Mahoney coaching connection puts Fairmont, Cardinals’ football on Minnesota map
By Charlie Sorrells, Web Prep Sports
FAIRMONT – Minnesotans traditionally migrate in groves to two things they love dearly – cabin-by-the-lake vacations in the northern part of the state during the summer and watching high school football games under the lights on Friday nights in all 87 counties during the fall.
When Thomas Mahoney departed Lake City for Fairmont during the late spring of 1956, little did anyone know the bespectacled 29-year-old head football coach would create a perennial powerhouse that would put the southern Minnesota town – population 9,000 at the time – on the map two decades before the completion of the Interstate-90 highway project in 1978.
After compiling a five-season record of 33 wins, 8 losses and 2 ties at Lake City – including a perfect 9-0 mark in the fall of 1955, Thomas Mahoney guided the Cardinal gridders to a 104-34-6 mark during the ensuing 16 seasons when the Fairmont football field was located behind where the Grace Lutheran Church currently sits on West Grant Street.
Unfortunately, a fire at the high school building during the fall of 1969 forced Fairmont’s school district to utilize a necessary split-shift academic format until the construction of the new junior high/high school was completed in late 1972. Thomas Mahoney and his football team demonstrated their work ethic in a time of dire need by playing an integral role in blazing a path to their new home on Johnson Street.
Mahoney’s football players literally helped lay the foundation for today’s football venue by moving sod to the current location during the summer of 1972 after grass seed had been sewn earlier in the spring.
“Coach Mahoney had a group of us (football players) drive over to Martin Park and pick up sod that was cut and stacked on a pallet and put it in place – where needed – on the new field,” said 1974 Fairmont High School graduate Gary Coombes, who played tight end for the Cardinals in 1972 and ’73. “It took us a couple of days to get the job done on what’s now known as Mahoney Field.
“Ironically, we still held two-a-day summer practices at the middle school later that fall because there was a hay field where the high school practice field was supposed to be located and we had to wait until the farmers baled it before we could use it.”
“Inspiration from perspiration helped our players develop a strong team bond created by the satisfaction of genuinely building the new field together,” Thomas Mahoney said in reflection during a newspaper interview after retiring in November of 1989 with a 9-3 record on the heels of a state quarterfinal loss to Albany.
Thomas Mahoney’s debut on the current Fairmont gridiron, however, proved a coaching masterpiece as the unpredictable became reality in the Cardinals’ season-opening game. In an ironic twist, Thomas Mahoney – who was known statewide for his time-consuming ground-and-pound running attack – called a rare pass play to produce the first-ever touchdown on Cardinal Field on Sept. 1, 1972.
Receiver Pat Garry caught a 24-yard TD pass from quarterback Jim Hanson during the 13th play of the offensive series with 4:31 remaining in the first quarter to establish the tone for Fairmont’s eventual 26-0 triumph over Jackson. Garry finished with five catches for 81 yards, Hanson completed 6 of 12 passes for 88 yards and running back Don Harkom – whose family had moved from Rochester during the summer – rushed for 187 yards and two scores.
In the next day’s issue of the Sentinel newspaper, Garry displayed his quick wit and sense of humor by giving sports editor Rod Hatle his descriptive account of corraling the historic first TD via a pass on the newly-christened gridiron.
“I wasn’t sure where I was,” said Garry, who had spent the previous season filling in at an offensive guard position and learning how to block, “but when I saw the crossed marks (end zone), I knew where I was.”
“That pass play not only fooled the Jackson defenders and coaching staff, but it caught our own players a little off guard when we (coaching staff) called it,” said a grinning Thomas Mahoney, who firmly believed his philosophy on the topic of throwing the football was the most logical. “Three things can happen when you pass the football at the high school level and two – an incompletion or an interception – are negative, so you’ve got to play the better percentages.”
In fact, Thomas Mahoney once jokingly said his offensive playbook would fit inside a match book cover because it contained – in his words, “Three running plays – student body right, student body left and up the middle.”
Despite his biological connection to the prep coaching pioneer, current Fairmont mentor and activities director Mat Mahoney did not follow in his legendary grandfather’s offensive play-calling footsteps.
“When I first took over the Cardinals’ program as head coach in 2007, the two of us had numerous conversations about offensive strategy. Needless to say, we did NOT share the same philosophy,” Mat Mahoney said with a laugh. “He utilized a bruising smash-mouth ground game to methodically move the sticks (first-down markers), but I’ve always leaned toward moving the ball through the air – maybe because I was a quarterback in my high school days.”
While Thomas Mahoney’s dominating running game has been affectionately labeled as a ‘school of hard knocks’ by opposing defenses, Mat Mahoney’s lethal quick-strike air attack on offense has been referred to as ‘Quarterback University’ due to the long list of signal-calling standouts who have rewritten – over and over again – the program’s passing, scoring and total yardage marks during his initial 19 seasons at the Cardinals’ football helm.
In a tongue-in-check moment of irony, the first touchdown scored under Mat Mahoney’s tutelage in 2007 resulted – like his grandfather – via a method directly opposite of their respective modus operandis. Mahoney the Younger – known for his program’s passing prowess out of a pro-style set – watched as 2024 Fairmont Athletic Hall of Fame inductee and standout halfback Paul Mallory found the end zone via a running play. Ironically, Mallory’s 6-point dash was the exact distance – 24 yards – as Thomas Mahoney’s first-ever touchdown at Cardinal Field via the Garry-from-Hanson pass 35 years earlier.
Despite a day-and-night difference in their offensive approaches, Thomas and Mat somehow have produced mirror-like statistical results since the inception of the football field that bears their last names prior to the facility’s 55th season in the upcoming fall of 2026.
Thomas Mahoney – who was the Minnesota prep football rank’s winningest coach when he retired with an overall 39-year career record of 256 wins, 94 losses and 8 ties – generated a 77-24 mark [76.2%] at the friendly confines of then-Cardinal Field from 1972-89.
Mat Mahoney – who enters his 20th season at the Cardinals’ helm this fall with a career record of 137-62 – just squeezed past his grandfather by a mere six-tenths of a percentage point for success on the current Fairmont gridiron by compiling a 73-22 record for 76.8% in front of the home crowd.
Thomas Mahoney, one of the architects behind Minnesota’s current Prep Bowl football championship format that first hit the now defunct Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis in 1982, guided the Cardinals to a 31-game winning streak that spanned the final four games of the 1966 season and ended during the 1970 season-opener. Since the state did not have a playoff system during that time period, Thomas Mahoney’s unbeaten 9-0 teams of 1967, ’68 and ’69 were unofficially deemed as “state champions.”
According to the Minnesota State High School League’s archives, Thomas Mahoney, however, did qualify for state postseason tournament action in 1978, 1982 and his final season of 1989. Meanwhile, Mat Mahoney has assembled an impressive resume that would put a smile on his grandfather’s face by meriting 7 state appearances from 2007-25, including Class AAA runner-up showings in 2011 and 2018. The Cardinals lost a narrow 34-32 decision to St. Croix Lutheran during the Fairmont football program’s first-ever appearance in the Prep Bowl championship round in 2011, while falling to Rochester Lourdes, 24-7, during the Class AAA state finals in 2018. Mat’s gridders also garnered state bids in 2013, 2017, 2021, 2022 and 2024.
“Every time I walk with my team onto the same field where my grandfather coached and my dad (1971 Fairmont High School graduate and 2004 Fairmont Hall of Fame inductee Tom Mahoney Jr.) played, I get a feeling that I can’t entirely describe with words,” said Mat Mahoney. “I feel comfortable there – like a home away from home, surrounded by my second family.”
While Thomas and Mat Mahoney have been the Cardinals’ coaching bookends from the current football field’s debut in 1972 to the upcoming season of 2026, respectively, Fairmont’s rich athletic program featured three head football coaches between the two renowned relatives.
Jim Simser – who powered New Richland-Hartland to 4 state bids, including the Class ‘C’ championship in 1976 and the Class ‘B’ crown in 1978 – replaced Thomas Mahoney as both head football coach and activities director starting during the 1990-91 school year, and the Fairmont juggernaut football team did not skip a beat.
Simser, who was inducted into the Fairmont Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015, matched Thomas Mahoney by engineering 3 state appearances during his stellar 10-year stint along the Cardinals’ home sideline.
Simser – who compiled a sterling 73-30 overall record from 1990-99 – etched his name into Fairmont’s history books by steering the Cardinal gridders to their first-ever appearance in the state semifinals in 1992. Fairmont lost a nail-biter to Farmington at the Metrodome to end the season with a 10-3 mark.
Simser then solidified his reputation as one of Minnesota’s elite prep football coaches by powering the Cardinals to unchartered territory in 1996 and 1997. The Blue Earth native and former prep Buc standout marched Fairmont to back-to-back double-figure win seasons – 11-1 and 10-2, respectively – and consecutive state bids. Northfield edged the Cardinals in both quarterfinal clashes.
After Simser’s retirement from the prep coaching ranks in the spring of 2000, Jerry Tietje – Simser’s defensive coordinator during Fairmont’s decade of success in the 1990s – experienced back-to-back fall campaigns filled with injuries and disqualification issues that depleted his personnel and resulted in a combined record of 1-17.
Upon Tietje’s departure after 2 seasons, Troy Cody took the program’s reins and produced a 30-19 record during his 5-year tenure at the Cardinals’ helm. Fairmont’s best effort from 2002-06 occurred in 2005 when the Cody-coached roster lost to Worthington in the sectional championship game to fall one win shy of a state bid en route to a 10-1 record.
“Even the best high school football programs throughout the state don’t produce winning records each and every year,” said Thomas Mahoney. “When working with high school student-athletes – who are maturing and trying to figure out where they fit into the circle of life, there’s a fine line between winning and losing. Some times the most athletic team on the field at a given time does not always exit with the win.”
Mat Mahoney agreed with his grandfather’s insight into the complexities of coaching at the prep level.
“When you first start out coaching you think you have all the answers, but the longer you do this job you realize that’s not always the case,” said Mat Mahoney. “I hope that my coaching staff and I do a good job of teaching the game to our players and making them better people as well as good athletes, but you realize many times they (players) teach us something about the sport – and life – along the way.”
While thousands of gridiron fans nestle into the bleachers at Mahoney Field during each fall season, hopefully future generations will remember and appreciate all the hard work, blood, sweat and tears that Thomas Mahoney, Mat Mahoney, their assistant coaches and players have given to the Cardinals’ football program throughout the decades.
“It’s my sanctuary. It’s a place where I can go just to organize my thoughts, take a deep breath and reflect,” Thomas Mahoney once said in reference to the football field renamed in his honor during the 1992 campaign. “It made me grin knowing the first touchdown ever scored on Mahoney Field appropriately was a running play.
“I gave him (Mat) the business about being a passing team, but he’s produced a lot of points, yards and wins by using it, so I tip my cap to him. I’m extremely proud of the coach and, more importantly, the person he’s become,” said Thomas Mahoney, who passed away at age 81 on August 3, 2008.
Writer’s Note: Thank you to the entire Mahoney family, 1974 Fairmont High School graduate and 1997 Fairmont Athletic Hall of Fame inductee Jerry Rosburg, former Cardinal standout Gary Coombes, this project’s coordinator Jason Subbert, former Star Tribune sports writer Joel Rippel, the Fairmont Area Football Association, Fairmont School District superintendent Andy Traetow and the Martin County Historical Society for all of their assistance on this story.