The Quick & the (Kinda) Short of it:

The Story Behind “Paint Me Green”

I graduated from D.C. Everest in 1990 and was part of the 1989 State Championship team at D.C.E. The team that Coach Steff always refers to as “Maybe not the most athletic that we had, but they were football smart.”

My letter jacket no longer fits, in case you were wondering.

After going to college on the east coast and then living in the likes of L.A., Chicago, and New Zealand with a career in advertising, the last thing I thought I’d ever do was return home to Rothschild.

But, in 2007 a lot happened. Life dictated a new path, and when that path lead home I started to think about my earlier years, and the “whos” and “whats” that shaped me. A big influence in my life -growing up a few houses away from the Steffenhagens- was Coach, and D.C. Everest football.

One thing lead to another, and before the permanent move, every Friday at noon I was leaving downtown Chicago and driving back to the Valley to film Coach. Every weekend of the 2007 season I made the trip north, met my friend Joel either at Stiehm Stadium or wherever they were playing on the road, and we filmed and recorded. If I wasn’t filming coach on the sidelines or in the locker room, I was hanging with Sondra in their kitchen or basement and interviewing her.

In the end, we had over 40 hours of footage. I interviewed a number of former players, coaches, parents, an NFL coach, and more. To be honest, some of that footage was lost between 2007 and 2019. A lot of the player interviews were fun to do, but when I saw the film starting to take shape those didn’t make it to the final cut.

I am flattered to have been given access to Coach Steffenhagen. He put a lot of trust in me, and I thank him for that. Part of me was frustrated that this took so long to complete but now, looking back, I think the timing was just right.

If you are a former player, I hope the final product speaks to you as much as it does to me and brings a bunch of things DCE Football flooding back. If you never played for him or never met him, hopefully you’ll still see what we had here in our community.

We had something special.