Former Hawkeye, Cyclone players helping to rebuild Roosevelt football
Cody GoodwinThere are moments during practice when Thomaj Davis will look around the field and see some of the best former Iowa and Iowa State football players in recent memory.
He’ll look to his left, and there’s Todd Blythe, one of the all-time great Cyclone receivers. To his right, Tavian Banks, one of the most-talented Hawkeye running backs. Straight ahead, Ernst Brun Jr., a star tight end for Iowa State from a few years back.
Davis, a junior linebacker for Des Moines Roosevelt, smiles in those moments.
Man, he thinks. These guys are really my coaches.
“It’s been really cool,” Davis said. “I like it because it’s motivational. These guys have been where we want to go, and they’re teaching us how to get there. They’re showing us what all they’ve done. They bring a championship energy.”
This is what the new era of Roosevelt football looks like. For the third time in four years, a new head coach has taken the reins of the Roughrider program. This time, it’s Mitchell Moore, who came to Des Moines after two seasons at Greene County.
'He’s a hell of a recruiter'
To help rebuild the Roughriders, who have just two winning seasons since 2006, Moore assembled a staff partly made up of former Iowa and Iowa State football players.
Blythe, of course, played at Iowa State, where he still sits second all-time in career touchdown receptions (31). After a couple of years with the Iowa Barnstormers, he has worked as an assistant at both Simpson College and Northern Iowa. Naturally, he's coaching the receivers.
Brun, another former Cyclone, hauled in 26 catches for 330 yards and six touchdowns in 2012. He’s listed as the program adviser. Another Iowa Stater, Brett Bueker, is Roosevelt’s sports performance coach. He was the holder in both 2012 and 2013.
And then there’s Banks, the former Hawkeye who rushed for 2,773 career yards while at Iowa, including 1,639 and 17 touchdowns in 1997 before a short stint in the National Football League. He’s coaching the running backs.
“He’s a hell of a recruiter,” Blythe said of Moore. “He called me, pitched the job to me, and that kind of lit a fire in me. I had been out of coaching for a few years since leaving UNI, and I had the itch to do it again.”
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Moore himself spent time at Iowa State, too, working under both Paul Rhoads and Matt Campbell, primarily as a recruiter and a director of high school relations. He was there when Rhoads fired then-offensive coordinator Mark Mangino in 2015, and watched as Mangino walked out of the Bergstrom Football Complex with a duffel bag in one hand and a small fan in the other.
“The first day he came to Roosevelt, I was like, ‘Yo, he came from Iowa State? That’s cool,’” recalls senior defensive back Antonio Alzheimer.
After Campbell’s first year, Moore left for Greene County, where he guided the Rams to a 9-10 overall record in two seasons. Meanwhile, Roosevelt went 5-4 in 2017 under head coach Erik Link. He left for Louisiana Tech just a few days before the start of the 2018 season. P.J. Hedrington took over in the interim and led the Roughriders to a 3-6 record.
“The biggest thing for me was the opportunity to move up and coach Class 4A football,” said Moore, who was hired in December and moved in January. “I wanted to be around a bunch of people with different backgrounds, and go to a place where I think people were maybe scared of the challenge and to a place that hasn’t had a lot of success lately.”
Moore’s staff includes more than just star-studded former college players — Evan Groepper, the team’s offensive coordinator, spent many years at North Polk, for example — but he knew it didn’t hurt to have past celebrities helping him, either.
“The big thing for me was just trying to find guys that have some great credibility,” Moore said. “Credibility is the catch. It gets people in the door. But what’s kept people has been the ability of my staff to build relationships that are meaningful.
“They bring great credentials, along with great football knowledge. But I think what excites me the most is their passion for the game of football. They love the game of football, and they love to outwork people.”
'For 112 games, it’s been the same'
Moore knows all about the mountain that he and his staff are trying to climb.
It’s well-documented by now that the Des Moines city schools have struggled tremendously in football over the last decade. East, Hoover, Lincoln, North, and Roosevelt are a combined 0-102 apainst their suburban Polk County counterparts since 2009. Add in Dallas County’s Waukee, and that record balloons 0-112. The average score of those games? A whopping 49-10.
In that same time, Roosevelt has posted a 26-66 overall record, with 17 of those wins coming against another Des Moines city school. That includes 2017, when the Roughriders went 5-4 and won the mythical city title by beating Lincoln, East, and Hoover. It also includes 2015, when they went 0-9, were shut out five times and scored nine total touchdowns all season.
“We talk about it all the time,” Moore said. “That’s the challenge we’re up against. That’s the narrative about the metro schools right now. It’s not something we hide from. For the last 112 games, it’s been the same. If we’re going to do something different, we have to be different.
“We talk about the ‘Rider Edge’ — that’s our mantra. The edge is the farthest point from the center. We talk about living on that edge. We have to do things that people don’t do. At the end of the year, there’s one team on top. They obviously did things differently than everybody else.”
Moore started this process the moment he arrived. His first month at Roosevelt, he held one-on-one meetings with every returning player, but he didn’t ask them a single football question. He asked about their background, their families and what’s important to them. He learned that gaining his players’ trust was the first step in the rebuilding process.
Davis, specifically, illustrates that struggle. He was hesitant the first time he met Moore. He’d had the same meetings with two previous coaching regimes.
What was going to make this guy any different?
“I really wasn’t listening to what he was saying,” Davis said. “Past coaches said they were going to do the same things, but then they didn’t show us how to get there or help us get there. But more of my teammates got me to listen to him and trust him.
“He definitely is one of the more energized coaches I’ve ever had — just his intensity and the urgency with which he wants things done. He holds high standards, and we’ve never had that before.”
Moore is using many of the same steps he used when he built up Greene County. After a 1-8 campaign in 2017, the Rams did a complete turnaround in 2018, starting 5-0 and finishing 8-2. He was named Class 2A’s District 9 coach of the year.
Now he’s being tasked to produce the same kind of results here in Des Moines. It will take a tremendous effort, but Moore believes with the help of his staff and the belief from his kids, Roosevelt can rise up again faster than some people expect.
“We embrace this challenge,” Moore said. “There’s always been a stipulation on the metro schools — you know, ‘Hey, we can be a good city school. Let’s go win the city title.’ No. We came here to be as good as we can be. Why should we limit ourselves because of who we are?
“I think it’s important for us to change it, for this school to change the narrative. We’re excited about the opportunity. I don’t know when or where it’ll happen, but I do believe it will.”
Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and high school sports for the Des Moines Register. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.
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