Hall of Fame Football Coach Credits Indiana Farm Roots
2023 Harvest of Thanks is a special edition of both AgDay and U.S. Farm Report. The show helps celebrate and honor traditions, while also sharing stories of gratitude. 2023 Harvest of Thanks is sponsored by Case IH and BASF.
“Come on, girls!”
The call comes muffled beneath a yellow slicker as rain falls on a herd of cows being gathered by Toto, Ind., farmer Russ Radtke. Every muddy step is matched by fellow herdsman, Bob Troike, as they push the group into a lot for doctoring and a preg check ahead of being turned out on the winter rye. Most of their farming careers have centered around working as a team.
“Our dads got to know each other in the 70’s and started doing things together,” Radtke says.
“Russ’ dad wore out his combine picking our corn, while we hauled all of his corn to the elevator,” Troike remembers. “He would run our hay mower and tractors to mow our hay so he could have the hay mower and the rakes for their hay.”
Today, the two are still working together today, raising calves, feeding them out and selling freezer beef.
“When our dads were working together, we leased pasture ground and were up to 120 cows at one time,” Troike says.
Today the herd is smaller, but they still find reward in the work.
With acreage and herd numbers too small to make this his full-time future, decades ago, Radtke turned to his second love, sports.
For Love of the Game
Topping a short rise along the highway in north-central Indiana, a glow brightens the horizon above rows of unharvested corn. The Knox Redskins bus sits in the Caston High School parking lot as fans fill the bleachers for a Friday night fight. A drizzle settles in as Coach Radtke exits the locker room with his team focused on the game ahead.
“We got an itch for it, and we enjoy it,” says Radtke about coaching football.
Rain or shine, this path wasn’t his original plan.
“Actually, I was going to Brigham Young University on a graduate assistantship to be a basketball coach and, all of a sudden, things changed,” Radtke explains. “I was loaded, we packed stuff in a U-Haul, I sold my house, my wife quit her job and then within 48 hours, I became a football coach.”
Now, 47 years later, Coach Radtke is the second-winningest high school football coach in Indiana history, topping 400 career wins this night with a 50-0 rain-soaked stomping.
“When I talked to Russ, last week before his game, he told me there are four things in my life,” says Chuck Freeby, sports director at local station WHME-TV 46. “There's football, there's farming, there's basketball officiating and there's family. That pretty much covers Russ Radke.”
Radtke’s time in agriculture and on the family dairy helped to mold his discipline and work ethic.
“I get up at five o'clock in the morning, I’m at the school for work during the day, we have football practice and then I'm watching video and film,” Radtke says. “I might not even head for home until 10:30 at night.”
“He's very analytical in the way he looks at things on a football field,” adds Freeby, explaining Radtke’s effective use of the option offense. “He's always trying to look for an advantage.”
That focus has helped guide his team, with the support of two of his sons as assistant coaches, to a near-perfect season in 2023. They ended 13-1 and just one game shy of the state finals.
“I don't golf, I don't fish, I don't have time for it,” Radtke smiles. “Other people can do it. Have fun. We have fun with what we're doing right now.”
Passion for History
The only other fun he has is amid his collection of restored antique and classic tractors. Most are Minneapolis-Moline in honor of the iron he grew up using on the family farm. There’s also a unique Oliver with tracks he dug out of a barn and restored. It was formerly used on the Indiana mint farm his wife was raised on.
“She doesn't want anything to do with them,” Radtke says in regard to his machinery collection. “She might not even know how many I have.”
From tractors to bulldozers, even road graders, his collection of iron, like his legacy on the grid-iron continues to grow.
From field to field, and yard by yard, his Hall of Fame career starts and ends at the farm.
“It just gets in your blood, and I would give up coaching before I give up farming,” he says.
Watch More Harvest of Thanks Stories:
Harvesting the Good Life: Pennsylvania Farmer Continues to Run Silage Chopper at 96 Years Old
