COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - Coming into the 2001 season, there were a lot of questions surrounding the Saint John's football team.
 
The Johnnies were coming off a 13-2 finish the year before, a season that ended with a 10-7 loss to Mount Union (Ohio) on a last-second field goal in the NCAA Division III national championship game.
 
But only five starters returned from that team, and not much was certain – especially after the Johnnies got off to a 0-2 start – falling 25-10 to Wisconsin-Eau Claire and 31-28 to St. Olaf in a pair of home games to start the season.
 
"We all knew we had to start playing better," said Drew Gibson, a senior wide receiver who returned on a medical redshirt for a final year of eligibility that fall. 
 
"The first two games didn't go our way, but now we had some experience under our belts. We were shuffling quarterbacks (between Ryan Keating and Ross Denne) in the early going, but that wasn't the reason we got off to a slow start. We just had to find our footing a little."
 
The Johnnies did that with a 48-14 win over Augsburg in the rain in Minneapolis in week three, setting up a huge matchup with archival St. Thomas in Collegeville the following Saturday. 
 
The game – played on Sept. 29 at Clemens Stadium – marked the 100th anniversary of the rivalry. And with the Tommies 2-0 in MIAC play and fresh off a 42-0 win over Carleton, excitement was running high on both sides.
 
"They had a really good team that year, but we knew we were going to have a big crowd on hand," Gibson recalled. "That made a big difference. It would have been a lot different if we'd have had to go down there with a 1-2 record facing a team with a lot of confidence."
 
But, on this day, the home field advantage belonged to the Johnnies as a huge crowd of 10,174 turned out on a sunny and warm late-September afternoon. 
 
And Gibson helped make sure they went home happy.
 
The Winona Cotter High School graduate hauled in a pair of touchdown passes – the first a 62-yarder from fellow wide receiver Blake Elliott, who took a short lateral from Keating then threw deep to a wide-open Gibson streaking down the SJU sideline.
 
"That was actually supposed to be the first play of the game," Gibson said. "It didn't work at all in practice that week. Our scout team knew us too well. But we still wanted to try it right away. It just wasn't the right situation in terms of positioning on the field. We had to wait for the perfect moment.
 
"I actually felt a lot of pressure because I was so wide-open. Sometimes those are the balls you drop because you're thinking about it too much."
 
But Gibson kept his concentration, just as he did on a 24-yard pass from Keating over the middle for another score in the third quarter. That put SJU on top 27-7, and though the Tommies scored the game's final two touchdowns, the Johnnies held on for a big win.
 
The victory generated momentum that continued the rest of the way as SJU closed out the regular season on an eight-game winning streak, including a convincing 34-0 victory over fellow title contender Bethel – ranked No. 5 nationally at the time – on Oct. 27 in Collegeville. 
 
That was enough to win the MIAC and earn the league's automatic bid to the Division III playoffs.
 
"The defense, especially, really came along quickly after those first two games," said Gibson, who also was a standout in basketball for the Johnnies. "They stepped up their play to a pretty high level. We had a whole new defensive line and they started coming into their own.
 
The Johnnies kept winning in the postseason, defeating St. Norbert (Wis.) 27-20 at home in the first round, then holding off Wisconsin-Stevens Point 9-7 on a late 25-yard field goal by Brandon Keller in a game that turned out to be the final game played on grass at Clemens Stadium. 
 
The field was so torn up during the muddy conditions that day that it was unable to be cleared of snow when a winter storm hit Central Minnesota the following week.
 
That meant a national quarterfinal matchup with Pacific Lutheran (Wash.) had to be moved from Collegeville to the Fargodome three hours to the northwest up Interstate 94 (a situation that provided the impetus for installing a turf field at Clemens Stadium before the start of the 2002 season).
 
SJU won that game 31-6, setting up a rematch with Mount Union on the road in the semifinals. There, the road came to an end with a 35-14 setback. But the seeds that yielded another national semifinal berth the following year and a national title in 2003 had been planted.
 
"I think what happened that year did carry over into what a lot of those guys went on to do, including winning it all a couple years later," said Gibson, who finished the 2001 season with 51 catches for 774 yards and 11 touchdowns, earning All-MIAC honors.
 
"That was a source of pride for a lot of us, even if we weren't there anymore. We felt like we played a part in it too."
 
Of course, the 2001 season was also played against the backdrop of a turbulent time in America. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which occurred the Tuesday before SJU's loss to St. Olaf, had an impact on everyday life.
 
But Gibson said football served as a respite.
 
"Being able to go to practice and play games was a break from the craziness of what was going on in the world," he said. "No one really knew what was going to happen or what the future might look like. There was no sense of normalcy. But I think (head coach) John (Gagliardi) even told us to use our time together as a break from worrying about what was happening.
 
"You did see everyone pull together. It united us all, even as opponents on the football field. There was a real sense of patriotism in the air. I know the national anthem seemed to hit a little differently that season."
 
And, in the end, it was a pretty memorable one – in spite of the rough start.
 
"Resilient … that's the best way to describe that team," said Gibson, who with his brother Will (also a former Johnnie football player), now runs Whetstone Machine Inc.  in their hometown of Winona. "We were able to keep calm and stay the course, even after that 0-2 start. Some of that speaks to us as players. Some of that speaks to the ability of the coaching staff. They weren't shy about letting us know what we had to fix. 
 
"They told us what we needed to do, then we went out and got the job done."

10 years ago (2016)
Senior Rocky Harmon scored the game-winning goal with a 35-yard shot to the top right corner in the 75th minute as the SJU soccer team edged Augsburg 2-1 on Sept. 27 in Minneapolis.

20 years ago (2006)
Junior Kelly Fermoyle finished second overall in a time of 25:47 to lead the Johnnie cross country team to a first-place finish at the Wisconsin-Eau Claire Invitational on Sept. 29.

45 years ago (1981)
Rick Bell had 31 carries for 121 yards and scored two touchdowns as SJU topped Hamline 31-19 on Oct. 3 in St. Paul for the 300th victory in program history.