The Gazette’s 2025 High School Football Coach of the Year: Duane Schulte of Cedar Rapids Xavier

CEDAR RAPIDS — It was a clean slate.

You start a high school football program from scratch, it’s all yours. Your ideas, your ideals, everything.

But Duane Schulte didn’t necessarily feel that way. Cedar Rapids Xavier opened in 1998, the combining of westside Catholic school Cedar Rapids LaSalle and its eastside rival Cedar Rapids Regis.

When it came to football, this was the melding of two programs with a history of winning. Tom Good won a state championship at Regis, Tom Kopatich won one at LaSalle.

“If you go back to when we started, I’d like to give credit to the old LaSalle and Regis teams for this,” Schulte said. “Because we started on a foundation of what LaSalle and Regis had kind of built under Coach Kopatich and Coach Good. Then we just tried to carry some of those principles over to Xavier in 1998 and those early years.

“We just tried to grind away. Just work hard and try to instill a hard work ethic and core values of being a good teammate, caring about your teammates as much as yourself. Just try and coach these guys hard in practice for the last 28 years. The kids and their families have bought in for the most part.”

And state championships have followed. Xavier has five of them, the latest this season when it went 13-0 to win the Class 4A title. For that, Schulte (who has led all five Saints title teams) is The Gazette’s 2025 Coach of the Year.

“The senior leadership on this team was outstanding, and the younger guys bought in,” said Schulte.

He’s quick to laud his coaching staff as well. Those guys include Xavier grads Reggie Schulte (the coach’s oldest son), Nick Garland, Casey O’Connell, Parker Tow, Joey Drahozal and Sam Meyers.

Then there are the “old guys,” as he calls them: Jim O’Connell, Nick Perkins, Brad Stovie and Dave Schreck. Schulte and O’Connell, the Saints’ defensive coordinator, have been together for years, working together at LaSalle before moving on to Xavier.

Xavier’s prior state championships came in 2006, 2017, 2018 and 2002. Schulte has 236 wins at Xavier, a 261-91 overall record at LaSalle and Xavier.

“We’ve had our core principles, but we have adjusted over the years, too, to install things that work for the athletes that we have (that season),” he said. “So there is kind of a culture part of it and kind of a schematic part, too. I’d like to think that we’ve adjusted over the years to what football has kind of become without abandoning our core principles and the way we want to play.”

Sound familiar? Schulte has become friendly with University of Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz, with Iowa successfully recruiting multiple Saints in recent years, including defensive lineman Ethan Hurkett and linebacker Jaxon Rexroth, who are on this Hawkeyes team.

Two of Schulte’s sons, Bryce and Quinn, played in the Iowa program.

“I’ve even told Coach Ferentz before that I think our programs are similar,” Schulte said. “Especially starting off in the MVC (Mississippi Valley Conference), we were the little guys. We weren’t supposed to be able to compete, and we got to a point where we could compete every year. We didn’t win it every year, obviously, but we could at least try to compete.

“The same way with Iowa in the Big Ten with Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan, supposedly all those bigger and better schools. So there is similarity in that regard that we’ve talked about. It’s also kind of weird in a way, because I’ve looked back over the years, some of the years where they’ve had fantastic, tremendous years, we’ve kind of had good years, too.”

Schulte is like Ferentz in that he and his staff always have “coached hard.” He doesn’t believe today’s athletes are softer, so to say.

They aren’t much different from when he first started coaching in the 90s or when he played in the late 1970s.

“Deep down, at least from our experience, they want to be coached and they want to be disciplined and they want to be held accountable,” he said. “Maybe the way you do that has changed over the years. But deep down, they still want you to coach them, and we still try to coach them hard. It’s just a little different method in a way.”

Schulte coached all three of his sons at Xavier and obviously now has one on staff with him. Like Duane, Reggie Schulte is a teacher at the school.

Duane was a practicing lawyer at one point before deciding to go the teaching-coaching route. His wife, Sherry, is a lawyer, and Bryce Schulte also works for a firm in town.

Quinn Schulte is in dental school at Iowa. The Schulte’s daughter, Hope, teaches at Iowa City Regina.

“The fact he has been able to win and contend for state titles for so long is due to his consistency and adaptability,” Reggie Schulte said of his dad. “There is a consistent standard that he holds players to that gets them to be tough and willing to work hard for the betterment of the team and their teammates.

“And in doing that, the players become the best versions of themselves. But, he's also been adaptable to the different types of teams that have gone through Xavier and done what he thinks is best for that particular group to be successful.”

“The secret sauce for him and Coach O'Connell is caring about the players in a genuine way. It may sound cliche but that care gets players willing to run through a brick wall for them.“

It wouldn’t be a surprise if Reggie Schulte takes over head coaching duties from his dad some day, but who knows when that day would be. Duane Schulte said he isn’t in any hurry to stop doing what he’s doing.

Next season’s Xavier team will be favored, perhaps heavily favored, to win it all again.

“This year was a blast. Going to practice was fun,” Schulte said. “There was no drama from these guys. The coaches I get to be around after school every day are phenomenal. There is just a positive energy. There was no, as Coach Stovie would say, no vampires draining blood from us. It was just fun to be there.

“As long as it’s fun, I’ll keep doing it.”

Comments: jeff.johnson@thegazette.com