Mel Tjeerdsma
American football coach
Mel Tjeerdsma ( CHURCH-mə; born May 24, 1946) is a retired American football coach and athletic director at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. He served as the head coach at Austin College in Sherman, Texas from 1984 to 1993 and at Northwest Missouri State University from 1994 until his retirement after the 2010 season. In his 27 years as a head coach, Tjeerdsma compiled a career college football record of 242–82–4. He led the Northwest Missouri State Bearcats to three NCAA Division II Football Championship titles (1998, 1999, and 2009) and four additional NCAA Division II title games (2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008).
Early life and education
Tjeerdsma was born and grew up on a farm in Springfield, South Dakota. He graduated from Springfield High School in 1964 and attended Southern State College in Springfield where he participated in several sports. Tjeerdsma earned his bachelor's degree in physical education from the college in 1967. He was a teacher and assistant football coach in Akron, Iowa in 1968. He received his master's degree in physical education at Northwestern College in 1977.
Coaching career
Tjeerdsma coached at Sioux Center (Iowa) High School and in 1972 won the very first Class 2A State football championship.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mel Tjeerdsma” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.