Mike Ekeler has traveled an interesting path to being an assistant coach for the Nebraska football team.
For starters, he grew up in the state. He attended Blair High School just north of Omaha and played the sport he now coaches. He graduated from Blair in 1990 and went to play for Bill Snyder at Kansas State.
Little did Ekeler know just 18 years later he would be coaching the team he was raised to love.
"I grew up wanting to cut my arm off to have the chance to play here, just like every kid in the state," Ekeler said. "You grow up and you love this place. It really is very, very special. I understand the tradition as well as almost anyone. To be here and have Coach (Tom) Osborne as the athletic director is pretty amazing."
The Nebraska native didn't always start off with the desire to coach. After finishing his playing career at Kansas State, Ekeler spent seven years owning his own private business. It was in the tail end of those seven years when Ekeler started to scratch his coaching itch.
He volunteered as an assistant coach at Omaha Skutt High School before assuming the same role for Manhattan (Kan.) High School in 2003. Ekeler then made the jump to a bigger stage. It was a bigger leap than most make, considering he coached as a graduate assistant on the defensive staff at Oklahoma under OU Coach Bob Stoops.
That's where Ekeler met now-NU Coach Bo Pelini. Pelini joined the Sooners after a stint with the Cornhuskers and took Ekeler with him to Baton Rouge, La., to coach at LSU.
Three years later, Ekeler can now say he's at home sweet home.
"It's been bizarre hasn't it?" Ekeler said. "I think everything you do helps you grow from it. I've been in some unique situations and I've been around some tremendous people. I just feel fortunate."
It wasn't hard to find a couple of old friends in Blair when he returned, either.
"I think it's great that he's back," said Mike Lehl, who was Ekeler's football coach in the late 1980s. "I knew that he would be successful with whatever he wanted to do, but it does surprise me that he would want to be a coach because I never got the feeling that he wanted to be a coach."
Lehl coached the Blair High School football team from 1960-1996. The 36-year span has given the retired 72-year-old a lot of memories of the gridiron, but to this day one of his most vivid is still of Ekeler.
"He was a junior the year we won the state championship (1988)," Lehl said. "He was a starter and one of the leaders, and in one of our regular-season games we were playing Platteview and were down a couple of touchdowns. We came all the way back and went for two for the win and made it.
"When we won, he went somersaulting down the field."
Lehl said it was just how Ekeler expressed himself, and he loved it. He liked the hard work ethic and intensity Ekeler brought to the field each day, and it carried over to his playing career at Kansas State.
Although he was listed as a linebacker, Ekeler was known in Manhattan for his work on special teams, and even more for his pregame ritual. As the Wildcats took the field before every game, Ekeler would charge a sign in the back of the end zone and ram his head into it. His nickname became "Crash," and it stuck.
Ekeler laughed at the prospect of a new nickname in Lincoln.
"We're keeping that on the down-low," Ekeler joked. "That was a long time ago."
Maybe, but old friends of Ekeler are hoping that a lot of the characteristics that helped him earn that moniker are still a part of him. Just ask his former high school principal.
"You can't be a success unless you're a competitive person, which Mike is," said Steve Shanahan, a former Blair High principal and current superintendent of Blair Community Schools. "He has those qualities. He has a great work ethic and he's going to do whatever it takes to get what he wants done."
What Ekeler needs done now is to join Pelini and others in revamping a Nebraska defense that finished one of its worst seasons ever in 2007. Ekeler said he knows it will be a work in process, but after just one day of practice, he's excited about the players he has to work with.
To say the last 10 years of Ekeler's life have been a roller coaster would be an understatement, and many are excited to have him as a part of the NU revitalization, even if they didn't know about him right away.
Shanahan said he couldn't be prouder of the 36-year-old.
"I found out about when everybody else found out, but what went through my mind is that a local boy makes good," Shanahan said. "It's the same kind of pride if a graduate becomes a doctor or major CEO or reaches a goal. It has less to do with athletics and more with reaching his goals. That's why we're all in education."
Ekeler now finds himself on the educator side in his home state, and he knew he was back the moment he stepped off the plane from Louisiana. He said it felt like it was 10 degrees below zero and snowing.
Ekeler knew he was home.
"I think I'm just as excited as anyone to be here," Ekeler said. "I'm ready to embrace the challenge, and I don't know if I'm any different than anybody else who is on our coaching staff. Everybody has a singular purpose here, which is to just crank this thing up."
spencerschubert@dailynebraskan.com
