Training Camp History

Hello from MavBlog!

University press release announcing that the Minnesota Vikings
would begin holding their
summer training camp in Mankato beginning in 1966

This post is going to bring you a little history about training camp, and insight from Shirley Piepho, the Assistant Director of Scheduling and Conference Service for Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Shirley Piepho

The Minnesota Vikings first held their training camp from 1961-1965 at Bemidji State University. In 1966, the camp was then moved to Mankato, where John Hodapp was the current Director of Men’s Athletics, from 1964-1968. This was also the year that Minnesota, and its neighboring teams, Chicago, Detroit, and Green Bay were re-aligned and made into the Central Division of the Western Conference.

Hodapp and Bob Otto, (the MSU head football coach at the time) had some correspondence with the former Vikings coach, Bud Grant, and former general manager, Jim Franks, which were recorded in some documents from that time and were found in a box in the Athletic Office. These documents contained some information from the year that they came down, with some interesting numbers. In 1966, the cost for one meal for a player per day was $7.90. The cost of the rental fee to use the football fields and other facilities was $1,000. Also, in 1966, training camp ran July 12 through August 31 whereas now, camp is July 24-August 14^th, a great deal shorter.

Shirley, who is in her 39^th year (yes, 39^th!) is in charge of all the scheduling that takes place on MSU’s campus. She is the one that communicates with the Vikings every year about coming to training camp, the requests, scheduling, when and where, how much, etc…

Talking about how training camp works now, Piepho, who hails from Jasper, Minn., said she works directly with the Viking’s operations staff starting in February/March, where she starts trying to figure out what their needs are, starts reserving all the classrooms and all the athletic space that they need.

Matt Golf, from Residential Life here on campus, takes care of the residence halls and getting those in shape for them to come. “So basically I’m kind of like the coordinator for all the different groups on campus whether it be facilities, which helps with the field preparation or other campus services that help with the setup,” said Piepho. “I just coordinate between all of the people and then I’m the one that communicates back to Paul Martin (Team Operations Coordinator/Training Camp for the Vikings).”

When asked what she likes or dislikes about her job, she replied, “I don’t dislike anything. Part of why I do like it so much, is I have really good people to work with. The Vikings are exceptionally good people to work with; very organized. Then we have good people on this campus to work with as well. We all pitch in and get the job done.”

She commented that the only thing that has really changed over the years for camp was that Gage went down, where the Vikings always stayed in past years. Now they stay in Julia Sears. Other than that, they use most of the same facilities. She says “every once in a while, they will want to bring in a hot tub or a pool to change it up, but normally year to year it’s about the same.”

Talking about the benefits to campus, she said there are many. “It’s good exposure for the University to have that many people on this campus. Last year they said they parked over 9,000 cars in the short period of time. So if you figure 3-4 people per car, you’re getting a lot of people. For the community, it’s win-win. It’s economic development, and huge economic driver for it. The restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, Wal-Mart. So training camp is huge, and if we lost it, it would be a huge impact on the school.”

Regarding the speculation that some fans are having about whether or not the Vikings will continue to come to Mankato for training camp,  Piepho stated, “I can’t say for certain, but I know they don’t have any training facilities being built near the new field. So it’ll be a while. I would suspect, and hope, that because they do like us, and next year will be the 50^th year, that they’re not going to leave for at least 3-4 years, if ever.”