Injuries are a common part of football, but Grinnell College football players say the injury bug has bitten their team harder than most over the past several seasons. Players said that the recent hiring of a strength coach has led to improved health in practice and games, helping to address challenges posed by the team’s relatively small size in terms of roster numbers and physical size of the players.
Sixty-two players are listed on the Grinnell football roster, which is put in perspective by a look at the competition. Monmouth College, which finished atop the Midwest Conference last season with a 9-0 record, has 128 players listed on its official football roster.
“We’re one of the smallest football teams I’ve ever seen,” said Kevin Johanson `26, a defensive back and the team’s all-time leader in interception return yardage. He started at cornerback for his first two years with the Pioneers before transitioning to safety. “So what that looks like is you have to practice for the same amount of time, but more people are taking the brunt of the practice. And so injuries amount.”
While Johanson has never missed a game due to injury over the course of his college football career, he said he’s battled through foot and shoulder problems throughout.
“My injuries weren’t things that just stopped me from playing. It was more that I had to play with limited mobility and a little more pain than normal,” he said. “None of these really ever go away fully, which is the worst part about injuries. You have something dramatic happen, you have a big play, a big hit, and then your injuries ache again.”
“Every time you get something hit and it swells up, that doesn’t go away, like, ever,” said Bert Greene `26, who started all but one game over his first three seasons at linebacker before missing the entirety of the 2025 season with a hip injury.
Head Coach Brent Barnes said he was unavailable for comment on the issue of injuries. Head Athletic Trainer Carissa Tigges and Athletic Trainer Jason Kofoot were unavailable to comment at the time of publishing.
Grinnell’s coaching staff is much smaller than those at many opposing schools, which Johanson said can limit the amount of specialized training and rehab different positional groups receive. However, he said he’s noticed an increase in strength and a decrease in injuries since the hiring of a dedicated strength coach, Steve Lewis, for the fall 2025 season.
“He’s really knowledgeable, and he’s a reason we don’t have nearly as many injuries as we should have,” Johanson said. “I think he’s a guy that recognizes that we’re not the same as a DI [Division I] college or DII [Division II] college, in the sense that we have guys who are academic people. We have guys who aren’t, who don’t have the genetics to recover as fast as everyone else, combined with the fact that a lot of people at Grinnell don’t sleep as much, which is the biggest thing on recovery. He understands how to write his programs so that they’re actually helpful for us, and it’s hugely injury preventative.”
Johanson said that players train hard to build neck strength to keep the head stable and reduce the risk of brain injuries.
“The concussions are a big thing,” said Greene. “That’s something that I didn’t care about it at all in high school, but once I got to college, I was like, yeah, maybe I don’t want to go as hard as I should, because now I have to be in class. And I value my education and that stuff does affect your ability to think,” said Greene.
Players take a concussion baseline test at the start of every season, which they’re evaluated against any time they feel concussed or appear visibly concussed, said Johanson. Modern equipment and limited full-contact practices help to keep players as healthy as possible during the season, with the team generally practicing in full pads only once or twice a week, he said.
“There’s been a big trend in not hitting as much recently,” said Johanson. “They try to make most of the injuries come from a game and not from practice.”
But both Johanson and Greene said that the risk of head injuries can’t be entirely avoided.
“I would always, during football season, have a slight sensitivity to light,” said Greene. “With just little things like reading, you could just feel that your focus is diminished.”
“I’ve definitely experienced my share of minor concussions, probably quite frequently,” said Johanson. “But I do know there are some teams that don’t even care about it, and we’re definitely not one of them.”
