Martens named Mosinee football coach

MOSINEE - Craig Martens was a starting outside linebacker and center for the 2005 Mosinee football team that advanced to the WIAA Division 3 state title game.

Now he has the opportunity to help make the program a championship contender again.

Martens was announced as Mosinee's football coach Friday morning, a move that comes after Paul Nievinski stepped down at the end of the season. Nievinski had been Mosinee's head coach since 1995 and spent all but one season of his 30-year career with the program.

"I had the opportunity to play for Paul and play for this community. I feel like a lot of who I am and what I have accomplished is because of this program," said Martens, who is a math teacher at Mosinee. "I am just really excited to give that back and give kids the opportunity to do good things with their lives and have some fun playing football."

Martens was a volunteer assistant with Mosinee this fall, working primarily with the offensive and defensive linemen. Martens spent the previous five years in Stoughton where he was an assistant football coach and also was a track coach.

"I had a wonderful opportunity to work with some great coaches down in Stoughton the last couple years and have kind of modeled my (coaching) philosophy off some of those guys along with my growing up in this Mosinee program," Martens said. "The big thing that I am about is just being a full team, a bunch of guys that care about each other and would do anything for each other. If you can build those relationships first where you are a bunch of guys working toward a common goal and you do everything for each other to accomplish it, winning comes easy. That is the team atmosphere I am going to build."

Martens coaching career began in 2010 as the freshman football coach shortly after landing his first teaching job in Stoughton. He progressed to being the junior varsity coach and also an assistant with the varsity coach where he worked with every position but defensive backs.

"I moved around and got a lot of exposure in a lot of things with that program. They gave me a lot of opportunities," said Martens, a University of Wisconsin graduate. "I didn't have a ton of aspiration to be a head (varsity) coach at first, but as I got more and more involved and met more and more people it evolved into the thought of, 'When can I really put myself in a position to help kids.'

Martens met with the Mosinee players earlier this week and his message to him was basic.

"It was just a quick 20-minute meeting with them. It was in part to settle the rumours about who got (the coaching job)," Martens said. "I also laid out, 'This is who I am and this is what I believe in..' The main message was 'This is the time that we are going to build toward winning a championship, from January to June.' I just sent that message and set out my philosophy."

Tim Johnson can be reached at 715-845-0731 or attimothy.johnson@gannettwisconsin.com. Find him on Twitter @timmyjo11.