By David Boyce
MARYVILLE, Mo. - Nearly a month before his final week as athletic director at Northwest Missouri State,
Mel Tjeerdsma sat comfortably in his office and in his very unassuming way, said he hadn't given it much thought.
Tjeerdsma admits he is not the type to look into the future and project what might happen. He lives in the moment. Well that moment of his final week as Northwest athletic director has arrived.
Many will wish him well this week as he walks to his office and on campus.
Tjeerdsma's impact at Northwest will be felt decades into the future.
He arrived as a 48-year-old football coach in 1994 and given the herculean task of returning Bearcat football to something the Northwest and Maryville community could be proud of.
Tjeerdsma succeeded on the field with three national championships, numerous MIAA titles, double-digit win totals nearly every season. He was even more successful off the gridiron. He brought in players who believed in family, faith and being an integral part of the Maryville community while being a student-athlete. They did volunteer work in and around the Maryville community so fans could see them more than football players.
"Mel was huge in changing the culture," said Northwest current head football coach
Rich Wright, who arrived at Northwest in 1995 as a graduate assistant. "A lot of it was his doing. It started with getting rid of players that weren't of the values he had.
"I remember things during fall camp, taking different kids to churches to creating more family-type team meals and doing things together and just recruiting a different kind of kid and embracing the Midwest kids that we use today, those Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas kids."
When Tjeerdsma retired in 2010, he and his wife moved to Texas. It appeared Tjeerdsma's association with Northwest was over.
But when Wren Baker left as Northwest athletic director, Tjeerdsma was asked to return to Northwest in the spring of 2013.
"It wasn't what I really wanted to do," Tjeerdsma said with his matter-of-fact honesty. "I was in the middle of a couple of coaching possibilities. I turned a couple down. I was struggling with what to do.
"I remember when it was first brought up and somebody said would you be interested. I said absolutely I would not be interested. About four weeks later I was here."
Since returning as athletic director in April, 2013, Tjeerdsma has resided over a football program that won three national championships in a four-year period and a men's basketball team winning its first national title.
Tjeerdsma has also been one of many people behind the construction of the Carl and Cheryl Hughes Fieldhouse, a $20 million indoor facility that will be completed in July.
"That was a big challenge," he said.
Tjeerdsma credits Michael Johnson, vice president of university advancement for being a great lead for the project. And there people from the foundation like John Moore and John Teale in addition to the Hughes family who played key roles.
"A number of people just got involved and had a passion for it, and it really spurred me on. I felt that energy. It was a good combination. Dr. Jasinski (Northwest President) was very supportive in getting it built.
"You don't build something like that unless your President is all in. That helped us. It was unbelievable what our fan base and our alums have done."
Also, a group called the Founding Fifty committed $50,000 over a five-year period for the building project. The Founding Fifty has swelled to over 75 members.
"That is awfully good," Tjeerdsma said. "People have never given at that level here because it is a state school. If this was a private school that is different. They live off of that. We always lived off of state funding and that has been a downward trend."
Northwest has prospered in the last two decades because the community relies on each other and one reason for that is Tjeerdsma. He will never take credit for the family culture at Northwest. It is not in his DNA to boast of his accomplishments.
Many people will thank him this week for all he has done at Northwest for over two decades. Tjeerdsma will simply smile, shake the person's hand and ask how are you doing.
"Coach T," Wright said, "I think one of his strength is he hired good people and he got out of their way. He let them coach and do their thing and at the same time, he did a great job of managing the overall organization and taking it a direction everybody was proud of."
Years from now, when Northwest fans hear the name
Mel Tjeerdsma, they might think of the 1998, 1999 and 2009 national championships. Others who pass by the Hughes Fieldhouse might view Tjeerdsma as a driving force behind a facility the will be in great use by the baseball, softball, track and football teams.
But mostly, people who knew Tjeerdsma will think about the kind, genuine way he treated everyone.
And when Tjeerdsma thinks about his time at Northwest, the people he encountered in this journey will be at the forefront. He said he didn't realize how much the Maryville community meant to him and his wife until they returned.
"Obviously, it is the people," Tjeerdsma said. "They are great fans, but it is more than that. They are down-to-earth people. It is like where we grew up. We grew up in rural South Dakota. Both of us did.
"The support this community gives to the university that is what really makes it special.I don't know we appreciated the people as much until we came back. It was like wow.
"People know you. People talk to you. We made a lot of friends in Texas, too, but it is a different feeling here. You can't go anywhere without somebody asking you about Bearcats. Just a lot of good folks."
Tjeerdsma feels the same way about the athletic administration staff he got to work with the last five years in
Lori Hopkins,
Mark Clements,
Scott Nielson,
Andy Peterson, Nate Davis, Marshall Fey and
MacKenzie Magwire.
"That is what makes it fun," Tjeerdsma said. "Coming back here and working with our athletic administrators. They are great people. I told them that.
"That is what I will cherish more than anything is the relationships that we built and to see how much they have done with not a lot. We are not blessed with a lot of resources. They are so bought in. They love this place. They love what they are doing.
"These five years as an athletic director, I don't feel like it was a job. I never felt like I had to go to work."
At 71, Tjeerdsma felt it was time for him and his wife to spend more time with family.
"So far I have been blessed with good health," said Tjeerdsma, who turns 72 in May. "You don't know how long it is going to last when you get into your 70s. We want to do some things, travel some. If I keep working that limits what we can do."
Their oldest daughter lives in Mississippi. Another daughter is in Texas and the youngest daughter is in Kansas City. They have three grand kids in Mississippi and three in Texas and two in Kansas City.
"You want to see them," Tjeerdsma said. "The grand kids in Texas and Mississippi, five of them will be in college or out of college next year. The two in Kansas City are smaller, 10 and 7 so you want to see them and do as much as you can with them.
"We have a lot of great friends here. We have a lot of great friends in Sherman, Texas. Right now we plan to stay here initially. We talked about having the best of both worlds."
Because of his kind nature, Tjeerdsma has made Northwest a beautiful world.
The amusing part is Tjeerdsma never thought Northwest would have this type of impact on his life when he became the head football coach.
"I thought I would be here for three years and then be a big-time coach," Tjeerdsma said with a laugh. "I didn't look at it as a destination. It is one of those things that the longer we were here and the relationship we built, it seem like this was the place to stay.
"Obviously, it is something that is fun to be a part of that. So many people have helped make that possible. You have to give a lot of credit to our former athletes, to our fans, to this community to create that type of an atmosphere.
"I think it is something that has permeated our entire athletic department and the entire university has grown from that."
