Tim Walz's Appearance Sparks Protest and Silence at High School Football Game: 'I'm Getting Desperate'

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz took to the stands at Mankato West High School on Friday night to watch a big game against the team he once coached as an assistant.

Walz's appearance also coincided with protests at the high school, as Palestinian supporters were seen outside the building.

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Multiple reels of footage of Walz talking to his family in the stands during the game showed the crowd standing behind him. Many were apparently indifferent to the presence of the vice presidential candidate. Several participants watched the event in silence. However, some participants talked to the governor and even hugged him.

A documented example of Walz drawing cheers from the crowd was when he joined both teams to help with the coin toss just before the game. When his name was announced over the loudspeaker, there was a quiet cheer from the Mankato West stands.

Tim Walz said he kept a shotgun in his car to go pheasant hunting after football practice

Walz's appearance at the match caused controversy among locals.

Former Minnesota Republican congressman Jeremy Munson urged people to show Walz in the days before the game. Published in October

Meanwhile, Blue Earth County GOP Chairwoman Yvonne Simon told the Minneapolis Star Tribune Walz's appearance in this game was out of frustration.

“They are desperate to get the word out,” Simon said.

The latest effort by the Harris-Walz campaign is to tie a bid for Minnesota governor to his position as an assistant coach. Mankato West High School football team In Minnesota in the 1990s. During Walz's tenure as a staff assistant, the team won the 1999 state championship. Before Walz was hired by Mankato West in 1996, Walz's first job out of college was as a teacher, where he was a geography teacher.

He also served as the first faculty advisor for the first straight gay alliance at Mankato West High School and worked to organize summer educational trips to China for high school students.

Walz's brief tenure as an assistant football coach became a talking point for the Harris campaign when he was announced as Harris' running mate on Aug. 7.

Walz even invited members of Mankato West's 1999 state championship team during his speech at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 21, when he officially accepted the nomination. During this speech, former US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell criticized the demonstration in a post on X.

“He was an assistant coach, not a coach,” Grenell wrote.

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Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris listens as her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, speaks during a visit with marching band members at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Georgia, on August 28, 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB /AFP, Getty Images) (Getty Images)

The warm reception Walz received at Mankato West was, in fact, warmer than at football games since he joined the Ticket.

When Walz was at a game played between Sept. 28 Minnesota and Michigan In Ann Arbor, Michigan, fans later waited outside and gave him a stern send-off. Several attendees booed him, and another fan even shouted, “Get out of here!”

Walz, despite never coaching beyond the high school level or even as a high school head coach, compared his experience as a football coach to that of Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who served as a head coach on four different NCAA boards . 5 football programs from 1995 to 2016. Tuberville led Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati as head coaches and even won an SEC championship with Auburn in 2004.

“I think one of my roles now is to be an opponent of Tommy Tuberville and show that football coaches aren't stupid,” Walz said at a fundraiser in Boston in early August.

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