20 years strong

PALMER — Not much more than a decade ago, Jared Williamson was among hundreds of players hoping to catch the eye of a college coach during the All-Alaska Football Camp. Now, Williamson is the college coach.

This week is sort of a homecoming for Williamson, a former Chugiak High School quarterback and All-Alaska Football Camp alum. It’s the first time he’s been back since his days with the Mustangs, and the 28-year-old probably can’t help but recall a time that preceded his whirlwind career as a record-setting signal caller at Mayville State and college assistant and head coach.

“It’s awesome. I haven’t been back since I graduated. I’ve been seeing a lot of familiar faces,” Williamson said after making a presentation about coaching college quarterbacks to a group of Alaska high school coaches.

Williamson was a four-year letterman and three-year starter at Mayville State, an NAIA program in North Dakota. He was a two-time All-Dakota Athletic Conference selection with the Comets and left as the school’s single-season leader in passing yards, completions and total touchdowns.

Williamson jumped into coaching immediately following his college career, serving as a graduate assistant at Illinois-Wesleyan University. He was also the strength and conditioning and running backs coach at IWU, before he was promoted to offensive coordinator.

Last year, Williamson was named the first football coach at Robert Morris University in Illinois.

“It’s a pretty neat success story,” camp director and founder Randy Klingenmeyer said.

Williamson is just an example of the camp’s countless success stories. For 20 years, Klingenmeyer has led a group committed to bringing quality coaching to not only promote the development of Alaska talent, but help provide opportunities to players in the 49th state.

“We’ve been fortunate in that way,” Klingenmeyer said. “Everybody knows what we expect, and we expect them to recruit.”

Williamson is one of 20 college coaches featured in the 2011 camp, which continues through Wednesday at Colony High.

“They’re all really great coaches,” Klingenmeyer said. “We have a group of guys who really care about this camp.”

All are helping to create success stories, like Williamson’s. A number of the coaches work for programs with Alaskans on their rosters. Camp field director and Valley City State University head coach Dennis McCulloch could have as many as eight Alaskans on his team next year, including 2011 Colony High School graduate Skye Rench.

Soldotna head coach Galen Brantley, a Valley City alum and former Viking football player, attended the first camp 20 years ago. As a coach, he’s helped lead the Stars to four small-schools state titles in the last five years.

In addition to the Stars, who bring their team each year, 13 of the last 19 large-schools state champions have brought their squads to the camp each summer.

Local programs Palmer and Colony, which have combined for three appearances in the large-schools state title game since 2005, attend annually. Eielson, which has won nine Greatland Conference championships in 11 seasons, also makes the trip from the Interior each summer.

“We’re getting a lot of success stories,” Klingenmeyer said.

The camp is also seeing new blood. Smaller programs such as Valdez, Skyview, Nikiski and Eagle River, a relative newcomer to the Alaska football scene, are attending the 2011 camp.

“Everybody goes to some sort of camp if you’re going to compete,” Klingenmeyer said. “It doesn’t matter what the sport is.”

Klingenmeyer said coaches and camp staff pride themselves on doing what they can to prepare athletes for life on and off the field.

“Not only are we preparing them for the upcoming season, we like to think we’re taking some steps to help prepare them for life and manhood,” Klingenmeyer said. “Every kid is looking to be a part of something, looking to belong. He’s gong to go one of two directions. He’s going to follow a path of success or he’s going to make that turn down the wrong road and get himself into a lot of trouble. The great thing about sports, period, (is) it keeps kids focused on positive things, positive growth in their life.”

Williamson probably didn’t realize the impact of his time at the camp as an aspiring young quarterback with the Chugiak Mustangs.

“I think you think it’s pretty neat to be around college coaches. You think it’s neat to get a head start on the fall with your high school coaches,” Williamson said. “But obviously, you don’t realize this is my ferry out of here to go play college football.”

But Williamson was scouted, recruited and signed by Mayville State after a Comets coach saw him at the camp.

Williamson said he’ll stress education and embracing opportunity during the camp this week.

“If you want to play college football, then you can play college football. You might have to pay for it, you might have to go to the East Coast, but there’s opportunity for anybody to play college football if they want to,” Williamson said.

Williamson said he emphasizes education. Since he took the job as the head coach of RMU, a Chicago-area school, eight former National Football League players have called asking about coaching positions.

“The career in the NFL is short, and less than 1 percent of college kids go to the NFL. The economy is hitting those guys just like everybody. If you don’t have your degree, you’re like everyone else looking for a job,” Williamson said. “Get your degree. Got to a school that has your degree, not just for football.”

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/matsu_sports.