Tim Walz was a football coach before being Kamala Harris’ VP pick

Tim Walz’s football coach background, explained, after being named Kamala Harris’ VP pick

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, the current vice president, has announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate following weeks of speculation. In recent days Walz was among many potential selections, along with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. But Vice President Harris zeroed in on Walz to be her choice.

Walz’s journey to this point starts, in many ways, on the gridiron. Walz was born in West Point, Nebraska and graduate from Butte High School in 1982, where he played football. After joining the Army National Guard Walz attended Chadron State College, graduating in 1989 with a social science degree. He taught overseas for a year before returning to the United States, where he took a teaching position at Alliance High School in Alliance, Nebraska. That’s where his football coaching career began.

Walz started out as an assistant on both the basketball and the football teams, working on the defensive side of the ball in the fall. During an appearance at Minnesota Vikings training camp last summer with Paul Allen, Walz talked about some of the techniques he was teaching his linebackers during that time, techniques that would be tough to implement in the modern game. Asked by Allen if his “defensive coordinator mind” could draw up one series of plays, Walz outlined some doubts.

“I watch this high school game change so much. I came from Nebraska, originally, and high school football is pretty big in Nebraska, and I brought in, kind of, we were guard reading on defense. Which was just such an innovation at that time,” said Walz. “Because you never false pull [as an offensive lineman]. No one was doing that. So our linebackers seemed to be on the play every time.”

However, the game has changed, and Walz wondered last summer if it had even passed him by. “I watch now, this man-to-man coverage that high school kids play, lock up, on the island and do it. So I don’t know if the game’s passed me by, but it certainly has become fun to watch.”

Following his time in Nebraska, Walz and his family moved to Minnesota, where he took his next teaching and coaching positions, at Mankato West High School. During his tenure there, as the team’s defensive coordinator, Mankato West brought home a state title. While his journey eventually led him to politics, as he was first elected to represent Minnesota’s first congressional district in 2006, the lessons he learned on the gridiron carry with him to this day.

Walz was part of a coaching staff that saw Mankato West go from losing 27 straight games to winning a state title in just three seasons.

“I think that it’s great preparation. This idea that you … don’t win on the game night, you win many months before,” Walz said to a group of high school coaches in Minnesota during an event in 2019. “Everybody wants to win. Who wants to prepare to win? Who’s thinking about it? Who’s putting in the work?”

Walz told that same group of coaches how football shaped his life, and how it was a huge part of the first 40 years of his life.

“Being away from [coaching] now, it really comes into focus. My message is going to be, I hope to just tell them to enjoy every minute of that and to understand, because it shapes all of us,” Walz said. “The first … 40 years of my life were either playing this game or coaching it.”

Walz also outlined during that presentation how the game shapes both the players, and the coaches guiding them, to be better in all aspects of life.

“It was an opportunity to treat these kids as adults, and start to learn those life skills and watch you model it,” added Walz back in 2019. “And you know, some of those times were of telling them, ‘Fellas, I got that wrong, I’m sorry about that.’ And for them to see that in their life, to see their coach tell them, ‘You know what, I did that wrong,’ I think they take those lessons.”

In the days before the announcement, Walz was back on the sidelines, making another stop at Vikings training camp ahead of the 2024 season:

Whether Walz ends up in the White House remains to be seen, and there are a lot of campaign days between now and Election Day. But if the need to draw up a run fit emerges in this campaign, Walz will certainly have the answer.