Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

Just as they have for generations kids played football under the lights at the Little Rose Bowl in West Branch on Monday night.

Only this time something was different.

Sure it was a spring Monday with a hint of humidity in the air rather than a brisk Friday in the fall but that wasn’t what was missing.

For the first time in nearly half a century a football game at West Branch took place without Butch Pedersen.

Pedersen, the hall of fame coach who built the West Branch football program into a power, who coached and mentored young athletes for more than 40 years, for whom the playing field inside the Little Rose Bowl is named, died on Monday following a battle with cancer.

There will be a celebration of Pedersen’s life on Saturday April 8 at the West Branch high school gym at 1 p.m.

“For 40 years a lot of things have changed,” former West Branch football player and current assistant coach John Hierseman said. “The town of West Branch has changed, the school has changed, the superintendents the mayors have all changed. The one constant for 40 years was Butch and Friday nights. That’s special.”

Butch Pedersen was special and he made West Branch football special.

Pedersen built his life around one school, one town, one program.

“He has been there for as long as I can remember,” former West Branch player and University of Iowa and NFL standout Marv Cook said. “From the time I was going to West Branch Bear football games he was an integral part of it.”

West Branch hadn’t reached the playoffs before Pedersen took over the program in 1983.

He led them to the postseason for the first time in 1988.

West Branch would reach the playoffs in 30 of the next 35 seasons, win three state titles and advanced to the 1A semifinals last fall in what would be Pedersen’s final season.

The career coaching achievements of Pedersen could fill this entire column.

So too could a list of young men and women that Pedersen coached, mentored and impacted during his time as a teacher and coach.

That list would fill the stadium where Pedersen stalked the sidelines for 40 seasons a thousand times over because that is what made Pedersen special.

“He just always wanted to coach the kids,” Hierseman said. “He completely let us coach the x’s and o’.  And the motivation, the work ethic and getting the very best out of every kid was what Butch wanted to do.”

Pedersen made headlines by winning games but he built a program and turned a community into a family by caring about kids.

When football season ended he coached basketball or track or whatever allowed him to impact the lives of the kids at West Branch.

And he coached each one with the same fire and the same principals.

“It didn’t matter what he was doing, if he was coaching, teaching, football or basketball or softball,” Cook said. “His impact not only made every one of those student athletes that he coached better but he made them better people so when they go on and mentor other people they will use the lessons that he taught them.”

Hierseman recalled the numerous times Pedersen would give a player, rarely a standout or even a starter, a second or third chance to be on the team.

The head coach would preach patience to his assistants with that player.

“He’d tell us, ‘that kid needs football more than football needs him’,” Hierseman said. “That epitomizes Butch.”

The loss of Pedersen leaves a football field-sized void in the high school football world and the West Branch community.

For 40 years Butch Pedersen WAS west Branch football.

The beauty of what Pedersen built at West Branch is that his death doesn’t stop his legacy.

It can’t.

Beyond the wins and awards and accolades Pedersen truly turned a football program and a community into a family.

His life’s work lives on through the coaches on his staff, many of whom played for him at West Branch, through his former players and through the countless boys he helped turn into better men through football.

“The benefit of coach Pedersen is a lot of those guys that he coached are now in the community, they are working alongside him in their industries there so the culture is still part of what he has developed and made his,” Cook said. “It’s the whole community and that’s what is special about what he’s done.”

West Branch football players wanted to be together on Monday night after the news of the passing of their coach had spread.

So, they gathered for a game of touch football at Butch Pedersen Field at the Little Rose Bowl.

Kids came together to play football.

Just the way coach Butch Pedersen would have wanted it.

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