Photo illustration by Travis Rosenau Springfield’s Gavin Vanderwerf was named the 2024 All-Journal Offensive Football Player of the Year on Wednesday.

SPRINGFIELD — For several years, the passing attack has been the focus of the Springfield Tigers offense. With the presence of quarterbacks like Decker Scheffler, Brendon Buerkle and Jakob Nachreiner, the Tigers have run a pass-heavy offense for years.

While Springfield didn’t entirely move away from the passing attack this year, averaging 193 yards through the air, there was a definite shift in the success that the Tigers found running the ball this year, averaging 175.6 yards per contest on the ground.

This was due in large part to the play of Gavin Vanderwerf, who took over the lead back role this season for the state runners-up. Vanderwerf broke onto the scene with 1,562 yards on 222 attempts, 7 yards per carry and 120.2 per game, and added 11 touchdowns on top of that. For his play and leadership this season, Vanderwerf has been selected as All-Journal Offensive Football Player of the Year, as voted on by The Journal’s sports staff.

“It’s an honor to get nominated for all these things,” Vanderwerf said. “At the beginning of the season, to be honest, I would have never thought that I would have come close to getting any of these awards, because there’s very good athletes around us all over the place. It’s an honor to be able to say I got nominated for all these awards.”

Vanderwerf said the increased role of the run game in Springfield’s offense helped set up a more successful offense in general this year.

“When we’re able to run the ball effectively, it makes our offense get into rhythm a lot better,” he said. “Once we get our run game established and those linebackers have to bite on the run game, it opens up our pass game a lot more, especially on fake runs. They have to bite and they have to commit to the run because we’re getting yards every carry because of our linemen and our lead blockers. It just opens up the pass game, and when we can pass effectively we’re very hard to stop.”

Vanderwerf has been a large part of Springfield’s success it has been building over the past several seasons. The Tigers reached their third consecutive Class A State Championship game this year and made history as they played Minneota for all three years, the first time two teams have played each other in three Prep Bowls in a row. Vanderwerf said the classes before him helped set an example of what it took for a group to make a deep state tournament run.

“These past coupe of years, we’ve had some great leaders on the team and some phenomenal athletes,” Vanderwerf said. “Just to be able to see how they lead and what circumstances it takes to be a leader, you can learn from great examples like the captains we’ve had over the past couple of years. It makes it easier going though the season, knowing what the good and bad things to do as a leader. Going back to the prep bowl, it helped all of us captains and leaders on the team to motivate our team and be good leaders throughout the year.”

On their way to the state title game, the Tigers ran into some tough opponents in Goodhue and Mahnomen/Waubun in the state tournament. Springfield saw themselves down at halftime in both games, but the leadership of Vanderwerf, along with the other Springfield seniors, led them back to win both games.

“As a senior, you don’t want your last game to be a game where we know we can play better and for us to not play our game and that to be the reason we didn’t make the Prep Bowl again.” Vanderwerf said. “I remember asking my teammates in the locker room what they were seeing, what they thought worked, what didn’t work, where all the pressure was coming from. All those things along those lines. Once we actually start communicating, it makes the game a whole lot easier. Basically, communication is key.”

Not only was Vanderwerf indispensable for Springfield’s offense this year, but he was also perhaps its top defensive player as well, and The Journal’s sports staff had a difficult time deciding whether he should be selected for offensive or defensive honors this year. Vanderwerf led the Tigers with 122 total tackles and 16 tackles for loss, also adding three sacks and three interceptions from his linebacker position. Vanderwerf was selected as the KNUJ Defensive Player of the Year and was the South District, West Subdistrict, South Division Linebacker of the Year. As such, Vanderwerf hardly left the field for Springfield and still played at a high level.

“Those first couple of games were definitely tough,” Vanderwerf said. “I was not quite used to that yet, being last year I was just playing defense behind some great players. I knew this year I was going to be playing both ways, so conditioning is very, very crucial when playing both ways and being one of the main players on both sides of the ball. You have to stay positive. It’s endurance, pretty much. And you have to be able to enjoy the game and want to play. If you don’t want to play on one side of the ball, it makes it hard to play as hard as you can on both sides.”

Between the two, Vanderwerf slightly favors playing defense, but enjoys getting the big runs as well.

“Just being able to fill the hole or tackle somebody when the time comes, it feels good,” he said. “But obviously it feels good when you have a 50- to 70-yard touchdown run on offense. But I think I have to lean defense a little bit more.”

With three prep bowl appearances under their belt, Vanderwerf and the rest of the Springfield seniors have raised the bar for Tigers football, leaving a legacy for the future classes to aspire to.

“The seniors the past couple of years have always looked at us as another group of boys that want to go to the prep bowl,” Vanderwerf said. “They always tell us to keep the legacy going and that just really gives us drive over the offseason to want to get back to that place. Every senior wants to get that far, but the seniors in the past years and all the kids we looked up to, we don’t want to leave their legacy behind.”

Vanderwerf is still considering his options when it comes to college and is unsure if he wants to continue to play at the next level. If he does choose to, he has gotten several offers from programs like Gustavus Adolphus College, University of Minnesota — Morris and The College of St. Scholastica. If he does decide to continue playing, the program he chooses can be assured that they are getting a player with plenty of talent and leadership.