Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

There will be new head football coaches at four different schools in the Your Prep Sports area this fall.

With all the shuffling on the sideline this season Your Prep Sports is helping area fans get to know the new coaches with series of question and answer sessions that will publish in the weeks leading up to the season.

City High is one of three area programs with a head coach that is new to the school with former Des Moines Roosevelt head coach Mitch Moore taking over for the 2021 season.

Moore is just the fifth head coach at City High since 1947 taking over for Dan Sabers who resigned in October after 20 seasons.

City High has won two games each of the past four seasons and is coming off a 2-4 campaign that ended with a loss to West High in the second round of the Class 4A state playoffs.

The Little Hawks open the season August 27 at Liberty High.

Your Prep Sports: You were a part of six Division III national title games at (Division III) Wisconsin-Whitewater as a player and as an assistant coach. What do you take away most from being involved in in a program with that level of success?

Mitch Moore: When I look at my career and my coaching style and the type of people I want to put around me from a standpoint of the leaders I want to put around me and the coaches I want to put around me and the type of kids you want in your program I think Whitewater set the standard and the foundation for what my coaching style is. When you are a Division III place there is a willingness to give up your personal goals and everything about you and make it about the team. I think that’s the biggest thing because you realize at that point that it is the end of your career so those four or five years are the end of your career so you want to do everything you can to get the best experience of it that you can.

The word culture is so overused but the culture at Whitewater was just constant competition in a way that you always trusted everybody next to you because you couldn’t take days off and you knew the guy behind you was just as good as you and you had to show him the way to work and show him the way that the guys above you showed you. You didn’t have to rebuild every year you just reloaded.

By the time I was a senior everybody below me at my position was better than me athletically every year during that run. So, I think the characteristics that I formed where I had to push and do everything and show the example at the same time those things molded you. It was such a process from freshman to sophomore to junior and senior year and those Division III levels, every year taught another thing. That is the backbone is who I am and that four or five-year process the ups and downs forged the opportunity for me to hopefully be a good coach someday.

YPS: You went to Ballard high school how did you end up at Whitewater?

Moore: Stan Zweifel who is the head coach at Dubuque right now was the offensive coordinator at Whitewater at the time and he recruited me. I went to Wartburg College and was playing there for Eric Koehler who is now at Miami (Ohio) and my dad got sick, I dropped out of college and went home and to be honest I had hardly heard of Wisconsin-Whitewater. I got up there on the way to Chicago and I thought this place is incredible. At that time, they had just done some things where you could tell that there was a vision to it and you thought it could take off. By the time I left there we had won a title in basketball, baseball and football in the same season. It was just incredible.

YPS: Did you know you wanted to coach?

Moore: I was always a sports buff, I just loved sports and everything about it. I grew up learning to read the Big Peach, that was the first thing I learned to read was the Des Moines Sports page. I always admired athletes but I always watched and listened and gravitated toward great coaches. I knew that was kind of my profession, I always knew I wanted to coach.

To make a long story short when I went to college I got hurt my freshman year and our coach said instead of just being a guy that goes to the training room every day you could be a coach. From my vision I just watched and learned and got to sit in staff meetings as a freshman in college and then went back and played so my perspective when I went back and played was just unique in the fact that I was really aware of my ability. I was not that great of an athlete but I think I understand how the coaches work and I could be a bridge between the coaches and players and that helped me as a leader for sure and I had that perspective for sure.

YPS: You had a good thing going at Des Moines Roosevelt what was it about City High that caught your attention?

Moore: John Bacon did such a good job of selling the vision and how much he loves City High. When you get to Iowa City you realize that City High is one of very few schools in the state that almost has a pageantry around it. From anybody that graduate from there, there is a community feel and a sense of pride and that pageantry feel where you feel like you have a real sense of community around the athletics there. At the same time there are incredible academics there.

For me I get an opportunity to really build something and carry on this tradition that has been unbelievable when you look at it over time. We have an opportunity I think to do that, those people are in the community. So, for me it was a place where my family can still be in a very vibrant area but at the same time I can coach some of the best athletes in Iowa.

YPS: How do you go about putting together a coaching staff when you move to a new part of the state?

Moore: That’s a part of being a head coach that I think is so fun and a part that I really thrive on. I have all these great pieces, some are bigger than others, some fit in different areas but my job is to put them all together. I always go into a staff knowing that I have three or four core guys that I know that I have to build around and then once I start getting those other guys that can help in certain areas or at certain levels and seeing how they fit with other people on the staff I think that kind of fits and molds itself.

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