George Thole was 32 when he arrived at Stillwater High School to coach the football Ponies. He had won big at tiny Casselton, N.D. (27-0), served an autumn coaching Gophers freshmen for Murray Warmath in 1968 and was an assistant for Richfield’s Bob Collison in 1970.

Thole’s first season at Stillwater was 1971, and that also was the last for Collison as the football coach for Richfield. As the athletic director, Collison hired Dick Walker to replace him, and Walker became another Richfield legend.

A slightly different timeline might have led to Thole sticking with Richfield — a Lake Conference athletic power at the time — and passing on the rebuilding that would be required at Stillwater. The Ponies were 33-88-4 over the previous 15 seasons.

Fortunately for Stillwater athletics, Thome was never one to doubt himself, storming into the challenge of transforming the Ponies from St. Paul Suburban also-rans to a state power.

“George would have the team crowded into their small family home on Thursday nights as our final game preparation,” Tim Kumerow said Friday. “We were jammed together; offense on one level, defense on the other. And the night usually included an appearance by ‘Thole-nac.’

“It was a play on the Johnny Carson bit, ‘Carnac the Magnificent.’ George was Carson, and our assistant, Jerry Foley, would be Ed McMahon, the straight man. And they would do the big buildup, George going through all the antics before opening the envelope.”

The questions came after the answers in this legendary bit, and on this week a half-century later, it might have gone like this:

Foley: ”Soren Gam." Thole-nac: “Can you name a placekicker from Denmark?”

The Thole effect was rapid, and in 1975 the Ponies were a confident bunch entering the nine-game regular-season schedule in the St. Paul Suburban. Placekickers were not highly valued back then — the position wasn’t offered on the all-conference team — but all coaches were on the lookout for one as a bonus.

Gam was a 140-pound foreign exchange student from Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city. He had a friend who had spent a school year in Montana through an exchange program and became intrigued.

Soren applied through Youth for Understanding, located in Ann Arbor, Mich. Meantime, the Muhlenpoh family in Stillwater had a spare bedroom after the oldest child moved out and made itself available for an exchange student.

“If accepted, you did not know where you would be sent,” Gam said. “New York, California … ‘No, Soren, we have a place for you in Minnesota.’ I did not know anything about Minnesota.

“Yet, once here, with my family, with the school, the town, the river right there … it was excellent."

Not to mention being an out-of-nowhere part of a state championship football team.

“We did not have scholastic sports in Denmark … not even soccer," Gam said. “Sports were all club. And football, we had never seen it. I knew nothing about it.”

Stillwater was not yet sponsoring a soccer team in the fall. Gam was near the football practice field and noticed kicking was taking place.

“I was very good at that in soccer,” Gam said. “In Denmark, they would have me take the kicks — the corners, the rest — whenever possible."

Gam and the coaches agreed on a tryout. They gave him a uniform, oversized though it was.

“You should have seen him in a uniform,” said Dave Schad, the center for the ’75 Ponies. “Everything was oversized on him. And the first game, George and the coaches just had him watch, to get a feel for what was going on.”

Gam was across the table from Schad, Kumerow and Lynn (Muhlenpoh) Bergal at breakfast Friday. He assured his companions that watching the 35-0 victory over South St. Paul was unnecessary.

The task wasn’t that tough to understand: Extra points or field goals, kick the oblong object through the goal posts.

“We did not try that many field goals,” Gam said. “I made two out of three. My 45-yarder hit the crossbar and bounced back. I could have made a 50-yarder. But with our team on offense, the coaches were not going to try.”

Going into the Class 2A title game, Gam was 27-for-27 on extra points. He beat Henry Sibley (now Two Rivers) 21-20 with a late PAT and North St. Paul 7-6 with another.

There were 14,000 jammed into Parade Stadium to see the Ponies and top-rated Richfield play for the title. And Gam missed a PAT for the first time after Stillwater’s first touchdown.

“Of course I knew what that meant at the end of the game,” Gam said. “We were behind 17-13, so when we were down by the end zone, we could not kick a field goal. I don’t think Coach Thole would’ve kicked then anyway.”

On fourth down at the 6, star halfback Todd Butterfield rolled a bit and found receiver Bob de St. Aubin open for a touchdown with 18 seconds left.

Thole-nak and the Ponies were state champions, 20-17, with three more to come when the state football playdowns became full service and were decided in a Prep Bowl starting in 1982.

On Friday night in Stillwater, the 50-year anniversary of that first state title was celebrated, and so was George Thole, football builder, who died in August at age 86.

There were 20-some players in attendance, including Gam, making his fourth U.S. visit. All have included reunions with Lynn Bergal and her family, but for the first time Soren was also seeing many of his one-year, title-winning football mates.

“There’s a good chance Soren was Minnesota’s first soccer-style kicker,” Kumerow said. ”And we know we weren’t unbeaten and playing Richfield for the state title without Soren."