Scott Slotten eager to hit the ground running as new Jefferson High School football coach

Slotten hails from Madison and is an alum of Madison La Follette High School. He was an offensive lineman at the University of South Dakota before graduating in 2011.

Slotten’s first varsity football head coaching experience came guiding Belle Fourche High School in South Dakota for eight seasons, helping instill an improved culture within the Broncos’ program while posting a 36-37 record which included a pair of Class 11A playoff appearances.

Now, Slotten is back in the Badger State and he’s eager for the challenge of leading a new program while looking to maintain — and push forward — the standard of excellence the Eagles became known for under Gee.

“It’s super exciting coming to a program that’s been so successful,” Slotten said. “Jefferson’s been in the playoffs for the last 15 years and they’ve been successful in their conference.

“I’m excited for a new challenge and to give the kids a new look. We’re not trying to change everything. We’ll continue to work toward more conference titles, we’ll aim to go far in the playoffs and then the ultimate goal is a state title.

“Having met kids eager to work with a new coach and a new offense, there’s been a sense of excitement around here all summer.”

The Wing-T offense that helped Gee become the winningest coach in program history and that the Eagles used so brilliantly en route to making Level 3 a season ago will be retired.

What’s not going away anytime soon is the team’s intentions to continue dominating the trenches and imposing their will on the ground. Slotten’s offense will make Jefferson more multi-dimensional and the new coach has seen some quality pass catchers already during the summer program.

“Jefferson has hard-nosed kids,” Slotten said. “We want to show our physicality. Coming from the double wing offense where they ran it a lot, we still want to run it up front and control the line of scrimmage but we’ll be a little more spread out. The passing game will come into effect.

“We’ve seen some talented receivers over the summer and today. When folks come and watch our games this year, they will still see a similar hard-nosed football like in the past years but we’ll be a little fancier on the offensive side of the ball. Hopefully kids can run with that and carry it on.”

Big-picture goals for Slotten, who will be a technical education teacher at the middle school, include continuing to energize the youth and middle school teams at Jefferson.

“We definitely want to continue to grow the program numbers,” Slotten said. “After graduating 22 seniors, you want to keep numbers high. We had 52 guys at practice today. We’ve got a big eighth grade class and a fairly big seventh grade class.

“It will be important to keep the fun in football and keep the excitement in the town for football. Starting at the youth level, we want to show how fun the game can be. It’s not all about winning but at the same time winning is fun, too.

“Putting a good team on the varsity field gets the young kids excited. Winning conference titles year in and year out breeds success. Additionally, football kind of kicks off the year. If you have a successful football season it turns into a very successful athletic program, which is something they’ve seen here in Jefferson with baseball and something we’re hoping to do in basketball.”

Jefferson opens the 2022 season at Lakeside Lutheran on Friday, Aug. 19 at 7 p.m.