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| The Finlandia football program has started over so many times that it's difficult to gain any momentum. Finlandia athletics photo |
By Greg Thomas
D3sports.com
At the top of every Around the Nation podcast, Pat Coleman reminds us that Division III is the largest division of college football. Division III’s 240 teams come in all shapes, sizes, and locations. In the coming weeks, our coverage is going to focus in on storylines such as Mary Hardin-Baylor’s quest to defend their national championship, North Central’s defense of their No. 1 ranking, and Mount Union’s path to return to the Stagg Bowl.
It’s easy to take the success of these teams for granted, but success at these proograms was always assumed. Their successes relied on years of patience, growth, and perspective. It’s these same principles that Mike DuFrane is bringing to Division III’s smallest school with a football program, Finlandia University.
In his second year as head coach of the Lions, DuFrane proudly leads a program that has had difficulty gaining traction in Division III. Located in Hancock, Michigan, Finlandia is about as remote as a school can get in Division III. Located on the Keweenaw Peninsula of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is essentially an island in Lake Superior, Finlandia is not exactly located in fertile football recruiting ground.
“Our closest metropolitan area is Green Bay, and that's three and a half hours away. If you’ve been D-III football long enough, you know that trying to recruit Wisconsin as an outside school for Division III is not an easy task,” DuFrane said. “If you look at our major cities in Michigan like Detroit, they're nine plus hours away.”
For Finlandia, where to recruit players has been a difficult problem to solve. DuFrane’s staff has put more emphasis on staying local. “For us it's about finding kids that are looking for this experience. Somewhere that is a little bit more remote, that is a little bit more off the beaten path. We’re really trying to get a hold on the kids from the U.P.” DuFrane said. “We do have two Division II programs up here, but we are the only Division III football program in the U.P. , so we do have kind of that little niche that we can sell and talk to kids about.”
While Finlandia has been playing Division III football since 2015, DuFrane essentially inherited a brand new program. “There were eight kids left [on the roster] when I walked in the door in March of 2021,” DuFrane recalled. “We were pushing the reset button. We had two seniors left in the room and then three that I was able to talk into coming back out.”
DuFrane inherited the program from Travis Wiltzius, who went 0-20 in two seasons, in which Finlandia played in the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association. Now the Lions play in the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference.
One of DuFrane’s previous coaching stops was as an assistant at Lyon College in that program’s first year of existence, so he is familiar with the growing pains of a young roster. “It's being patient and understanding that things aren't going to happen overnight. And it's helping our guys understand patience. And I feel like, in today's culture especially, patience is not something that guys have a lot of.”
Teaching that kind of perspective can be challenging, but DuFrane is seeing his players catch on to the program-building nature of what he is working toward.
“We do have guys that are starting to understand it now. I see the growth. I see the guys understanding the game better, better understanding the process about getting to Saturday,” DuFrane told Around the Nation. “But then you do see those moments of immaturity and you just have to remind yourself that, hey, these guys are 18 and 19 years old. They're, they're figuring out how to function on their own, let alone be a college athlete right now. It’s a process and it's patience and it’s understanding that you have to be where we are right now before we can get to where we want to go.”
DuFrane played defensive tackle at UW-Whitewater in 2007 and 2008, winning a national championship in 2007. While Finlandia is not in the Stagg Bowl-level tier of the division that UW-Whitewater has occupied since his playing days for then-head coach Lance Leipold, DuFrane has been able to draw from that experience to enhance football at Finlandia.
“It's that attention to detail and that dedication to the process that I learned as a player there. Those guys are obviously phenomenal football coaches and they're doing a fantastic job everywhere they've gone,” DuFrane said. “When I got to Whitewater, the thing I noticed about it was the dedication to the tradition, the dedication to the culture, the dedication to just being together as a group. That doesn't change whether we have a massive roster or a smaller roster that same aspect — that same pride in the program, pride in yourself, and that same appreciation for the process — that never changes.”
Another cornerstone of the program building at Finlandia is what the student-athletes do off the field. With a roster of 57 players at a school of about 380 students, the football team is a visible presence whether they are active or not. DuFrane’s Lions have embraced being active on campus and in their community.
“In the classroom, our guys sit in the first two rows. We ask them to be leaders in the classroom. That’s not something that's always easy for a young kid to do, but that is, that is a requirement of our guys that they lead in the classroom and that they're active when they participate.”
In addition to being leaders in the classrooms at Finlandia, you’ll find Lions football players supporting their fellow student-athletes at other events like hockey games, basketball games, and volleyball games. The team also works with Bethany Baptist Church with U.P.-specific chores like shoveling snow off of rooftops and splitting and stacking wood for fireplaces for members of the community.
Finlandia also hosted their first youth camp this summer for the first time in their program’s history. “Over a hundred kids showed up which I mean up in this area, having over a hundred kids excited about football when they're in the fourth to grade is awesome,” DuFrane said. Finlandia will also be hosting those campers at a Youth Day at their upcoming game against Westminster (Mo.), where the campers will be able to spend some time with the players on the field before and after the game and experience a college football game day.
All of these efforts to build relationships in the community are important for Finlandia. “Not a lot of people talk about us and we're just trying to develop those relationships and build a program from the ground up. As much as we can get out and talk to people, that's what we're trying to do,” DuFrane explained.
From talking to DuFrane, it’s clear that there is a lot of positive energy at Finlandia and that the program is growing, but Around the Nation readers will know that Finlandia hasn’t won a game in a long time. Wins are the ultimate goal for any program, but when you’re starting from scratch, what does progress look like without relying strictly on the scoreboard as a measurement tool? DuFrane has a mental checklist.
“It's little things right now. Did we check off all the boxes throughout the week to what we had to get done? Were we everywhere we needed to be? Was the tempo of practice what it needed to be? Were we better than we were last week? Did we make improvements?” DuFrane asked. “I have a staff full of guys that, man, we're very competitive people and they all want to win really bad. It’s that patience and understanding that it's a process and there's a whole lot of steps that we need to go through to get us to where we're going to be.”
Success is also something that is measured differently for very small, young, and rebuilding programs. “In the short term for me right now is just getting us to be more consistent in everything that we do. It's finding that consistency on a day-to-day basis, DuFrane said. “We tell our guys every week, ‘Hey, let's do it our way. Let's make sure we're flying around, Let's make sure we're energetic, let's make sure we're excited to be doing every aspect of it.’ You’ve got to have that same excitement. You’ve got to have that same energy. If you can find consistency, that's what builds you into wins.”
Like many coaches, DuFrane stays focused on the next play and the next practice, trusting that longer term success is a product of focusing on what is immediately in front of them. “Becoming a consistent winner in the long run is obviously what we want to do.” DuFrane reiterates: “Finding consistency through everything. We tell our guys, just be 1-0 in everything that you do, 1-0 in every single rep, 1-0 when you go to the classroom, 1-0 when you're in the weight room. Going 1-0 with a young group of guys consistently every single day is something that we're striving to do.”
We’re going streaking
Around the Nation likes to check in periodically with the longest streaks in Division III football, and this seemed like an appropriate week to update our list. Since our last check-in, Thiel broke the longest active losing streak, which now belongs to Finlandia. The Lions, who have been road warriors this season, will host Crown on Saturday in just their second home game in the last six weeks. 2022 has seen a lot of long losing streaks snapped — Finlandia could be the latest to do so this weekend in Hancock.
Longest active losing streaks:
37 games - Finlandia
21 games - Beloit
20 games - Buffalo State
19 games - Whittier
13 games - Albright
13 games - Austin College
On the win streak side, Carnegie Mellon continues to hold the longest active win streak after another defensive slugfest win at Washington & Jefferson in Week 7. The short list of active win streaks:
14 games - Carnegie Mellon
12 games - Randolph-Macon
9 games - Wartburg
8 games - Susquehanna
Carleton (7 games) and Trinity, Conn., (7 games) are the only other two schools with active win streaks that date back to last season.
On tap
Week 8 is the halfway point of the full Division III football season, postseason included. As the season moves along, the stakes of the games get more acute for teams chasing conference championships and teams trying to stay alive for at-large selection, and teams playing to qualify for postseason bowl opportunities. Our team at D3football.com is going to keep the spotlight on all of those high-stakes games and stories as the season steams ahead toward the postseason. Here’s what you can watch for every week at D3football.com:
Tomorrow: Quick Hits featuring our panel’s predictions and insights into this weekend’s games
Saturday: Game day. The D3football.com Scoreboard has all of your links for stats and broadcasts.
Sunday: New Top 25 poll
Monday: Around the Nation podcast. Pat Coleman and Greg Thomas recap the weekend that was and preview the weekend to come in Division III football.
Tuesday/Wednesday: Team of the Week honors, features columns
Thursday: Around the Nation column
I’d like to thank ...
Special thanks this week to Finlandia head coach Mike DuFrane for taking time to talk Lions football with Around the Nation!
Read options?
Small college football is actually pretty massive. Division III is home to 240 teams, many thousands of student-athletes and coaches. There are so many more stories out there than I can find on my own. Please share your stories that make Division III football so special for all of us! Reach out to me at greg.thomas@d3sports.com or on Twitter @wallywabash to share your stories.
