Flashback! 1983 FB team had great defensive run

July 5, 2004
Editor's note: This is another story written in 2003 in a series as part of the 100-year celebration of St. Thomas athletics. The 1983 football team Coached by Mark Dienhart won the MIAC championship with a 9-0 record and participated in the NAIA playoffs.

1983 Tommies were pleasant surprise

By GENE McGIVERN
Sports Information Director

Once upon a time, 20 years ago in 1983, Mark Dienhart was a 29-year-old starting his third season as Tommie head football coach. His wife Kate had delivered their first child, a baby girl, Mary, in the offseason. In football, the coach was dealing with some huge graduation losses from the 1982 team and looking at two untested sophomores to fill the quarterback position.

How time flies. Today, Mary Dienhart is a star midfielder for the Tommie soccer team. Her dad is now St. Thomas' executive vice-president and chief administrative officer. His distinguished career in athletics has included nine years with the Minnesota Gophers, where he hired Glen Mason and Don Lucia in his role as athletics director.

The 1983 season saw the coach trying to replace a graduation class that included WR Jim Gustafson (who would play five NFL seasons); QB Randy Muetzel (threw for 366 yards in one half vs. Gustavus); WR Sean Higgins (104 career catches, played in NFL training camp with the New York Jets; and TE Shawn Graham. That group had led the Tommies to records of 7-2 and 8-2 in Dienhart's first two seasons.

The coach braced himself for the possibility of a rebuilding year with no marquee offensive players. "Everyone thought the cupboard was bare,"Dienhart recalled. The 1983 Tommies may have been short on offensive stars but they were long on leadership and chemistry. After an opening defeat at UW-LaCrosse (27-15), the Tommies reeled off nine wins for an unbeaten MIAC slate. That's the only season since 1956 when a St. Thomas football team has gone untied and unbeaten to win the conference.

On the defensive side, coordinator Jerry Miller returned 10 starters form 1982, and that group in 1983 held nine MIAC foes to just 53 points. Five times the Tommies scored 17 or less points but won the game. The season included a 41-14 win over the Johnnies in Collegeville.

"We had a strong, tight group of seniors that provided exceptional leadership," Dienhart recalled. "Some days
we just found ways to get it done. We had a lot of injuries."

The Tommies were invited to the NAIA playoffs --
just the second postseason football game in school history, but lost 17-10 in rainy, cold conditions to eventual NAIA national champ Northwestern in Orange City, Iowa.

"That was the most miserable game weather-wise
I've ever seen or been a part of," Dienhart said.
The Toms locked up the conference championship
on the final week of the MIAC season at home vs. Hamline.

Sophomore DB Neal Guggemos -- who would go on to play several seasons in the NFL -- had one of the great clutch performances in MIAC history as he picked off four passes to help the Toms hold off the Pipers, 10-7. Guggemos finished the season with 10 interceptions out of his school-record career total of 25. Mark McDonald made first-team All-American at defensive end.

The 1983 captains were defensive back Randy Odom,
a returning first-team All-MIAC honoree; offensive tackle
Tim Fischer, defensive tackle Dave Bonka; and running
back Sam Anderson. Other key defensive players included linebackers Randy Shei and Jim Smith, who were in the midst of their four-year runs as starters; nose guard Korey Niesen and safety Pat O'Bryan.