Apple Valley High School Grad Coaches Gophers Football

After 17 years as a college football coach around the nation, Eric Klein has returned home to Minnesota.

The 40-year-old graduate has been the strength and conditioning coach for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team since December.

Other coaches take care of strategy, Klein said. He's the guy who makes sure the football players have the strength, speed and agility they need to compete on game day.

“Eric Klein is a guy that I can't say enough about,” Gophers Head Coach Jerry Kill said. “He's been with me longer than anybody. … He is the reason we've been successful in turning around programs. … [He’s] the best in the country, in my opinion.”

Kill has hired Klein every time Kill has moved to a new college football program. When Kill was hired for his first college head-coaching job at Saginaw Valley State in Michigan, he hired a fresh-out-of-Carleton College Klein. He did the same when he went on to Emporia State in Kansas, Southern Illinois and Northern Illinois.

“It’s been a really awesome experience,” Klein said of coaching at Minnesota, the university whose campus he tromped as a high school student.

Klein graduated from Apple Valley High School in 1989. His family moved to Apple Valley before his junior year of high school, meaning Klein arrived at the school the year after its 1986 state football championship. With Klein on the team, Apple Valley made more deep runs in the state tournament.

Klein was “a model student athlete, in class and on the field,” said Bud Bjornaraa, a former Apple Valley High School teacher, track coach and assistant football coach.

Klein was a defensive end on Apple Valley’s football team and a thrower for its track team.

“Eric saw the good and pursued the good” in sports and life, Bjornaraa said. He said Klein, a “top-notch guy,” did things the right way and wasn’t swayed by people who took shortcuts.

Klein had the patience to understand how things work, which Bjornaraa said has continued to serve him in his coaching career.

In addition to success on the field, Klein’s success in the classroom led him to Carleton College in Northfield, where he earned an English degree but ultimately decided to continue on the football path.

During Klein’s senior year, Carleton defensive coordinator and defensive line coach Gerald Young asked him to work as a coach for the Carleton football team.

Young, who is now Carleton’s athletic director, said he was impressed with how Klein separated himself from being a player to become a coach. Klein was “a good and meticulous teacher,” Young said.

It was Klein’s work with Young that connected him with Kill. Kill and Young were roommates and teammates at Southwestern College in Kansas in the early 1980s, and when Kill got his head coaching job at Saginaw Valley State in 1994, he called Young looking for good young coaches.

Young recommended Klein, who got the job and stuck with Kill from then on.

Though Klein has been in Minnesota for several weeks, his family—wife, Allison, and 18-month-old daughter, Taegan—is still in DeKalb, IL.

“I can’t wait to have my family here,” he said.

He said he’s been too busy working with athletes to visit Apple Valley yet, and his parents moved south years ago. And he hasn’t made it to the Mall of America or other prime Twin Cities destinations.

But he’s excited to be back in Minnesota, he said, and at the university whose football team he grew up watching.