Five Menomonie High School graduates are on the 2026 UW-Stout Polytechnic football roster, the most MHS grads on the Stout roster in almost 30 years.
Seniors Ben Bystol and Brooks Brewer, junior Isaiah Giron and freshmen Luke Bystol and Max Branch make up the largest number of Menomonie students since the 1997 team carried eight players from the hometown high school. The 1996 team also had eight players from Menomonie and the 1995 team had 10 Menomonie players.
While Stout has had brothers playing on the same year’s roster in the past, Ben and Luke Bystol are the first Menomonie brothers on the squad in at least 30 years. Plus, the Bystol’s parents, Jake and Beth Bystol, are UW-Stout graduates. Jake was a member of the Blue Devil football team and Beth was a member of the Stout softball squad in the late 1990s.
Branch also has a family connection to the Stout team. His father Derek Branch, who played for Stout in the early 2000s has been a Blue Devil assistant coach since 2016 and the pair are one of only a few father/son coach/player duos in Stout football history. Mike Lawrence played for his father Rich Lawrence, who was the Blue Devil head coach for seven season from 1986-92.
A case could be made for Tyler Naatz playing for his father Duey Naatz, who was the Blue Devil head coach for three years from 2007-09. Tyler joined the Blue Devils in 2011 as a defensive back. Duey was named the Blue Devil athletic director in 2010, a year before Tyler came to Stout. But even as the athletic director and not an “official” coach the elder Naatz could not be kept off the practice field.
The Menomonie players from the 1997 and 1996 UW-Stout teams included: Adam Roach, John Bjork, Ehrich Shaw, Tucker Giertz, Eric Aamodt, Andy Mickelson, Andy Wickstrom and Rob Hanson. Menomonie players from the 1995 Stout team that included10 players – nearly 10 percent of the roster – were: Wickstrom, John McKane, Bill Engler, Kevin Path, Roach, Mike Morrow, Nick Kaiser, Giertz, Bjork and Shaw.
Menomonie Collegians is a regular feature of Menomonie News Net. The column is not limited to student-athletes, but may be a former Menomonie area student in a play, forensics, music or any type of collegiate competition. If you know of a Menomonie Collegian, please email [email protected].
The column “Menomonie Collegians” by Layne Pitt is licensed under a CC BY SA 4.0 International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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