Helping kids be the best version of themselves

Finding a place that would support his vision of how he could help students and athletes become the best they could be was a priority for Jeremiah Delzer. He definitely believes that place is Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn.

Delzer is the new head football coach at H-M-S and will serve as head girls' track coach. He is also an elementary and high school special education teacher

A native of Scottsbluff, Neb., Delzer played high school football in a program that was state runner-up his senior year.

He continued his athletic career at Northwestern College in Orange City. He was a special teams player his freshman year but was injured during a playoff game. After rehabbing through the pandemic in 2020, Delzer tore his ACL in the fourth practice the next season.

"I was not destined to play college football, I don't think, except for a year," he said. "So I switched to a student coach role in my remaining time there."

Delzer helped with the Red Raiders' defense, specifically outside linebackers, and discovered he liked coaching.

"Honestly, that was probably the best thing for me. I really loved that experience and that's how I started getting into coaching," he said.

After relocating to the Des Moines with his future wife, he joined the staff at West Marshall where he coached tight ends and helped with the outside linebackers. He moved on to Bondurant-Farrar, where he was linebackers coach, tight ends assistant coach and helped with the run game.

The head coaching vacancy at H-M-S presented an opportunity that was appealing.

"We have some family coming to northwest Iowa and we knew the people here, and what they're about and how genuine they are, and we said, 'Hey, we want to start getting back to this area,' so I was really interested."

Connections with people who had ties to H-M-S as well as others also peaked his interest.

"Knowing the people were going to support me in the way that I thought was best to help kids be the best version of themselves, that was a big draw," Delzer said. "It worked out really well and I have felt that way since I've been here."

The transition to his new role has been a good one.

"I think we've had a lot of good work and a lot of good buy-in from the kids, being in a really good place up to this point," he said. "I've talked to coaches so many times and some of them are like, 'I don't think we could be in a better place than where we are right now from the football side of it.' "