LONE TREE

The first time Chad Shield met the legend, it was in the middle of a cornfield.

There was no track. No hurdles. No long jump landing pit.

But there was a tornado.

Shield, who is now the girls head track coach and a football assistant at Lone Tree High School, will never forget the day he met Iowa Track Hall of Fame coach Mike Kautz of Lone Tree. Chad was just a teenager back then, working in the fields of Downey near West Branch.

“I remember one summer, I was out there detasseling on his crew,” Shield said. “All of a sudden we look out and the weather changed. It was getting dark. It was getting cool. It was getting windy. All of a sudden, a funnel cloud appeared.”

Chad had just one thought: run.

“I’m a 15-year-old kid, ‘Oh, my goodness, let’s get out of here.’ “

And that’s when Kautz helped the kid out. No worries. No wicked witches on broomsticks flying around. We’re OK.

“He put his arm around me and telling me the science behind funnel clouds,” Shield said. “Don’t worry, it’s already passed.”

And those were the words of Mike Kautz the Lone Tree science teacher.

Shield never met him again because their paths never crossed again.

But what a meeting that would be.

Shield now coaches the team that Kautz had for 44 years at Lone Tree. When Shield walks to the track or the football field behind the school, there is a statue of a lion and a plaque underneath the Lone Tree Lion honoring Kautz.

Following the legend is not a step that Shield takes lightly. His wife was a student in Kautz’s science class at Lone Tree. His daughter, Rylee, is a freshman on the team this year.

The Lions will host a meet honoring their former coach, the Mike Kautz Invitational, on April 11.

“He was an outstanding coach,” Chad Shield said. “Several top 10 and top 5 [state] finishes, second-place finish at state, 108 state qualifiers.”

Kautz, who died in 2016 at the age of 80, was inducted into the Iowa Association of Track Coaches Hall of Fame a few months after his death. In addition to coaching track at Lone Tree, he also coached basketball, softball and girls basketball. He was an official in basketball, softball, baseball and volleyball.

And when he began coaching track at Lone Tree in 1961, the track was grass. The Lions didn’t get a surfaced track until 40 years later, in 2001.

“I’m sure he’d be front and center at every meet,” Shield said.

Fast forward from those cornfields in Downey to the track stadium in Lone Tree, and Shield is pumped to coach a team that includes 2021 Southeast Iowa Super Conference high jump champion Kasey Chown and a strong group of freshmen and sophomores. One of them, sophomore Avery Lisk, finished seventh in the long jump in last year’s conference meet.

Chown reached 4 feet 8 inches in the high jump during the Lions’ season-opening meet March 17 at Central College in Pella, a height that was 2 inches higher than her conference-winning jump a year ago. Her runner-up finish in Pella was among four second-place finishes posted by the Lions.

“I am really excited,” Shield said. “I think the first couple of outdoor meets, we’ll have a chance to compete with some schools our size up at Belle Plaine and then down at WACO. I think we can come away and show them how good they really are and how good they can be.”

Shield is getting plenty of help to help boost the Lions. Ashley Zaruba, who holds a couple of Lone Tree records and ran at the University of Iowa, is assisting with distance runners and hurdlers. Keely Hinkel is also working with the hurdle events. Jovonte Squiers, an assistant boys basketball coach and former Lone Tree runner, is working with sprinters and jumpers.

“They’ve been to state, they’ve been to Drake Relays,” Shield said of his assistants. “They know what it’s like. I think, having that, them give back their time to this program that they went through, is just awesome. I think the girls are really buying in in that regard, listening to what they have to say.”

It’s not just the physical skills. It’s the mentality of it all.

“He’s really pushing us, making sure we can be the best that we can,” Chown said. “He reads us articles all the time about mental toughness. That really helps.”

And once in a while, he’ll tell the girls the story about the twister near the cornfield and the day he worked for a legend.

A Lone Tree legend.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.