Inspired By Red Lake Football Story, Olson Family Donates to Fund New Scoreboard

Last year, Star Tribune sports reporter Chip Scoggins wrote an article about the Red Lake football team, about how the Warriors hadn’t won a game since 1999 and the sacrifices of both the players and its coaches to keep the team afloat.

One Minneapolis family, the Olsons, were so touched by the article that they made a large donation to Red Lake football that helped fund a brand-new scoreboard. That scoreboard now sits in the east end zone, but it does a whole lot more than keep score.

It gives the team a sense of pride, and it’s something for the players to enjoy and something that’s a small step toward building a bigger football program. The program currently fields less than 20 varsity players, but what they lack in numbers, they make up for in heart, and they want to do well not just for themselves, but for their teammates and family.

The Olson family visited Red Lake High School and visited with the football team recently on the day of their homecoming game, where they got to see the new scoreboard firsthand. It’s a scoreboard that has yet to favor the Warriors, but it doesn’t much matter to the boys wearing the Red Lake jerseys. That’s because they measure wins not by the score on the board, but by the number of lives the team impacts. And in that, Red Lake Football is undefeated.