HMS Football – Hawks to have a fresh look under new head coach

Jeremiah Delzer has taken over the reins of Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn football and he promises the team will have a different look under the Friday night lights. “It will all be new,” promised Delzer. “There will be some things that are similar, but it will all be new.”
The new coach played his high school football in Scottsbluff, NE. He then signed to play football on scholoarship at Northwestern College in Orange City. “That was one of my favorite experiences of all time,” said Delzer, despite seeing action on the field only in his freshman season due to injury. He made the pivot to student coaching at Northwestern. “Honestly, that was probably the best thing for me,” he admitted. “I really loved that experience and that’s how I started getting into coaching and I loved it.”
A move by his fiance to the Des Moines area led to Delzer coaching at West Marshall. He was then a coach at Bondurant-Farrar before accepting the head coaching job at HMS. He has coached linebackers and tight ends and was a defensive and run game assistant.
With family coming to northwest Iowa the move here made sense, but the HMS opening held a special attraction. “I had some previous connections with people who were post-HMS’ers, who I coached with and who I went to college with or at least knew about the area,” explained Delzer. “I knew that the area would be willing to buy into somebody who’s really going to try to lead and help kids become the best that they can be. I knew that I would get supported in doing that and that is something that really drew me. Knowing that people were going to support me in the way that I thought was best to help kids be the best version of themselves, that was a big draw. It worked out really well and I have felt that way since I’ve been here.”


With the fresh look planned for this year’s team, there is plenty of work going on in the preseason. “We got here in early summer and we started installing,” shared the new coach. “We’ll be doing some new things so it’s been a lot of install, a lot of re-write in kids’ brains of what football’s really like because our style and last year’s style, I’ll be honest, they’re not the same.” Delzer is pleased with the progress, saying, “Obviously, there’s always things to work on this time of year but kids know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it which is the most important thing. We can make the corrections about things like technique. The kids are buying-in and having great effort but now we can just throw the film on and be like ‘We’re close but we’ve just got to fix this thing and this thing’ and I think that puts us in a really good spot to have good success this year.”
And what does this different look entail? “Without tipping my hand too much for a little preseason advantage, it’s just that it’s going to look more like modern football,” revealed the coach. “I know HMS has always been known as ground and pound. That’s something that we definitely want to do but it’s not going to be our MO anymore. It’s not going to be put 10 guys in the box and 11 guys in the box and let’s see whose will is stronger. We’re still going to have some of that but that’s not going to be the main thing we do. It’s going to look more like the spread modern football that you’re going to see from other teams.”
Delzer has taken from different sources to form the offense that is being taught to the Hawk players. “I’ve tried to piece together the things that I think were most effective for kids and streamlined them to make it that we have all these different parts of success that I saw,” he said. “At Northwestern their offense was electric and they had every answer in the book. They could do whatever they want. The passing game was ridiculous. I went to West Marshall where it was more of a spread, quarterback featured game and then Bondurant was feature your best tailback and we’re going to run the ball and see who’s tougher at that and once you adjust we’re going to adjust off of that. So just everything that I’ve learned from that and from clinics and different coaches over the years and pull all of those pieces and find the things that I think stick for kids.” The coach sees the players buying in to the changes. “The kids have done a great job. You can tell they’re excited. They want to do it and they want to get it right. You can always tell when they’re processing and they’re asking questions like ‘Coach, is this the right thing?’ Okay, so you really want to know and we’re having that, so that’s awesome. I think that leads to success.”
The Hawks’ Class A District 1 opponents this season will again be Akron-Westfield, Alta-Aurelia, Gehlen Catholic, MMCRU, Sibley-Ocheyedan and South O’Brien. “I think that our district is going to be an interesting one this year, because I think that the top dogs of the district graduated a whole lot last year and a lot of the younger teams are going to be bringing up a whole lot of guys that maybe you wouldn’t have expected them to be that were contributors and are going to be able to be older now,” said Delzer. “I think a lot of teams have a really good chance to win the district this year just from bringing back experience. I really hope that we can hold it through and be competitive. I seriously think we can be because I think we’ve got a good chance. There’s a good clearing threshhold of if you have experience and if you’re a little bit older and you can bring some stuff back everybody has a chance to be competitive this year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a whole bunch of teams trying to figure it out and Week 8 it can go a whole bunch of different ways.”
HMS opens the season August 30 hosting West Sioux. The Hawks’ other non-district game will be September 27 as they face Kingsley-Pierson on the road. “I’ve done a lot of work on West Sioux and K-P,” said the new Hawk coach. “I think they’re both teams that are going to be solid year in and year out. They’re going to bring a good group and be well prepared and have a good gameplan. Their coaches know how to coach and will make you wrong if you don’t go out there with a good gameplan. Some teams reload and some teams reset I think those are maybe programs that reset rather than reload. It just seems like every time I hear about a K-P or a West Sioux team they’re always super-duper competitive. I’m excited for a week one matchup where we get to go against who used to be the king of Iowa high school football and still is a very, very competitive team and kind of test out where we are and have that measuring stick early week one.”
When it comes to setting goals and defining success, Delzer shared that he is not somebody who really harps on the numbers. “I always try to say, the way that I want our program’s success to be defined is: Did every single person become the best version of themselves by the time they left HMS football?” said the coach. “If you, by being a part of Hawk football, became a better man, a better husband, a better father of the future, a better football player, a better worker, that’s what we want to get. If we have that we’re going to win a whole bunch of football games and we’re going to have a lot of fun. If we don’t have that, we’re going to learn a bunch of life lessons, but we’re still going to learn about it. I don’t think we really set any numbers. With the group we’ve got, I think we can seriously be really competitive in every single game that we play and have a good chance to win every single game that we play. We’ve got a lot of growth yet to do, so it is yet to be seen.”
HMS Varsity Football Schedule
Coaches: Jeremiah Delzer, Korey Ebel, Jaden Kleinhesselink, Mark Petersen, Kyle Vogt, Chris Schmidt
(All games start at 7:00 p.m.)
Friday, Aug. 30, West Sioux, home (non-district)
Friday, Sept. 6, Alta-Aurelia, home
Friday, Sept. 13, MMCRU, at Marcus
Friday, Sept. 20, Akron-Westfield, home
Friday, Sept. 27, Kingsley-Pierson, at Kingsley (non-district)
Friday, Oct. 4, South O’Brien, home (Homecoming)
Friday, Oct. 11, Sibley-Ocheyedan, at Sibley
Friday, Oct. 18, Gehlen Catholic, at Le Mars Community High School
HMS JV Football Schedule
(All games 5:30 p.m. unless otherwise indicated)
Tuesday, Sept. 3, Hinton, home
Monday, Sept. 16, MMCRU, home
Monday, Sept. 30, Unity Christian, home
Monday, Oct. 7, Sibley-Ocheyedan, at Sibley
Monday, Oct. 14, Emmetsburg, at Emmetsburg
Monday, Oct. 21, Sheldon, at Sheldon, 5:00