Great memories of belief-in-one-another, hard work & teamwork were evident Saturday night at the 50th reunion of a football team that made state history right here in the lakeshore area. Roncalli High School won the ‘first’ State football championship 28-8 over Chippewa Falls McDonell in the W-I-S-A-A title game played at Lambeau Field, in mid-November 1969. About 20-former Jets’ players gathered at the Time Out Sports Bar & Grill to celebrate their accomplishment.
The fullback on that team was Paul Johnsrud, “We just had great coaches that had a bunch of guys that believed we were pretty great ourselves. The coaches were great, and still are.”
All-State Guard and Defensive End, Don Shimon said they were a very unselfish, and rather small team. “We had one guy, Chuck Malek, who was 218 lbs. Everybody else was under 200 lbs,” Shimon explained. “I remember we played Premontre and they averaged 245!”
Team-member Steve Oswald said “I think everyone believed that everybody could do it…We did not have that one dominant player, but as a team, we were able to MAKE players dominant.”
Terry Warden was an All-State halfback for the Jets, and he broke Rocky Bleier’s record for touchdowns in a season. He recalled looking at Lambeau Field and thinking “the field was twice as big as anything we ever played on. I thought you could never run to the other end and score a touchdown without running out of breath. Everything worked out for us, and we were pretty lucky that day.”
Quarterback Greg Jahnke also recalls the special feeling of playing at Lambeau. “I had followed the Packers as a little kid and emulated all those guys, Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, and just to run through that tunnel with our group of guys was a truly, truly amazing thing.”
The head coach of that Roncalli team, Ron Klestinski, said he was the “happiest guy in the world” Saturday night. “I see these young men I was fortunate enough to coach, and they come from all over.” Several players made the trek back to the lakeshore from places like North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado. “It meant something to these kids, evidently, to play on our team at that time in their life.”
Jahnke said he followed in Coach Klestinski’s footsteps as the Jets head coach after the Stevens Point native retired, and took the lessons he learned from Coach Ron and passed them on to his players.
Roncalli was seeded 4th in that first WISAA State playoff field and the Jets were able to beat top-seed Milwaukee Pius, 14-to-7, in the semifinals…to advance to their date with destiny.