Stan Legg (at right, in hat) is the owner and coach of the Panic semi-pro football team. In his inaugural season in the Southern Plains Football League, Legg has amassed partnerships with a physical trainer, wellness coach and dozens of community sponsors.
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he players are huddled at midfield. The late March air is damp, swamp thick and still crackling with the snap of their shoulder pads. This is their first practice outside after months indoors and built-up aggression has punctuated every collision for the last 30 minutes. At the center of the huddled mass is Kerry Sorensen. He is tall and thickly muscular with a beard that, at 41 years old, announces his stature as the team’s elder statesman. He is glowering at the younger men, his voice commanding rapt attention. Towering above his teammates, he could be a Viking — in both senses of the word. He is, after all, wearing a helmet and shoulder pads and preparing for an eight-game season as a member of the Panic, a locally based, semi-pro football team playing its inaugural year in the Southern Plains Football League. But he recalls something, too, of the Old Norse seafarers of legend. The mist in the air has turned to heavy rain now, and his words stream forth from plumes of hot breath. With his proud and menacing stature, he would seem just as well on the prow of a longship, guiding 30 young warriors toward some gridiron siren and their Valhalla of football redemption. “Every day, I see my life wilting away a little more and a little more,” Sorensen booms into the earholes of their helmets. “What you guys have in front of you is an opportunity to do something you’ll never do again.”
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s one of nine teams in the nine-man football League, the Panic will play a full schedule with rules modified only slightly from the pro game. Home games will be held at the Nicollet High School football field. Team owner and head coach Stan Legg got into the league
after working with another team last year. Displaying the same tenacity and ambition that led him to open Audio Addix — a state-of-the-art music recording and media studio in St. Peter that he assembled in fewer than two months in the winter of 2012 — Legg wasted no time putting together his own team. There’s Sorensen, a father of four and former truck driver who’s gained respect for outworking men half his age. There’s a few like Garrett Mensing and Wes Berninghaus, former prep standouts with collegiate skills; and many more like Matt Sharits, a 2003 Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial graduate who last played for a one-win high school team and is willing to sacrifice his body for one more chance to play. Caleb Huls, the team’s defensive captain who played formerly for Gustavus Adolphus College and proved himself a dominant player in the league last year, summarized the driving motivation for many of the players. “I wasn’t ready to quit,” said the 2010 Mankato East graduate. “I have a lot of fight left in me.” When Legg had a team assembled, he lined up a scrimmage last December — in the Metrodome, of all places — and began investing more than $10,000 in helmets, pads, jerseys, merchandise and team apparel. His vision is of a family-friendly, minor league-style atmosphere. He’s secured food vendors for home games, bought a T-shirt cannon, recorded a team anthem and put together an in-game soundtrack of more than 40 songs and sound effects. Legg has secured more than 20 local sponsors and is emphasizing the same community-mindedness he’s made part of his mission at Audio Addix. But his vision also includes a winning team — and not only that, but a team that looks, acts and performs like it’s composed of serious athletes. MANKATO MAGAZINE • May 2013 • 23