Adrian's Strand now a member of MN Football Coaches Hall of Fame

Randy Strand, who was the head high school football coach in Adrian for 33 seasons, has been inducted into the Minnesota Football Coaches Hall of Fame. The induction took place this past Saturday in Minneapolis.

Strand, a graduate of Tracy High School, began his teaching and coaching career at Adrian Public Schools in the fall of 1978. He taught elementary school there for 38 years, with the first 33 years as a sixth-grade instructor and the final five years as a fifth-grade teacher.

After beginning his coaching career at the junior high level, Strand coached football and boys basketball at the JV level for a couple of seasons, then was an assistant for both sports at the varsity level. He became head football coach of the Dragons in 1985 and went on to amass 238 wins over three-plus decades against just 112 losses. His teams won 10 conference championships and six sectional titles. Four of those teams — the 1997, 1998, 2007 and 2009 squads — reached the Minnesota State Class A Championship games.

Strand was selected as Conference Coach of the Year nine times and Section 3A Coach of the Year six times. And football wasn't the only sport where he found success — he was the head girls basketball coach from 1986 through 2019 and won 488 games over 32 seasons and eight conference titles.