Starting From Scratch

Pete Fredenburg teaches Mary Hardin-Baylor to swim in the deep end
by: Everett Starling
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No matter what level of football you’re coaching or playing, it’s hard enough to maintain a successful program these days. From high school to Division I to even the NFL, there are budgets, injuries, ever-growing parity with technology and those inevitable peaks and valleys.

That’s talking about established programs. What’s it like to try to create all of those things programs strive for: fans, top-tier talent, tradition and of course, wins, from scratch?

Six seasons into such an endeavor, Pete Fredenburg of Division III Mary Hardin-Baylor can offer some answers. When he was hired at the Central Texas school, there was no staff, no field house and not a single helmet or goal post. Now, there’s a program 130 players strong off two straight trips to the NCAA playoffs and an American Southwest Conference crown.

“Now obviously, it wasn’t an easy task. I don’t know that I’d ever go through it again,” Fredenburg chuckles.

A veteran college assistant and former Texas high school head coach who served as Grant Teaff’s defensive coordinator at Baylor for 13 seasons before additional tenures at LSU and Louisiana Tech, Fredenburg is known not only for his X’s and O’s proficiency but was once called one of the better recruiters in the old Southwest Conference. So why not dance on a bigger stage?

Leaving Division I for a Division III startup might have surprised some of his colleagues, but for Fredenburg, it was a matter of timing, and doing something that would work for his family. After seeing two older sons grow up in different places like those of so many coaches, Fredenburg sought some stability.

Ironically enough, it came in the shadow of Waco, where the Fredenburgs had roots. UMHB, a university that had been exclusively a women’s school until 1971 and didn’t offer athletics until 1977, was seeking a way to raise its male population. What better way to do that in a football-crazy state like Texas than to add a football program that would not only add more students via participating on the teams, but give kids and parents a reason to be in Belton on weekends?

It was 1997 and the wheels were already in motion. The school settled on NCAA Division III membership and set out a fund-raising effort, even adding women’s soccer and a marching band as part of this multi-pronged effort to make the school a more special place. Baylor regent and Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane Jr. and others, including The Anderson Foundation, had set forth the funds that’d cover a startup football budget of around one million dollars.

Fredenburg’s wife had just finished her doctorate at LSU, and Baylor offered her old job back. Belton was just a short drive down the road. University officials met with Fredenburg to share their vision. It wasn’t a tough sell, as Fredenburg remembered the Division III scene from the experience of one of his older sons, while thinking about his youngest, Cody.

“What went through my mind in going to Division III was that my oldest boy went to Austin College (Sherman, Texas) out of high school and played quarterback there for them. He was just there a year, but had really an incredible experience there in one year’s time. Loved it. I liked the atmosphere. So it was kind of appealing to me,” Fredenburg said. “We then moved from Baylor, to LSU, and then La. Tech, I really wanted to kind of stabilize my youngest son, his life. So when this job came open, I got to talking to Ben Shipp, our AD, it just kind of all fell together.”

Fell together would be one way to put it. Fredenburg was hired and immediately seemed a bit overwhelmed with everything from trying to hire a staff, to planning every inch of the field house and stadium facility to buying equipment to, oh yes, recruiting a team to compete in a pass-oriented conference boasting Trinity and Hardin-Simmons, among others. Fredenburg was on a crusade to create the Crusaders.

Thankfully for Fredenburg, Hardin-Simmons’ Jimmie Keeling had been through similar circumstances, bringing back football to the Abilene school after a long period of dormancy.

“(He) has done an incredible job of helping me through all of the rough times. He was very generous to volunteer information about what they did and what they went through and how they got it organized, so it just allowed us to really model their program,” Fredenburg said.

Word seemed to spread like wild fire through Central Texas about what the school was undertaking. Over 200 players came out for the first team, creating an immediate need for a junior varsity team. Fredenburg’s reputation had certainly brought out a lot of curious onlookers. Of course, quantity doesn’t always mean quality. Could those coming out to represent the school play on a competitive level, and if they couldn’t, would they put in the work and effort to make it happen?

Going back to his roots, Fredenburg brought in experienced assistants who believed in his core philosophy: press, press, press on defense, and make defenses be disciplined against you or the option you use will hurt them.

“Really everything that we have tried to put on offense are things that really caused me grief as a defensive coordinator in trying to defend the things that people do to you. We’ve kind of had a philosophy of what we’ve wanted on both sides of the ball, and that’s kind of how it’s evolved. The guys that are here are guys that have the same philosophy as I do. Our defense is the same and our offense is the same, so that will carry on,” Fredenburg said.

Current East Texas Baptist University head coach Ralph Harris, who was Fredenburg’s offensive coordinator at UMHB in 1998, found himself utilizing his experiences under Fredenburg while building a program of his own.

“I had the advantage of seeing all the things done well and all those things that created difficulty while building a new program,” said Harris, whose Tigers enter its fourth year since returning to football after a 50-year hiatus. “The major advantage I had coming to ETBU is that it was exactly the same as the situation at Mary Hardin-Baylor. Both programs started from scratch with the same foundation, facilities and support. I have taken from Coach Fredenburg the idea of providing a Division I atmosphere at the D3 level ... I am referring to film study, recruiting processes, meeting rooms. That approach is exactly why Mary Hardin-Baylor has climbed to the level that they have under Pete.

“Plus, they seemed to get a whole lot better after I left there,” added Harris jokingly. “Pete and I are very similar in that we are both dinosaurs. We believe in a physical aggressive style of play as do many of the coaches that are still in existence from the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth.”

Managing a program with 200-plus players is hard enough, but getting everybody on the same page, well, that’s often another matter. Fredenburg and his staff of five full-timers learned first-hand in 1998, losing seven of 10 games that inaugural season. The final tally inched forward in 1999, as the team finished 4-6, but showed signs that better things were possible.

“The first two years were obviously very difficult ... we felt like we could have won some more, but we really felt we didn’t have a good commitment from so many of our players. They were doing this in passing. So it took us awhile to really get guys that wanted to invest the time and their talent into the building of a program really special. It kind of all came to a head that second year we had some guys that just really hung in there,” Fredenburg said.

Word apparently began to spread around Central Texas players and coaches. Fredenburg recognized a core group of kids that was both talented and hard working beginning to form. Talent was starting to trickle in. Division III football, really in its infancy in Texas, was starting to become de-stigmatized.

“Since then, starting that third year, every year we’ve been in existence we’ve gotten a little better quality of athlete. It was rough at first, then it just started to develop,” Fredenburg said. “I think word got out that Division III is an incredible place for a youngster to play because the playing field is level, so if guys want to continue to play, it’s just an awesome place.”

“The bottom line is that Pete is good for football and good for people,” said Harris, who now annually competes against Fredenburg for ASC supremacy. “He is an intense a competitor as I’ve known ... he is a coaches’ coach.”

It’s no question talking to him that Fredenburg feels at home. And to him, it’s that sense of a fit that isn’t just genuine, but the most sellable commodity he has. “The thing that we wanted to do, since Division III youngsters don’t get any kind of athletic scholarship, we felt that we wanted to really create an atmosphere that would be conducive to youngsters reaching their athletic goals while they achieved their education. So, in order to do that, we felt like we had to, No. 1, just create an atmosphere that would allow us to work hard, but work in a nice environment and treat these guys with great dignity and class.

“Then just try to recruit. We’re right in the middle of Texas, so we thought it was a good location to recruit a lot of quality guys. Obviously, facilities do factor in, but also it’s relative to the way youngsters are treated, and the way that the program is developed with that philosophy in mind. Guys come to us, they want to continue to play, and want to try to be the best football player they can. But that means you have to have a great weight room, a great organization that will allow the kids to be successful,” Fredenburg said.

Fredenburg apparently has the right pieces in place. For the rest of the competition in the American Southwest, what has unraveled in the last three years is no secret. Mary Hardin-Baylor went 9-1 in Fredenburg’s third season there, then repeated the feat in 2001, resulting in a playoff berth. (Apparently Hardin-Simmons’ Keeling kept some secrets to himself, as each loss each was to H-S.) They took it a step further in 2002, winning the conference title outright with their 10th win before having their season end a second straight time at the hands of Trinity.

Fredenburg says he saw the picture pretty clearly seven years ago: we can compete for a national championship. As the Crusaders seek to further those goals this season, they’ll do it offensively behind the leadership of Cody Fredenburg, their senior quarterback.

Coach Fredenburg, not unlike many coaches who get the special thrill of coaching one of their children, is enjoying the ride, though he had reservations even before his son ever decided to step foot on campus.

“It’s just been absolutely incredible. When he had the opportunity to go other places, I tried to remove myself from his decision. I knew that he could help our football team, but I also had a vested interest in what was best for him. So we discussed at length the pitfalls of him being a part: No. 1, he’d have to listen to other players talk bad about his dad sometimes, then his acceptance by the team was a concern of his mother’s and mine. How he would fall into place, but all of that has taken care of itself,” Fredenburg said.

“Since he’s gotten here he’s been a real asset to our program. As far as I know, he’s very well accepted by his team. He’s been elected captain for a second year in a row. Those were areas were I was concerned, and it didn’t materialize. It’s just been incredible. I get to see him every day, I get to watch him play, and then his success on the field has been pretty extraordinary.”

Perhaps not as extraordinary as what dad has put in place, the fruits of which he doesn’t have to be walking across a practice field or standing on the sidelines to enjoy.

“The thing that is most rewarding is just to see the excitement the football team generates across campus. The university has certainly embraced our football team and I would think that’s the most exciting thing to see. The student involvement in our games, to see our players get the gratification of playing in front of a nice crowd,” Fredenburg said.

“The same old deal ... it doesn’t matter where you’re at, everybody likes to be recognized and gratified and I think that’s the thing that’s most rewarding.”

Doesn’t matter whether it’s the old Southwest Conference, the SEC or apparently, a sleepy university with an enrollment around 2,200.

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