Barry Alvarez won a national championship as a defensive coordinator at Notre Dame and three Rose Bowls at Wisconsin.
Yet it’s leading the 1978 Mason City (Iowa) High School state championship team that still holds a special place to this day, and now he’s helping other communities celebrate the same feeling.
“Winning that championship was the culmination of work of three years where you start from scratch,” Alvarez told Sporting News. “It took the entire community to accomplish all of that; the finality of that. I’ll never forget waking up at 3:30 in the morning and walking downstairs to make sure the state championship trophy was still there.