NICOLLET - Jordan Rudenick doesn't remember his first varsity start.
"Man, that was a long time ago," he says.
It's probably a good thing he doesn't remember. Rudenick was thrown into the fire as a freshman to lead a Nicollet team that had just come off an 0-9 season.
"It was definitely a shock," Rudenick said. "There was no one else to fill that position. I just kind of got put there. I don't think a whole lot was expected out of me."
That first year, the Raiders didn't fair much better going winless again.
"It matured me as a player you learn to deal," Rudenick said. "Those two years we didn't do so well record-wise. We got thumped every game that we played but it was definitely a learning curve for me because it just showed me what I had to do to get better and get yourself and your teammates out of that position in the upcoming years."
Season by season, his stats improved and that also went hand-in-hand with the improvement of the Raiders. They were 0-8 in 2006, but improved to 2-7 in 2007 and last year, Nicollet was 4-6 and advanced to the Section 2, 9-man championship.
But it was this year that the Raiders finally turned the corner. Led by Rudenick's 3,172 yards and 33 touchdowns, he completed 231 passes and had a total of 3,820 all-purpose yards (which is first all-time in state history according to the Minnesota Football Coaches Association website). He led the Raiders to two comeback wins in the state tournament and was the team captain for three years.
Just three years after going 0-8, Nicollet made a complete turnaround and finished this season 10-3 and was the 9-man state runner-up. These are just a few reasons why Rudenick is The Journal's 2009 Offensive Player of the Year.
"No one had picked us to be where we were and where we ended up to be," he said.
The season started out difficult for the Raiders. Nicollet coach Tom Murphy looked at what he had coming back and decided in the offseason a change was needed so they went to a new no-huddle offense.
"We kind of didn't know what to expect," Rudenick said. "Our defense was the same but offensively everything was brand new so we didn't know what it was going to be. After that first game there were things to clear up, obviously, but we knew there was potential and things to look forward to once we got better at it."
It took a lot of work at first but the change paid dividends in the end.
"We had to have a lot of guys be there at practice," he said. "We started out in the summer in training camp. We went to the MSU passing league scrimmage. Then we went to the UMD football team camp.
"We had three or four practices before we even went up to Duluth to get the basics of the offense. It took a lot of time out of everybody's schedule to try and learn that new offense but we adapted to it well and I thought we had the athletes to run it too."
But for three years Rudenick had been running the same offense, now his senior year they were switching it up.
"You just believe in what coach says," he said. " Me and Murph, I just trust whatever that guy says and I am going to go with whatever that guy says. He knows what he is talking about. He just felt that we had the athletes to run this offense and I agreed with him. We had the guys to do it and it was just a really good fit for us."
And he says the offense was a big key to the teams' success.
"Me and Murph talked about it," Rudenick said. "He asked me if we would have ran our old offense if I thought we would have gotten this far. I said, 'maybe but not really because we had so many mismatches that we found when we started playing teams.' We could go deep, we could kind of power teams and we just had mismatches every where. I think this offense helped us get as far as we got this year."
And getting to the Metrodome was a dream Rudenick had since he was a youngster and he went there to watch his older brother play on Nicollet's 2002 runner-up team.
"It just felt great playing in that atmosphere, going to the dome," he said. "There has been a couple of other teams that got to play for a state championship from Nicollet and just to know that you had a chance to do that.
"I dreamed about that when my brother went and played in the Metrodome in 02. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I was like, 'well when I get up there and start playing varsity ball, I hope that we are going to have that chance to be there too.' It was a dream come true really."
Even though Nicollet lost that game, Rudenick wouldn't change the feeling of playing in the state championship for anything.
"Just going to play were the big guys play like Adrian Peterson and Jared Allen, it was awesome," Rudenick said. "You will have those memories forever. It was something you wanted to be apart of and I am just glad I had the guys that I had and they were able to do it with me."
