Ed Meierkort

Ed Meierkort the head coach of the South Dakota Coyotes football team.

Biography

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Meierkort is a graduate of South Dakota State University and Dakota Wesleyan University. He is married with two children.

Career

Meierkort began his coaching career at Dakota Wesleyan, where he also served as head baseball coach. From there he served as a graduate assistant at South Dakota State before moving on to Southwest Minnesota State University, where he held various positions from 1983 to 1993.

He began his head football coaching career at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in 1993. During his tenure there, he coached sixteen All-Americans and two future NFL players. In 2000, the team achieved a No. 5 national ranking. That year, Meierkort was named Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and and AFCA Region 5 Coach of the Year and was a finalist for AFCA National Coach of the Year.

Meierkort was named head coach of the Coyotes in 2004. He has overseen the program's elevation from the NCAA Division II rank to Division I. The team's first victory against a Division I opponent came against the Southern Utah Thunderbirds of the FCS on November 15, 2008. In 2010, the program achieved its first win against an FBS opponent with a victory over the Minnesota Golden Gophers.