The football field under construction at Oconto Falls High School will bear the name of former coach and teacher Dan Rider, the Oconto Falls School Board decided April 13.
Athletic Director Jerry Moynihan suggested the field be named after Rider, whose name will be placed on the scoreboard, scheduled for installation May 15.
“We need to order this scoreboard soon in order to do that. I thought this would be one way to recognize the donation we had for Dan Rider,” Moynihan said.
Jeff and Cecelia Jensen, of Evergreen, Colorado, donated $50,000 to the stadium project to recognize Rider, who coached football and taught mathematics at Oconto Falls High School from 1974-1979. Cecelia is a sister to Jerry and a 1980 graduate of Oconto Falls High School. Melissa Moynihan, another sister, contributed $1,000 to the stadium project.
Additional donors are ST Paper, $100,000, and Ginny Just, $10,000.
The Oconto Falls Lions Club also has committed $10,000 to the project, Superintendent Dave Polashek announced.
“I’m thinking we can consider naming a gate for them or something,” he said.
Polashek said the contributions will help to enhance the project by upgrading building designs to be more attractive to the public.
Ginny Just recently presented her donation in honor of her husband, the late Gary L. Just, who was a football coach, math teacher and principal at OFHS in the 1960s and 1970s.
“I just thought that with that new stadium it would be nice to have his name some place,” Just said.
She said football played a big role in the life of her husband, who lettered in football, basketball and track at Green Bay West High School. After graduating in 1959, he attended Lawrence University, in Appleton, where he lettered in football and basketball.
After graduating from Lawrence, he worked at American Can Company in the Fox Valley and played quarterback for the Manitowoc Chiefs semi-pro football team. In 1965, while playing semi-pro football, Just accepted a math teaching position and became assistant football coach in the Oconto Falls School District. Two years later, as head football coach, he led the team to a conference championship.
For the next two years, he taught math and coached football and track. In 1969, he was hired as assistant principal at OFHS, then principal in 1970. He ended his coaching career in 1974 and retired from education in 1978.
He died in 2002 at the age of 61.
Just said her husband’s love of sports was passed on to their two sons, who played football, basketball and track in high school. Athletics was a center point for the family.
“I’ve just been hoping they’d get a new field and track,” she said.
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