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Craig Mattick: A cheerleading coach in competitive cheer and dance. Now, he was there when it all came together to sanction competitive cheer and dance. It's been huge for South Dakota. He's also been one of eight finalists for National Coach of the Year in cross country and is a two time South Dakota Cheer Coach of the year, and he's getting ready to retire. He's the Aberdeen Central Golden Eagle, Bruce Kleinsasser. Bruce, welcome to In Play.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Thank you, Craig. Appreciate it.
Craig Mattick: So is that true, we're hearing about retirement maybe for you?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Yep. Well, retirement from cheer, and then I got a couple... I'm not that old, not that I'm wishing I was older, but I have about a year and a half before then I'm retiring altogether. So yeah, my brother and I got a house down in Arizona, so we are just waiting to go there. So that's my goal.
Craig Mattick: How long have you been a part of athletics at Aberdeen Central?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Well, I would say 1980, 1984, when they first had one of the girls' basketball B tournaments, we worked, I worked there. I worked at the basketball tournament. I had known some of the people up there. I'd worked the state basketball tournament, so we start, I would say, 1984. We've been doing stuff at Aberdeen Central constantly after that then, score-keeping, doing this stuff and all that stuff. And then I took over the cheerleading program in fall of 1997. And then prior to that I was at Northern, so coaching them, so that's where I was and that's how I've been at Aberdeen Central that long, 84. I graduated in 83 and from high school, came to college, and they needed help because back then, that's when we still Deb Smith would type and we would talk to her. We didn't have the computer.
Craig Mattick: Deb Smith with the Aberdeen American News. Yes.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Yep. And then she would type it, and so we were the computer. We would call the games for her and then we would run and do all this stuff for her. So that's how we got involved because she needed help and we were friends with her and she goes, "You guys think you can help me?" And I said, "Yeah." So we did.
Craig Mattick: So was Aberdeen always going to be your first stop after college? I mean, were there other opportunities or?
Bruce Kleinsass...: There was. Graduated 87 from college, and then I went to work in Pierre at the Y and then they had the ninth grade or freshman cheerleading coach was the new one, so the lady that was our cheerleading coach in high school, she goes, "Hey, Bruce is coming. Can you help these guys?" And I said, "Sure." Because I had coached up here, so I helped them for a year, about a year and a half, and then I came back to Aberdeen. So I have been in Aberdeen the rest of the time then. So I left for about a year and a half, and other than that, I've been here since I came here in 83, other than that year and a half.
Craig Mattick: Did you grow up in a big sports family?
Bruce Kleinsass...: No. Well, not really. No. I mean, my brother was the manager of the basketball team when Pierre won in 1979. And then I was just always... We always liked sports. My father took us everywhere. That was our vacation. He would take off a week when we'd go to the state basketball tournaments.
Craig Mattick: Nice.
Bruce Kleinsass...: In Sioux Falls, and we always just went, or my mom made us, we went, and that was our entertainment on Friday nights and we just always got involved. But no, that was just him and I. Just my brother was the manager, and then I was always with the cheerleaders. I was always down watching them and doing stuff with them and cheering on the team.
Craig Mattick: Your first year though, at Aberdeen Central, describe what was going on. You were in charge of the cheerleaders at that time?
Bruce Kleinsass...: I was. So I was doing Northern at the same time, and Aberdeen Central had just, we had gone through an athletic director and then we had another athletic director, and he called me and he said, "Bruce, what do you think? Can you do this?" And I said, "Well, it's kind of hard because a lot of things are the same, but let me try it." So we did that. Prior to me, they had 14 girls and then you just picked what they wanted to do. Well, that wasn't what... I didn't want to do. You had six for basketball, six for wrestling. So we kind of had to change some things and work some things out, but I was blessed with seven great seniors that year, and they were like, "Bruce, we just wish you would've been here five years ago for us." And I said, "Well, I wish I could have too."
They were so good, and they're still great friends of mine, and they're just good kids. Now they're mothers, some of them are grandmothers, some of them they're married and have children, doing stuff. And then I just continued to do that and we just continued to build from that. So out of those seven, I had, those girls had sisters and I had all the sisters then going through. So it was like, you just kept rolling through and you're like, oh, now the next one's coming. And the parents then were great too because they already knew who I was and what we were doing, so they kind of... Really, we had a lot of great support back then. We hadn't yet become competitive, but we were working on it, but we were really good at sideline. We were doing our best for that.
Craig Mattick: You said you did it at Northern too. How did the Northern spot come out?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Well, two of my high school friends that were cheerleaders that I kind of helped in high school because I would go to practice and do whatever, they came to me and said, "Bruce," They made the squad at Northern and they said, "Bruce, could you just come and just help us and just stand there and kind tell us things you do like you did in high school?" I'm like, "Yeah, okay." So I went over there, kind of did that. And I said, "Okay, girls, here's what we're going to do." Kind of had a little structure. I really didn't know much, but I just know from what our cheerleading coaching and advisor, you were on time, you had to do these things, you were on the court, all this stuff. So I said, "That's what we're going to do." And so then the next year, they make it again. Well, they don't have anybody. There's nobody to do the cheerleaders, so my good friend, well, she's Kim Steele-Robbie, Derek Robbie's wife, she's a good friend of mine from high school, and she said, "Bruce, you need to go talk to the athletic director."
And I'm like, "Jim Crutchman?" And he scared me. I mean, he just felt... I was scared of Jim Crutchman. Anyway, his daughter and I were good friends in high school or college, but I'm like, "Ah..." So I just went in and said, "Hey, I'd like to help." And I just remember he had a red file and he said, "Here's the file. Do you have any questions? Ask the secretary about getting the car or van on wherever you need to go, and here's your money allotment, so keep within that range, and if you have any questions, just let the secretary know." So eight years of that, I did both fall and winter tryouts. Didn't really know what I was doing. One year, I took them down to Sioux Falls to a high school camp, and that's where I started learning about what cheerleading really was all about. So that's where it was. And then now in 1996, 97, started coming, and that's when I started doing both. And then it just got too much.
Craig Mattick: You're in one of those positions where you're not an educator, right? You're not a teacher. You work outside the school.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Yes. Yep. I worked at the Y, I worked at the Aberdeen family Y for about 20 years, and then I went to become... Jean Brunel, our athletic director, and I mean Central, I was his secretary or administrative assistant for seven. And then I had my hip replaced and I've had issues with my hip and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it was a change of life for me, and I'm just like, "I just don't think I want to do this anymore." And I moved to the hospital and working at the therapy center, and Jean called me and said, "Bruce, we can't find anybody. Can you come back and just help us out a little bit and we'll find somebody?" Well, that was from 2009 to last year.
Craig Mattick: You were at the Y. I heard that you were teaching fitness classes, you were doing CPR classes, first aid, right?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Yep. First aid, CPR, I train all that. We train all the lifeguards within 150 mile radius of Aberdeen. Still do that to this day. We have a wonderful thing. I go all over the state to do that. Help down in Sioux Falls at the Midco Aquatic Center. You always say be careful what you wish for. I always wanted to be an instructor trainer so I could train people. Well, I became that, and now people don't become that, and now there's not very many of us and everybody wants to be trained. I do love it, it just is... Again, I'm getting older and I have other things to do. But yep, I taught class every morning at five 30, water class, taught all the classes during the day and life-guard training and CPR, first aid, I still do all that here at the Y to this day.
I just did a class on Monday of 20 people, and I do all the community and all of our staff. Cheerleading and swimming was always my love because it was just something that I liked to do, and it just worked because it worked out in my schedule and I could go do all the games and do all the stuff and had good kids that I worked with and they worked for me.
Craig Mattick: How did you become a better coach when it came to leading the cheerleaders?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Well, I think I became a better coach from the people that I started working with and being around. And then when I became a member of our coaches association, not only our cheerleading coach association, but our South Dakota High School Coaches Association, so that was everybody. And I just kind of said, "Well, I think we could do those things in cheer that you guys may be doing in basketball or football. We could do those things." And so I really learned a lot of stuff from them. And then the people that were starting the cheerleading stuff, I mean, Ruth Rain was... And that's the biggest thing is, Ruth Rain, her and I were good friends at the Pierre Y. It's a long story, but not a long story. But her and I were friends at the Pierre Y, and she's like, "Bruce, you know all this stuff and you need to help us and get on the board and do all this stuff." And I'm like, "Ah, I don't think so." And so of course I get involved and get on advisory and start helping people and start learning.
And then that's how I kind of learned. And then I just started watching videos. I mean, back then it was videos or you know what it was. I always wanted to be the University of Kentucky or I wanted to be like Watertown. The Watertown cheerleaders were always good. They were good jumpers. And I'm like, so I called her and I said, "How do you become better?" And she goes, "Well, these are the things you have to do." And then I just started doing that all, and then becoming involved with all those other people and then the people in our association really made us all grow together. Taffy Hendricks, Sue Cronkite, I mean, there's so many people that started together. We went to become, well, teachers are of this safety training, and we went down to Kansas City with all the officials and we learned how to do that, and then we would go train. Everyone had to be trained in the safety portion of it, and that's how we kind of got to learn everything.
And so that's where, I guess, Taffy and Sue and I and Ruth, and we got in a huge demand with all the football, basketball, and wrestling officials, and we drove down because it was this big, huge convention. We're in Kansas City and we just started learning, and we met Jim Lord, who is a big person for cheer, and he's just like, "Oh my God, you guys are so far ahead of a lot of states," And he helped us a lot too in learning about cheer. I mean, learning about what cheer is all about, what safety is all about, what we need to do, what our kids need to do. That's where I learned it. And those are the people I still go to. I mean, if we have things, I go to Jim Lord or throws off things with Taffy and Sue or those people. And they've been out of it for a while, but just their knowledge of, "Hey, this is what you could do. Think about it." So that's what we did.
Craig Mattick: The sport of cheerleading basically was standing on the sideline and cheering. But it has grown now for... There's tumbling and there's lifting. I mean, there's so many things that go with it. And then South Dakota Sanctions Champion Cheer and Dance competition. It's been 18 years now that that's been around. It's a huge presence, I believe, in the state. You have several thousand girls who were involved with this sport. I know you were involved with this sport from the beginning. What was it like trying to get this sport sanctioned? And were there barriers that you had to get around to get this sport sanctioned?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Huge. One of the biggest things was we had to convince the athletic directors that this is what we did. And then that's when we brought those people in and said, "Here's what really, this is what we're going to do with putting all these pieces together." And they're like, we had to go to their meetings and they would say no, and then Taffy, we would all go again and they would go, "Yeah, let's try." The biggest barrier was convincing them that it was worth it, that it was going to give a much more opportunity to young women and ladies, and that we had to give that to them so we could... I mean, like you said, there's over, there's 22, 24 AB schools and there's 19 of us at the double A schools. I mean, that's a lot of kids. I mean now. Back then, we didn't have that many, but we had a lot of more kids to do that.
So that was the biggest barrier over and over and over, getting pounded down and saying, "Nope, we can't do it. You got to give us some more stuff. What's it going to do for us? It's going to take three hours and we got to pay these people and do this and that and that and that," But once we convinced them, their kids started doing it, putting maybe a little routine together so we could show them, then they're like, "Oh, well maybe this could be..." And then, of course, the dance world come in, and they were already kind of there, as in... Because the dance studios, they would do their resettles and stuff.
Craig Mattick: They had their clubs. They had their dance clubs. Right.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Right. And they had their dance clubs and had their cheer clubs [inaudible 00:14:24]. So it's like they kind of helped us go, "We can probably do this." And so again, we just kept pounding away. I bet you it was three to four years, and that's when Ruth too started at me and said, "Bruce, you got to start doing it." And again, I was the only male in this female world with all the coaches and saying, "There you go, Bruce, you got to be the one to get up and talk." And I'm like, "No, you guys got to talk." So they would talk, I would comment, and we really kind of convinced them. I mean, we really had to... Some of the athletic directors were just like, "Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's a waste of time."
And then had been there like, "We got to buy more uniforms. We got to do this and that." And I'm like, "Well, you don't seem to care when you buy it for football." But there again, I had a great athletic director in Gene Brownell, and Gene Brownell was like, well, he understood, but you still had to convince them that, "Hey, this is what we're going to do."
Craig Mattick: So what got you over the top?
Bruce Kleinsass...: We finally, the third time around, the two dance people and the four of us, and we showed them exactly what we were going to do and how we were going to run it, and how we were going to have the judges train and this and that, and this is how we're going to do the competition. It's going to be, you can have 10 teams, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that was over the top. And they finally said, "Okay, we're going to try it for a year." Well, that was in 2007, and we've been 18 years since. And then we just kept getting bigger and bigger. And then when they started seeing, at the state tournaments and the other things, all the money coming in... You know, everybody comes to that event.
Craig Mattick: It's huge.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Our events were huge.
Craig Mattick: It's huge.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Huge. And they always are. I was just judging in Walsby, and there was 17, and that place was packed. I mean, it might be a little gym, but there was no place to sit. And I'm like, "We're in Walsby, South Dakota, guys, and this is what it's like." People came. And that's where we're at right now. I mean, it's just so big and it's getting bigger. And when you have to have the Denny or the new place out in Rapid, it still fills it up on the one side. So that's what really took us over was that I think they were probably getting tired of us saying let's just try. I don't know. And you just kept trying because it was all for the kids. We wanted it for the kids. Most of us already had 10 or 15 kids in our system as in cheer for basketball, football, and wrestling. But we already had those kids, we didn't need to go get them, but we were going to get more though because maybe they didn't want to be competitive.
And then once they saw the stuff we did, then they're like, "Yep, we're on board." And they've been on board ever since. And then now they're our biggest advocate. I mean, they're our biggest person to say, what can we do next? How can we make this better? How can we have more competitions? So now all the little towns are getting into it. I mean, I'm judging this year now. I went to Wagner and we're going to Elston, Lake Benton. There's just all these little towns that are doing in. And like I said, when we walked into Walsby on Tuesday, we got Rene Cummings and I said, "Wow, there's a lot of people here."
Craig Mattick: You need a bigger gym.
Bruce Kleinsass...: It's just amazing that it's gone that far.
Craig Mattick: What was this sport like its first couple of years? I mean, I'm talking about the routines themselves. Everyone's learning this new sanctioned sport. What was it like the first couple years?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Well, the first couple years was really hard because we didn't have a base or a base of what we were going to use for criteria. We didn't really want to use the NCA and UCA cheerleading program, the national one. We wanted it to fit South Dakota. So it was really hard. Was it more subjective? Was it more detailed? That was the hardest thing because one time you could get a score of, out of 300, you could get 229, and the next time you only get 150 because the judges, they all had different opinions and we all had different things and we did different things, and some of the schools down south who had club experience, where were we giving the experience? So the first couple of years was, I would say, putting together a score sheet. So our score sheet, what are we going to do for safety? Our score sheets have evolved in the last 18 years, and now we have a rubric where here are the criteria.
If you want to make these points, here's what's going to happen. If you're going to do illegal stunts or things like this, this is where you're going to get deducted. So we evolved from just a piece of paper that had maybe five or six things when we started to a whole page worth a hundred points. That was the biggest thing. And I hate to say it, but to this day, it's still a big thing because we want to make sure that we are getting those score sheets so that the kids are getting the best thing out of what they're doing regardless of your level, regardless of where you're at. So that was the hardest thing, and it still is hard because we have people that say, "We want this." We have people that say, "We want this. What's the majority? What's this?" We were just on a meeting call yesterday and we were talking about the same thing that we talked about probably at that time. We got to make those changes and we're trying to make it better. And then to get everybody on board.
And you have to remember then, we were going through people too. So Ruth left, here comes Joe. We had to teach her and all that stuff to tell her what's this, and now Christina Sage, and they all did wonderful jobs for us, and they all advocated for us, and they said, "Hey, we want to do the best for you." So I would say that was the hardest part. And we had people that wanted to judge, we had people that wanted to do events, we had people that wanted do everything. And then we started getting also into conference. So it's hard because it's like, well, they had the ESD conference. Well, the ESD conferences, you win so many things. Well, we didn't have that because we only have to go to two competitions a year. So then we said, well, can we just have one day that's the ESD. So all the ESD schools do it. Whoever wins does it. So then that started evolving for that too. And then that helped us out a lot to say, okay, now we're ESD champions and we're this and that.
And then the other big thing was we always have all-state basketball, all-state football, and I would say in the last, probably, 10 years, we've got that down to a pat. Here are your all-state cheerleaders. So we never had any of that. So there were so many things, and it was so hard to convince people that we wanted the same thing. They said, "Well, cheerleading is not the same as..." "We need numbers." They always want numbers. And I'm like, "Well, we don't have numbers." I mean, we have scores, but we don't have numbers for a kid.
Craig Mattick: What makes up, for someone who doesn't really know what competitive cheer and dance, that whole event is like, what is it today?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Well, these athletes, first of all, have to be in top shape. I mean, they have to be in the weight room, which the kids are, and they have to be dedicated to the sport. I mean, from tumbling all over the floor to jumping, to then going into stunts and pyramids. You're talking about people that have 18, 19 kids, you're putting up four or five different things at a time within two minutes and 30 seconds. You have to be able to do that. And if you want to, that rubric, if you want to score five scores in five, you've got to put a lot of elements in that thing. So our kids are working so hard to get there. I mean, we're throwing healing bodies all over the place. They're twisting, they're coming down, they are tumbling into the stunts to go up to the top, and then they're coming back down the same way. Athletically, they have to be athletes and athletics to do all that.
And so to put a routine together for two minutes and 30 seconds to get the most you can, you're doing a lot of work in that. Between your cheer, your tumble and your pyramid, that's a lot of stuff to put in there. So our kids are working so hard to get there.
Craig Mattick: The coaches are the ones who come up with the specific routines, right? The coaches are doing this. How complicated can that be?
Bruce Kleinsass...: It's very complicated. So my thing was, that was never my forte. My forte was to coach and get them better. And so most everyone has choreographers that come in and do it for you, but in the middle of it, and some of it you have to change, but there are so many things that they do that I have to make sure, or the coach has to make sure, that we do what they wanted us to do. There's just so many things that they show you all the stuff. You have your markings, you have to be in formations, you have to make different formations. Your cheer has to be, your elements in the cheer. Do you have a flag? Do you have pom poms? Do you have a megaphone? Do you have whatever? Do you have the mascot come out? Whatever it is. So you have to incorporate all that stuff. And so that's really involved because we never did that before. We jumped, we pyramid and we did our cheer. Well, now we're putting all those other things in there. Everyone, almost everyone, except a couple, have a choreographer that comes in and does all that for you.
But again, we do that in the summer and a lot of things can happen within the summertime and fall. We might lose a person or someone doesn't want to do it, and we got to change everything, so then that's what we have to do. We have to know how to change stuff. I really had good assistant coaches that were good at that. I was more the coacher, those guys were my helpers. They knew that stuff because they either cheered for me or they had done it before.
Craig Mattick: In class A, Sioux Valley has won the championship every year. Every year, it's been sanctioned since 2007. So what makes that so impressive for Sioux Valley?
Bruce Kleinsass...: All those kids go to the lady, the girl, that's Coach Casey, also has a club and they all go to the club and then they all cheer for her. So they do all that stuff year round. So they're doing it year round, that's what makes it so impressive that they do all that stuff. And so that's why they're so elite because they can do all that stuff throughout the whole year. And I am just saying that because they can do that. They can do clubs and they come back and they do the cheer portion of it during the season. And when you can do those elite stunts and do all that stuff and you can get fours and fives, that's what's going to happen. And that's why they're so good. And then she makes them work. I mean, those kids lift, they tumble, they have to go to tumbling class, they do stuff.
I mean, they do all that stuff throughout the whole summer and the whole year. She did a lot of our clinics and stuff. She and her assistants would come in and they would show us what they did and, "This is what we do and this is how we do it." And so she gave all that information to us and said, "This is what we did." And she said, "You got to remember that I'm a self-taught tumbler." She was from Faulkton. They taught them how to tumble, and now she teaches those kids how to tumble. She was in some of those groups that when Faulkton won the state title two, Casey was with [inaudible 00:25:46] and those guys up there. And then she just became... Again, she just was learning. She loved cheerleading and she wanted to know how to tumble, and so she...
And she is the one that kind brought tumbling into, because we had tumbling and non-tumbling, so you didn't have to tumble, and then she brought that in and said we all should be able to do cartwheels and forward rolls. Then when you can know that this person was a self-starter, that you could do that too. And they practice hard. I mean, they do a lot of stuff.
Craig Mattick: What's the toughest thing that these athletes have to do when it comes to this sport?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Oh, well, one of them is for putting those pyramids together and putting two girls high, putting high and getting them down and then throwing them up. And then the last couple years is inversion, so their heads are to the floor and we're flipping them back up, and then they're coming and laying down. I mean, there's so many things. You're like, "Oh my God, don't drop her." But they're becoming so elite, those kinds of things that now it's just easy now for them to do. Now what's the next level that we have to do? What can we do to that? And now we're twisting them into that. I mean, we have them up in the air with two girls stand... We have people standing up in the air and they have the people on the bottom, and then we're holding these people and we're twisting these people all over and catching them and then throwing them back up and flipping them back on their stomach.
That is the hardest part. And again, it's two minutes and 30 seconds, we got to get all that in there. I mean, you got to get all that in there. So your counts are quite fast. And so you're getting those kids up in that air, up in the air and then having to get back down, and now we had to come running around and do tumbling, and now we got to jump. So that is the hardest part because one of the things is you have to have all those kids to make that element, and when someone's sick or someone's gone, it's not like I can just say, "Okay, put somebody in," Like in basketball, at basketball. I can't do that because that maybe the girl that needs to come in has never been a base or she's been a flyer the whole time. So there's a big [inaudible 00:27:49] between that and going, "Well, I just can't pull somebody in to do that."
Craig Mattick: You coached Aberdeen Central to state title four years in a row 2010 to 2013. What made the Golden Eagles so good those four years to win titles?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Well, one, we didn't tumble because that was back in the no tumble. We didn't have tumble. Two, we had great choreography. A girl came in from New Hampshire and she had so many different elements of everything. But I think it really was the kids. Our kids really, those years... Again, now we go back to what I talked about, sisters. I had all the sisters, you know what I'm saying? In those four years, I had all the sisters from 1997 in those groups, so they knew how we function. And then the one time, or one of my cheerleaders, who was the mother of the one, she was in that when we won all those two, the daughter was, and we won all those titles and we won the ESD. So I think it was that they knew mentally that this is what we were doing, and they just worked really hard.
I mean, we had 18 on one, we had 16, 20, 18 on those four years, and they just all stayed with us. I mean, I was in and people stayed with me. And I had great assistant coaches. So my assistant coaches were either cheered for me, so they knew the caliber of what I wanted. And our big thing is, I would always say, "Just go walk down the hall. Don't you want your picture up there?" I mean, that's what we would say. "Do you want to be like your mom or your sister? Go look down the hallway."
Craig Mattick: How weird was the 2020 COVID year for cheer and dance?
Bruce Kleinsass...: It was sad because we had a really good squad that year. Our year was, we had a really good squad and all the kids got sick. And when we got up to the state and majority of our kids had got sick. It was hard because you would go to leave... And then we had pods, so only four people, four teams would go, you'd come home and you'd leave. And there was nobody in the gym, just us. It was just one of the weirdest things that I've ever encountered in cheer. And then when we got sick and we couldn't go, it was like they worked really hard and it just didn't happen. And I mean, they could have got sick from everything, anything else too, but I'm like, yep, that's what happened. And we didn't go. We were the only team that didn't go that year.
Craig Mattick: You were nominated for National Coach of the Year 2014. What did that mean to you?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Well, it meant a lot because there again, our South Dakota High School Coaches Association was always about... They had a hard time with us bringing cheer into the South Dakota Coaches Association, and I was a big part of that. And they didn't recognize cheer as a sport at the national level until gymnastics and all that stuff, and so then we kind of got in there and then they nominated me and said, "Hey, Bruce, I think that you should be this," And I'm like, "Oh, really? Because that's really important to me." And I'm like, "That's very nice." And it was. It was probably the second biggest honor I ever received in that realm of coaching. So I went and.... You have no idea who was doing it. There was eight of us and you had no idea where you ranked at. It was just really nice. They talked about you, they put your pictures up and everything. We were in Rochester, Minnesota. And so it was probably one of my biggest honors. I mean, one of the biggest ones. I have other ones.
My Spirit of Sixes and all those things are really important to me because those girls made me what I was. They made me become that award and get that award. I just helped coach, and then we got the accolades from that because those girls worked so hard. And especially the ones that won three years or five years or four years in a row. They made that. They did it all. I only coach them. They're the ones that we have the trophies for. That's what we have.
Craig Mattick: Cheer coach of the year. Twice.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Twice. Lucky, probably
Craig Mattick: Lucky.
Bruce Kleinsass...: No, I don't know.
Craig Mattick: I don't think so. Just last year, 2024, you won the Max Hawk Award from the South Dakota Coaches Association. You know that means that you're good at what you do, Bruce, and you've been doing a long time.
Bruce Kleinsass...: In the back of my mind, when I become a member, I always wanted to be that. And I say this in a good and a bad way, I was not one of the good old boys, I was always the pusher. So I was like, "Hey, let's try something different in the coach association. Let's try something this, let's do this, let's do this." And they're always like, "Bruce, Bruce, we can't, not ever." And I'm like, well, "I'll never get that award now. I'll never get that award. It'll never me in my thing, in my realm." And then when the nominations came through and they said my name, and I'm like, "Oh my God." And then we had to go out of the room and come back and they said, "You won." And I'm like, "Are you kidding me?" I mean, I was just totally shocked because it was something I wanted, it was something I wanted on my wall, it was a goal of mine.
And then that award, like you said, I don't know, it's me. That's what I do. I do all the grunt work and that's what I want. That's what I want to do, make everybody better, I want to do that, and that's what the Max Hawk award is all about, to make people look better and to make sure that our organization and anybody's organization that I work with does the best. And when I got the award, his wife and his daughter gave it to me and she squeeze my hand and she goes, "You are so observant of this award because you live what he did." And I said, "That was the best thing ever." And I'm like, "Okay, I guess that I am that person." And it was difficult. It was hard for me because I'm like, I don't know if I... I think I was, but when she said that, I'm like, I am, that's what that award's all about.
Craig Mattick: Right. You're right.
Bruce Kleinsass...: It's about doing all the extra stuff and making the other thing shine.
Craig Mattick: I got two more for you. Where do you see the sport of cheer dance going in the future?
Bruce Kleinsass...: Oh, it's just going to get bigger and better. There's things that are going to be, I don't say changing, but we're going to try to maybe make some little, maybe... We're trying to get more divisions so we don't have all the heavy people at the top and all the people never getting there. We're trying to figure out how to do that in a manner of... I don't want to use the club or I don't want to MTA UCA, but we need to probably have divisions, like divisions of 1, 2, 3, and four and figure that out. But I think that's going to come, but we've got to... Again, the new people and the people are thinking that, we just got to get it and convince, again, convince the AD's, how is it going to affect everything? What's it going to do? We're going to go back to that ground zero, but we are going to flourish and we're going to have more and more kids. I think we had, what, two, three more squads this year than we had last year. I think it's going to become bigger and better.
And then if we could get into, it's called Game Day competition, where it's like a game and it's a day and they throw things out and you have to do a cheer or chant, and I think if we could start that out with the people that don't have as many kids as everybody, and then we could build onto that. And that probably is going to be coming here in the near future. Again, just a lot of work to get that all done, but it's going to have more and more people to do that. So that's where we're going to go.
Craig Mattick: Bruce, you're so passionate with this sport for so many years, for so many decades, and you've mentioned retirement. I can't see you stepping away without being involved. I mean, what is next for you, Bruce?
Bruce Kleinsass...: I've been judging. Now I'm really getting into the judging portion and I'm going to try to help get everybody on the same pages, do some things with that for the cheer thing. I also do the cheer program. So the program that they use for the scoring program, I and Dr. Jennifer Yanke down in Yankton, her and I, but she's not in Yankton anymore, but she designed it, I kind of put it together. And now we use that program. And we kind of had to change it a little bit because dance this year had changed some of the criteria, so we had to change it, and so I'm trying to help with that just to make sure everything goes smooth because when you run an event, you're only doing it once a year, you're not doing it every week like basketball, football, wrestling. So I want to make sure everyone knows how to do that.
I went to Harrisburg to make sure they knew how to do it correctly down there because I happened to be down there for something, and I'm going to Watertown because States in Watertown, so I want to make sure that it's going to be run and we're going to run it correctly. So that's one of my big things for that. And I don't know, cheer just will always be there. I help at the state basketball tournament, unless that's not going to be part of what I do, but I am so involved in that or whatever tournament we're having, I'm involved in that because I like to do the grunt work and make sure everything looks good...
Craig Mattick: You can't do that from Arizona, if you've got a house in Arizona.
Bruce Kleinsass...: Oh, I can though because I can fly back up. I can. I can come back. But yeah, I think that once I decide that if I want to live there year round, then I might do that. But there's a couple more years left here. I'm getting my knee replaced here at the end of the month, and hopefully that'll make things a little bit better and get me going. But there's so many things. And I am involved in my church, I'm involved in this, I'm involved in that, and I just want to make sure everything is good for everything and people want to see things and I see things and I go, "Why are you doing that that way?" And I don't know, just be careful... I always say be careful what you wish for because I always say at the state tournament, I'd watch the state term and go, "I could do what those people do. I could do that."
And then when you get to do it, you're like, "Oh my God, there's a lot more to it than just watching it on TV." And I do enjoy all that, and I do enjoy helping. And now that Christina, the new Joe, but this is her second year and she's like, she just appreciates everything that we all do to help her to make sure she knows all the ropes. And it's just nice that we can do that. Jean Brownell taught me everything about what I needed to know and what we needed to do, and it's all about the kids, and we want to make sure it's a big event for kids. So I don't think I'm going to leave. Well, I've already got judging, and I only thought I'd do one or two, well, I've been judging every week just because if something happens, I can go now because I don't have cheerleading, and I can go do that.
Craig Mattick: In Play with Craig Mattick is made possible by Horton in Britton, where smiling at work happens all the time. Apply now at Hortonww.com. If you like what you're hearing, please give us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast. It helps us gain new listeners. This has been In Play with me, Craig Mattick. This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
