Badlands Activities Center renamed honoring Biesiot

• Biesiot

Dickinson State head football coach Hank Biesiot, right, stands next to his wife, Susan, as he speaks during a ceremony that renamed the Badlands Activities Center the Henry Biesiot Activities Center following Saturday afternoon’s homecoming football game against Montana Tech. Next to Biesiot is a plaque he was presented with by DSU President D.C. Coston. Biesiot, in his 37th season as head coach, holds numerous coaching records and is a member of the NAIA Hall of Fame. For more on Saturday’s game, see Sports B1.

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• Montana Tech hands DSU third straight loss, 42-6

Hank Biesiot harkened back nearly 40 years to his playing days at Mayville State to tell the story of his first football experience in Dickinson.

On Saturday afternoon, following Dickinson State’s homecoming football game against Montana Tech, the team’s stadium was renamed the Henry Biesiot Activities Center. It had been called the Badlands Activities Center since it was completed in 2009.

“The first game I ever saw in Dickinson, I looked up from the field — we weren’t doing very well — but I looked up and all I saw was headlights and all I heard was honking horns,” Biesiot said as he spoke to fans. “Now I look up and all I see is faces of people I know.

“I’ve been around for a few years. It’s a touching, touching thing. It’s a lot better than headlights and horns. Community, we’ve come a long, long way.”

Flanked by his wife, Susan Biesiot, and his sons, Vince and Tony, and surrounded by his Blue Hawk football players and coaches, Biesiot received a standing ovation after he spoke briefly during a 15-minute presentation that included a slideshow video of Biesiot and Blue Hawk football photos set to the song “The Boys of Fall” by Kenny Chesney.

Biesiot, who was inducted into the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006, holds the NAIA record for most football coaching victories at one school and is one win away from setting the record for most NAIA wins by a coach.

Though the Blue Hawks lost to Montana Tech 42-6 in a Frontier Conference game, Biesiot reiterated comments he made earlier in the week, saying if a stadium is being renamed after him, it’s not just a credit to him but to countless others.

“There’s so many people that have had so much to do with this,” Biesiot said. “You’ve got to remember, Hank never made a block, never made a tackle. I happened to witness a lot of them. … The guys I’ve coached with, there’s certainly been special memories from the first one to the last one. Those are what relationships, names and memories are made out of.”

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