September 1970. The Bloomington Ice Garden opened with one rink before its later expansion to three, the Valley West Shopping Center was a month away from opening on the corner of France Ave. S. and Old Shakopee Rd. and just up France Ave. was the opening of the city's third high school, Jefferson.
This season marked the 50th year of the West Bloomington school's football program. The first head coach was Bruno Waldner. Like many teachers and coaches, he came from Kennedy. Among his assistants were Stan Skjei and Dick Coombs.
School colors, still to this day are Columbia blue and silver and the nickname for all athletic teams would be the Jaguars.
In 1970, the Lake Conference was divided into two divisions, the Red and the Blue. The Jaguars were in the Blue Division with their city rival the Lincoln Bears. Lincoln shut down in 1982. Another school that would later be defunct would be Robbinsdale, nicknamed the Robins. Two new high schools would also be in the Blue Division, Hopkins Lindbergh (now Hopkins High School) and Robbinsdale Armstrong. St. Louis Park and Mound rounded out the Lake Blue.
Who would be the first quarterback in Jaguar history? It would be John Anderson. Jerry Yoneji and Bruce Ahlers would comprise the backfield. At wide receiver would be Dan Hoffman, who would later become one of the first top players on the boys basketball team.
As for the Jefferson tri-captains, they were Tom Ruud, Don Finley and Bill Fiola.
The season opened for Jefferson September 11 as they faced their crosstown rival the Kennedy Eagles at Bloomington Stadium. Back in 1970, all three high school teams and even Normandale Community College played their home games at the corner of 88th St. & Queen Ave. S. In some instances, there would be doubleheaders, with the first game starting at 3 PM.
No expansion blues for the Jaguars as they got two touchdowns from Ruud and beat the Eagles 14-6. The following week, many people across the state tuned into WTCN-TV (now KARE 11) to see Jefferson face Minnesota and they went to 2-0 with a 9-0 win over the Skippers. A 47 yard pass from Ahlers on a fake punt to Ruud turned out to be the clincher.
"I was really surprised we came as far as we did since the opening of practice. We had an entirely new system to team these kids and I have to credit offensive coach Stan Skjei and defensive coach Dick Coombs for the excellent jobs they did," Waldner to the Bloomington Sun for the September 19 edition.
Jefferson continue to dominate the opposition in their maiden voyage season. They would beat Lindbergh 33-8, Mound 27-12 and improve their record to 5-0 with a 12-7 win over Alexander Ramsey from Roseville.
But the Jaguars wouldn't go undefeated since they lost their first game to Armstrong 15-8 and thyeir second straight St. Louis Park 28-8. They would get back on the winning track with a win over Lincoln and wrapped up the season on November 2 with a Friday matinee at Bloomington Stadium against the Robbinsdale Robins and lost 26-14 to conclude their first season with a record of 6-3. There was no playoff system or state tournament until 1972 so that was the end of the season.
The first football season would set the stage for the program's future. In 1974, they advanced to their first state tournament and made it to the Class AA finals before falling to the Rochester John Marshall Rockets. Today, the Jaguars are led by one of Waldner's former players Tim Carlson and though they had a losing record in 2019, his legacy lives on as the man who built the football program when the school opened in 1970.
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