Football Journey Takes Beaver Grad to National Championship Game
Ryan Grubb, a 1999 BVU alumnus, helps direct the Washington offensive attack
Four captains for the 1998 Buena Vista University football team posed for a photo while standing in the waters of Storm Lake, just off the lakeshore. Twenty-five seasons later, one of those captains, Ryan Grubb, continues to make waves as the Offensive Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach for the University of Washington, which faces the Michigan Wolverines in the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday at NRG Stadium in Houston. Both teams are 14-0.
The Buena Vista University community wishes its 1999 graduate all the best as he works in the epicenter of his sport. For teammates and his BV coach, Ryan Grubb’s success comes as no surprise.
“Nobody will outwork Ryan Grubb,” says Bart Boustead, a 1999 BVU graduate who played collegiately with Grubb before coaching football with him at Kingsley-Pierson High School, Grubb’s alma mater. The duo also toiled with one another raising hogs for four years following their BVU graduation.
“Ryan took a road less traveled and chased a dream.”
Joe Hadachek, BVU Head Football Coach, 1995-99
“Ryan is the reason I went out for football at BV,” says Boustead, now the co-owner of an insurance agency based in Kingsley. “He encouraged me to get into shape and to come out. Turns out, I got to play with my younger brother and Ryan, and several other guys who became great friends. I’m very thankful he urged me to go out.”
Grubb, one of three siblings to attend BVU, played tight end, fullback, and tailback for the Beavers in a career that spanned four seasons. The business education major was recruited by Coach Kevin Twait ’85, then coached by Joe Hadachek, who succeeded Twait and guided the Beavers from 1995 to 1999.
“Ryan was one of 24 seniors on our team in 1998,” says Hadachek, recalling a watershed squad that finished 7-3. “He was a hard-nosed player who led by example.”
During their time together, the Beavers traveled to Germany to play an exhibition game. Players and coaches put education at the heart of their trek, visiting the site of a concentration camp and touring areas that came to the fore during the 1972 Olympic Games held in Munich. Often, when teammates gather, their Germany trip becomes a topic of conversation.
Right now, many of them text and talk about Coach Grubb and his football ascension.
“I think he made $1,700 as offensive coordinator at Kingsley-Pierson High School 20 years ago,” Boustead says.
Soon, he earned a graduate degree while coaching at South Dakota State University. He met up with current Huskies Head Coach Kalen DeBoer while coaching at the University of Sioux Falls. The pair worked together at Eastern Michigan and Fresno State before moving on to Washington two seasons ago.
At times early in his career, Grubb wasn’t coaching. He poured cement for a period in Sioux City until the chance to coach in Sioux Falls was presented, allowing him to join former Beaver teammates Jon Anderson ’00, who now serves as Defensive Quality Control Coach at Old Dominion University, and Zach Mathers ’00, now the Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Performance at Samford University.
“Ryan took a road less traveled and chased a dream,” says Hadachek, who checks in from time to time with his former captain. “You sometimes work for nothing, or work for peanuts, and you do what you love, you coach.”
“We’re very excited to follow Coach Grubb and the Huskies,” says BVU Head Football Coach Austin Dickinson ’10, an alumnus who also played for the Beavers for four years. “It’s great to show our student-athletes and recruits how a BV graduate, who was once in their shoes, is now at the center of the national championship.”
Boustead smiles and recalls helping Grubb move to Brookings, S.D., for his stint as a graduate assistant with the Jackrabbits. “Ryan went from making a decent living to making $600 per month, but doing something he loved,” Boustead says. “I wasn’t sure how he’d make ends meet, but I knew he’d make it.”
Mathers resided with Grubb in Sioux City two decades ago as the latter designed sweeps, screens, and slants for the Kingsley-Pierson Panthers, gearing up for battles against Class A and Class 1A high schools like Lawton-Bronson, Woodbury Central, and West Monona.
“We would talk about doing this at the highest level, on the game’s biggest stage,” Mathers says. “Buena Vista is NCAA Division III, so we put in the work because we loved the game. That hasn’t changed. I know how hard Ryan has studied, researched, and surrounded himself with the right people to help make himself the best he can be.”
On Monday night, he’ll have company in his booth at NRG Stadium; a quarter-century of Xs, Os, and grit on his shoulder, orchestrating a fast scheme and his talented, hardworking players, moving as one, helping their Huskies make waves.