ST. PAUL, Minn. – This Thursday at 6:30 p.m., Concordia-St. Paul football kicks-off the Joshua Schumacher head coaching era as CSP hosts Quincy University at Sea Foam Stadium in the program's lone non-conference game.
 
Heading into the season opener, the season preview will be released in phases covering the overall program, the offense, the defense and the special teams as Coach Schumacher introduces the public to the roster.
 
WEATHER OUTLOOK
Nearly a week out, Thursday's forecast is favorable for a football opener with a high of 81, NNW winds at 10-15, sunny and clear conditions with wind slowing to 5-10 in the evening and an overnight low of 54.
 
WEBCASTING ALSO ENTERS A NEW ERA WITH MIDCO SPORTS PLUS
Starting with the 2026-27 season, Concordia and the NSIC will call Midco Sports Plus the streaming home for the NSIC Network. Midco Sports Plus, a regional cable provider primarily based in North Dakota, South Dakota and parts of Minnesota, features an expanded variety of online sports coverage.
 
The NSIC Network will be part of a subscription service with annual access plans starting at under $7 per month for the full year ($79/year) or monthly service for $15 which includes NSIC coverage as well as Summit League.
 
Concordia's broadcasts will continue to feature multiple cameras with instant replay along with commentary from St. Paul-native Dan Flanagan, a graduate of Fordham University (N.Y.) where he covered multiple NCAA Division I sports teams on campus for the Rams including football and basketball in the Patriot League. Flanagan has been the broadcast voice of the Golden Bears for nearly 20 years and called multiple national, regional and conference championships.
 
For more information, view the NSIC's press release announcing the Midco Sports Plus partnership: https://cspbears.com/news/2026/7/16/athletics-midco-sports-launches-nsics-new-streaming-home.aspx
 
For streaming support and troubleshooting, visit Midco's support page: https://sports.midco.com/support
 
TICKETS - PURCHASE IN ADVANCE ONLINE
Fans are highly encouraged to purchase tickets online at cspbears.com/tickets prior to game day. All ticketed events for the 2026-27 academic year will utilize the Vivenu online ticket platform found at that link and fans must scan a mobile ticket to enter. Tickets will still be sold on site on gameday but purchases are card-only and include additional fees. The best way for fans to make their gameday entry as smooth as possible is to purchase tickets online in advance. CSP Students, Faculty and Staff will be able to download their free passes through Vivenu.
 
DOWNLOAD THE APP
Fans can download the CSP Bears fan app, free of charge and available in the App Store or on Google Play. The app contains live in-game updates, close game alerts, rosters, schedules, scores, stats, news, social media and more! Customize your options to get notifications to your favorite teams, as well. Search "CSP Bears" in the app store to stay up-to-date on Golden Bear athletics.
 
COACHES SHOW RETURNS TO TWIN CITIES RADIO
The Coaches Show with Joshua Schumacher is back on the Twin Cities airwaves for a seventh season, once again hosted by Wally Langfellow of Minnesota Score. The show airs following the Minnesota high school football game of the week, typically on Friday evenings in the 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. hour on KYCR 1440 AM radio, available in the Twin Cities metro area.
 
The season opener episode will be an in-depth discussion with head coach Joshua Schumacher, while future episodes will feature student-athletes in addition to Coach Schumacher.
 
For fans who miss the live show over the air or are outside of the radio station's Twin Cities reach, the entire show is accessible via the CSP Bears Podcast, available in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube podcasts. It will typically be uploaded late Friday night (after the initial air time) or Saturday morning prior to the game. Search 'CSP Bears' into your favorite podcast provider!
 
SERIES HISTORY: QUINCY 1, CSP 0
The Golden Bears and Hawks met for the first time last season in Quincy, Illinois in week zero at QU Stadium. The Hawks prevailed with a 38-7 win over the Golden Bears as Bradyn Little completed 22-28 for 256 yards and three touchdowns while rushing for a pair of scores on his three rushing attempts for three yards. Little distributed his three touchdown passes to three different targets and no one on the Hawks had more than 59 rushing or receiving yards in the game.
 
Concordia's defense held Quincy to just 84 rushing yards on 33 attempts, forcing the Hawks to a 2.5 average on their home turf. Ricky Dixon led CSP's defense with seven tackles while Isaiah Wray had six tackles, 1.0 for loss and a half sack.
 
Offensively, Zachary Yeager started the opener and completed 12-20 for 51 yards while Reed Styer entered for the injured Yeager in the second half, completing 5-7 for 87 yards and found Timothy Davis for a 45-yard strike to set up a short touchdown run by Joel Lacy.
 
Davis had three catches for 73 yards and Lacy had six carries for 12 yards. Daniel Hornacek added 48 combined yards with 7-19 rushing and 6-29 receiving.
 
ABOUT THE HAWKS
Quincy enters the 2026 season picked fifth in the nine-team Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) Preseason Poll. Quincy went 6-5 overall (4-4 GLVC) last season and were 6-4 overall in 2024 in head coach Jason Killday's first season leading the program. Killday enters his third year with a 12-9 overall record.
 
Returning standouts Bradyn Little (So., QB), Brock Wiley (Sr., LB), Collin Parsons (Jr., RB), Jack Bishop (Sr., OL) and Kendrick Adimado (Jr., CB) are coming off of All-GLVC recognition in 2025.
 
Little engineered the offense in all 11 games, completing 65.1 percent (253-388) of his passes for 2,492 yards and a 17-6 TD-INT ratio while adding four rushing touchdowns.
 
Parsons averaged 4.8 per carry, rushing for 420 yards and four touchdowns and added 20-154 in the pass game, running behind Bishop and the offensive line.
 
Wiley led the team with 106 tackles, adding 8.0 TFLs, 3.0 sacks and six pass breakups while Adimado had a team-best 11 pass breakups with 30 total tackles.
 
SEASON PREVIEW PART 1: "A NEW SCHU ERA"
On January 5, 2026, Concordia University announced the hiring of Joshua Schumacher to become the 11^th head coach of CSP football. Schumacher joined the Concordia sidelines after serving as the associate head coach, special teams coordinator and linebackers coach at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan where the Cardinals competed in one of the top football conferences in NCAA Division II.
 
With Schumacher aboard, the Cardinals went 5-2 in the GLIAC and produced a 6-5 overall campaign in 2025.
 
He is no stranger to winning football, having guided the Concordia University Ann Arbor (Mich.) Cardinals to an impressive 8-year run as head coach, going 59-25 including a pair of MSFA Mideast League championships and five NAIA playoff appearances.
 
Along the way, Coach Schumacher has amassed a wealth of coaching connections including former players who went on to coach in other programs to further branch out.
 
Those relationships were cultivated and nourished, and with a new opportunity to be a head coach at a University he believes in, it was not a difficult reach for Schumacher to assemble a talented and qualified coaching staff.
 
But it started with establishing new relationships with the CSP coaches who were retained through the coaching transition.
 
"The first conversations were with guys from last year's staff. Coach T (Dalton Thomas) and I met, and realized we had a mutual connection. I outlined a vision for a cohesive coaching staff, and through talking with Coach T and Coach Vouk (Devin Vouk), we determined where we were at and if they wanted to be part of the vision for CSP football. A united staff is vital to a successful program. If a staff isn't united, that's the fastest way to make fractures within a 100-plus player roster."
 
Dalton Thomas had just spent his first season with CSP, coaching the defensive line and as special teams coordinator, coming to CSP from a strong background of good programs at South Dakota State and Northwest Missouri State.
 
Devin Vouk, who is Concordia's current longest-tenured coach heading into his third season on campus this fall, also comes from a strong football program. His playing career began at St. Cloud State and shifted to nearby Division III power St. John's before coming to CSP to begin his coaching career.
 
"We had great conversations and quickly realized we were on the same page. Coach Vouk is our longest-tenured coach, and had great talks with him. His background is running backs, and he also had some experience with tight ends. Shifting him to wide receivers is an exciting way for him to grow his coaching profile. They threw the ball a ton at SJU so it's coming easy to him. With Dalton, he's been an incredible resource with paperwork, understands how campus operates, gets everyone pointed in the right direction, communicating with the right people and building relationships in the right ways. He's been elevated to recruiting coordinator and helped us recruit over half of a roster on an accelerated timeline this offseason."
 
Joining Thomas and Vouk as returning coaches are the graduate assistants, second-year GA Riley Heller and three-year starting center and first-year GA Caydon Christensen.
 
"Everyone recommended Caydon. He has a great perspective and passion for our program. He was respected as a player and brings outstanding passion and character to our staff. Riley was coaching on offense, but with his background as a player having changed from offense to defense, it was a natural transition to move him back to the defensive line so Caydon could join on the offensive line."
 
He continued, "These are two amazing guys from Iowa, they make me think that Iowa is the greatest place on Earth. Riley is working alongside Dalton and has been a sponge. Our two GAs make behind-the-scenes things happen, and have helped me to understand CSP on a deeper level. They've been great with recruiting and communicating all of the great things about CSP as well as day-to-day college living that recruits and their parents need to know."
 
He concluded, "All four of the coaches who have remained on campus through the transition have been great."
 
Having retained four key staff members and locking down continuity, Schumacher then was tasked with rounding out the full-time, part-time and volunteer coaching positions.
 
"The first coach we brought in was Coach Mux (Caleb Muxlow) as our offensive line coach. Everyone knows how critical the offensive line is to being successful, and Mux is a fantastic coach. He played for me my first four years as a head coach and knows how to implement our culture on the offensive side when I'm working on the defensive side. He has been mentored by some good coaches. He's a great mentor and I'm really thankful that he is here. He's been doing great, and has developed a great relationship working with Caydon at the offensive line position."
 
Schumacher, who is a defense-oriented coach, continued to bolster the offensive side of the ball.
 
"Next, we aimed to secure our offensive coordinator. We wanted to find someone who fit the mission of faith and football integration, believes in toughness, running the ball and creativity and Jordan Armstrong checks all of those boxes. I had coached against him when he was calling plays at Olivet Nazarene and they gave us fits in that game. He got caught up in a coaching change, and had a chance to continue his career coaching development at Tiffin (Ohio), and learn from and work with the staff there which was a great opportunity for him. He learned their processes, how they did things and our mutual connections developed."
 
When Schumacher secured Armstrong as the offensive coordinator, what came next only solidified Schumacher's belief in Armstrong as a leader.
 
"Coach Armstrong has the type of character and leadership that he had a coach who wanted to come with him. When you have a coach who has guys who want to be with them, you they have strong abilities to influence, mentor and lead."
 
That led to the hiring of Marco Aguinaga as quarterbacks coach.
 
"We're excited to have Marco lead our quarterbacks. He played high-level NAIA, played in Brazil and Europe and has experience coaching another position group already. We're excited to get him working with quarterbacks here."
 
With the offensive coordinator, Armstrong, coaching the running backs and tight ends and responsible for the play calling and oversight of the entire offense, Tre Collins was brought in to work alongside Armstrong at the running back/tight end position unit.
 
"We're excited to have Tre here, he's from Michigan and played in high school with some of the guys that I coached at Concordia Ann Arbor, so we have some great familiarity with him."
 
Defensively, with Schumacher coaching the linebackers and Thomas working with the defensive line, he set his attention to finding leadership over the secondary with corners and safeties.
 
"I had a relationship with Felix King after he graduated and visited us at Concordia Ann Arbor before he went to coach at Grand View. We played Grand View in the playoffs, their coaches including Coach Munkwtiz talked to us about him. Having been in Wisconsin, he's from Chicago and is a really good recruiter and does a good job coaching our guys with defensive back technique."
 
To work with King in the secondary, Schumacher turned to Christian Boivin who brings a unique set of power-four and Division II football background to the program.
 
"I coached Christian last year, he was our team MVP at Saginaw Valley and sat in all of our coaches meetings. We ended up becoming pretty close through our experience at Saginaw Valley. He played a lot of special teams snaps at Michigan, he showed he's a sharp coach. I thought this would be a good opportunity for him to be our special teams coordinator and coach our safeties. He has a lot of experience playing a year of running back at Michigan, they switched him to linebacker, he's been a special teams player of the game. He was exposed to some elite coaches who are in the NFL now, so we are excited he is here and he does a great job."
 
With Boivin leading the special teams as coordinator, Schumacher found him support to work with the specialists, specifically. "Javon Hering reached out as a kickers/specialists coach and he's doing a phenomenal job. We return punter Caden Carsen and long snapper Carter Miller, but we went and added a freshman long snapper from Faith Lutheran in Las Vegas where my brother coaches, and then Ryan Schroeder who came in from Drake and James Graves whose mom coached volleyball at CU Ann Arbor so I knew him when he was a little kid. Our guys have made so many improvements with Javon working with those guys, to see where we were day one to where we are now, I am very encouraged to think we have some good kickers. We spent a lot of time on special teams in spring, to teach techniques since a lot of the guys would be on special teams. We saw it as an area to grow and improve if technique was emphasized even if we weren't able to put it all together in the dome in the spring."
 
Rounding out the defensive staff, Schumacher was able to find support in the position group he leads, an important boost while he oversees the balance of the roster and manages the coaching staff.
 
"Keaton Edwards came to us later in the summer from William Jewell. He was a graduate assistant at Olivet Nazarene when Jordan Armstrong was there. He's also helping out with special teams quite a bit and helping me by coaching the outside linebackers. The experience he had with Jordan at Olivet Nazarene when we coached against him, I knew their head coach well as a faith and football program mission, making them both a good fit for us here."
 
With the majority of coaches in place in time for the spring football season, the returning Golden Bears along with a few newcomers at the semester break had a crash course to learn new systems as well as new approaches to daily life as a college football student-athlete.
 
"Spring was tough, so we focused on details and techniques. With the small roster numbers we had across the board for our spring season, it was hard for us to focus on intensity, so we taught techniques and fundamentals that players could carry over into their personal summer workouts and drills to help them improve their game. We laid a foundation for schematics, how we want to operate and our base drills that we want to do in practice. We did teach some schemes. We didn't get to have a full spring game but we called it 'the spring games' with various drills and competitions to best simulate the game and our guys did a great job competing in that."
 
Heading into fall camp, with the staff fully in place and coaches working together for the first time in many cases, it falls on Coach Schumacher to lead the coaches in the direction he is taking the program.
 
"My style of leadership with the staff is that I hired coaches to do a job but I am willing to get dirty to do the job with them. I try to help them think through the best way to do a job whether it's computer work or down in the equipment room, just to name two examples. I want the best ideas to bubble up to the top and I also want to think through if this is the most efficient way to do things. I'll often try to do things with them a couple of times to see how it is, make sure they feel good about the process, but I don't want to stifle a guy's creativity. I want to communicate the standards to what needs to get done."
 
"It takes what it takes, but I don't want anyone to be here all the time," is a quote that Schumacher often uses. "I want them to be able to get home, see their families. But at the same time we can't walk in here unprepared and not ready to go. So it's trying to be flexible, allowing our guys to become good teachers, think on their feet, because you could spend your life here and never see your family. I want them to be good husbands and fathers and build those family connections to model to our guys. But also be prepared for practice, but on gameday there is no PowerPoint out there, you have to be able to think on your feet and figure it out. So having a balance in preparation and an ability to adjust quickly and on the fly is something I try to work with our coaches on."
 
Schumacher mentioned teaching, and he reinforces that through the way he communicates.
 
"I try to give our staff reasonable explanations on what we want to do, why we want to do and how I think about it so they understand my perspective on it. I want to help them see all the sides to it. When I talk to the defense, I tell them we won't be live tackling in a scrimmage, for example, and the reason why is I want our offense healthy for the opener, and that could lead to us having 8-to-10 missed tackles in a game. And how do overcome that? We have to be there with great pursuit so when he cuts back, we gotta be ready to smack 'em and in order to do that, we have to be all over our guys about our effort and pursuit to the ball, that we are a swarming defense as we continue to work on our drills in live tackling, but just trying to show them what we're up against - we aren't going to complain about it, we are going to come up with our best strategy to overcome it. If we give them a why, along with a solution to work around it, then I think they buy into it."
 
With a new head coach and new coordinators come new schemes and systems, a new playbook with new terminology and signals.
 
"It's been a big adjustment for the returners. It's been a layered approach for the guys in seeing who I am as a coach and some of our offensive guys are still getting to know me. Defensive guys spend more time with me as I lead the defensive meetings, but I think it's been a big adjustment for them."
 
Knowing that there would be a learning curve with new systems on both sides of the ball, Schumacher didn't set out to change everything in the program on day one, either.
 
"What I asked when I came in is, what are the things that are going well here and what are the things that need to be fixed. And that is something that I continue to do, I asked the family leaders this camp again – what are things that are going well so that we don't think everything is terrible, and what are some things that we can fix."
 
Working through a staff transition, Schumacher was mindful of the fact that other coaches have positive ways of doing things that he can learn from and adopt, as well as help ease the transition for returning players and staff members.
 
"I took that approach coming in here because there were certainly some really good things being done in this program and we wanted to continue to do that, respect the history and tradition of things that were great at CSP and we also wanted to address the things that needed to be addressed."
 
Relaying things through the staff to lead their players and position groups, Schumacher has a clear message.
 
"I tell our coaches that we cannot be upset with the players if we haven't trained them and taught them. Don't come back to me upset with a player and the only thing you've done is told them something. We have to train them to be able to do things a certain way, and if guys aren't prepared for a game we look inward at ourselves first, look ourselves in the mirror for it. What our guys are learning is that we are being consistent about the standards that we want and with it, they've bought into being accountable for it. I don't try to destroy them with punishment, I want to be able to do as little as I can to be as efficient as I can but they need to have learning moments and sustained in their brain to do things a certain way."
 
The final piece of the puzzle for Schumacher in rebuilding systems is the players' response to situations.
 
"Trying to get their brains conditioned to how we want to respond to things is another way to help them with the toughness to recognize when their buddy is complaining about something. We have ways for players to show it to each other in a live setting to build toughness, get it over it and play the next play – complaining about it isn't going to do anything. Our guys are starting to get the mentality we want to have, to do things as a team. We've spent a lot of time having guys get to know each other, asking questions and taking time in our day actually sitting and talking with each other and not just being on our phones."
 
Keeping 18-to-23 year olds off their phones, especially in settings when players are relaxed and waiting such as prior to meeting rooms getting started is just one example Schumacher lays out.
 
"When we come into the meeting room, get off your phone. If you need to be on your phone, stay in the hallway, but once you come into the meeting room and you're early, I want there to be a chatter before I say 'team on two' and get started, that their building connections and talking and not just staring at tik-tok."
 
One of the players says, "hang up and hang out" so that's what we call it.
 
While returners were the first to begin adjusting to new playbooks, new systems and new ways of doing things, the program also had an influx of new talent added to the mix this offseason with the largest roster turnover the program has ever experienced.
 
"In fall camp, we've had long practices, but we break it up. We practice for three hours but take a break at 2:15, break into different groups and give them three questions. They have to ask each other the three questions and take that break time to get to know each other. We've taken them off campus and away from football, we went rafting down the river, we've had family Olympics, had a scavenger hunt on campus to learn important spots and meet people they need to interact with as well as around the St. Paul community. We had an egg-eating contest and Kade Barney devoured six eggs in about 45 seconds, it was incredible. We had a Fear Factor competition where our GAs Riley and Caydon had a budget of about $40 to come up with the weirdest cocktail they could and that included things like sardines, marshmallow fluff, cottage cheese and a lot of other things in a red solo cup for our guys and Sabastine Weaver won it. We've had different competitions, we had a Skit Night talent show and the guys did a bang-up job, probably the best Skit Night I've seen in the 14-15 years of coaches skits I've seen, they were hilarious."
 
He continued, "I think the extra time together was invaluable. I make them come up and say each other's names. We don't want to be the team where you're an offensive lineman and you don't know the DB's name in October – you can't have that. Getting them to embrace the awkwardness early on, get over it – it's hard to get to know 100 people, so you have to create the time for them to actually do that. And when you get to know them, you end up knowing where they're from, what they're about, you find your similarities and differences and find that mutual respect. And our coaches are doing it, too, everyone is just being intentional to connect with each other."
 
But above all of that, assembling a staff, recruiting a new roster, implementing practice plans and playbooks, and integrating newcomers with returners, what will a Joshua Schumacher-coached team look like on the field?
 
"My expectations is that our fans will see a hard-working, tough, competitive Concordia. Our hard work should show up on gameday. Fans should see a tough, resilient team that will respond to sudden change. A team that is salty at pursuit to the ball, we want to see ball carriers finish runs. We aren't going to hang our heads when bad plays happen and just move on to the next. I had a camper ask what our goal is for the season, and my answer is 'I want our guys to truly compete every rep. Whether we are up or down, that they go out there every rep and compete. We don't play based off the scoreboard or show up based off the opponent's record is, that they just show up at the very least in neutral thinking. We want to stay out of negative thinking, we want to play in positive or neutral thinking and give every rep our best."
 
"Concordia is the best name. With a meaning 'hearts together' we want to not do things individually but collectively as a Concordia that we are putting our hearts into it and can be inspired by how hard our teammates are playing."