P.J. Fleck dedicates Iowa win to UMD football player who died at practice

There was a moment at the end of the game where you were caught on camera as the winning field goal was going up. You pointed to the sky as you were walking out onto the field. Can you kind of give us an insight of what was going through your mind at that time as you were trotting out for the handshake? It's a pretty long story, but I'll make it very simple. We had some guests, Aaron and Stephanie Ryan, whose son, Reed Ryan, was the football player at the University of Minnesota Duluth who passed away a few years ago at practice. And, you know, Aaron was a University of Wisconsin Badger. But we were in Croatia on our vacation and ran into these two. And Heather goes, they look like fun. Let's just go talk to them because you're on a cruise ship and you're in Croatia. No way do you know anyone. We go in there and they say, are you PJ Fleck? And I was like, oh, great. Now I got to talk football for the whole vacation. And they both start crying. After their son died, Reed, we signed an oar, sent it to them. And they said, out of all the flowers, all the things, all the mail we got, that was the greatest piece of healing that we could have ever gotten and we've never got a chance to thank you in person and the world and universe has a way to put us all together when it needs us to I firmly believe that and they were our guests in this game and it's amazing how we've both had different experiences with our kids but the universe brought us together based on a story of Row the Boat and Colton and and their son Reed and just powerful like powerful and so I was talking to Colton and Reed as that ball was kicked and then it went through. So it's just one of those moments you have as a head football coach and our culture is way bigger than just football. And some things you just can't explain. They just kind of happen and then you respond to it. But that was a unique moment and got to share that with our players in the locker room and share that with the Ryan family, which is really important to us. Yeah, tremendous story indeed.