like this needs a champion, and Mike is a champion.

I couldn't tell you how many hours he has put into this program, and it's really made a difference.

Thank you for jumping on board with us, and if anybody wants to find out about it Mike, how do they get a hold of you?

Well, we'll maybe put the information up there, but they can text me or contact me through email and I can get them the nomination forms.

Or if another school is interested we have a flyer that we call our shared content.

We can send them to help them get started with their own program, within their own school and community.

Perfect.

Thank you.

You've been watching Lakeland Currents.

I'm Ray Gildow.

So long until next time.

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