As a senior at Normal Community High School, Tye Niekamp’s goal was “finding someone who was going to coach me hard” on the college level.
He didn’t have to look far. The man for the job lived in the same house.
Travis Niekamp is Illinois State’s defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach. As a parent, he is “extremely proud” of sons Tye, the Redbirds’ All-American junior middle linebacker, and Dexter, a redshirt freshman linebacker.
“Not just for the success they’ve had on the field, but off the field,” he said. “It’s been a lot of fun watching them get better week by week.”
The Niekamps have helped ISU advance to the semifinals of the FCS playoffs. Next up is Villanova at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in Philadelphia.
One day, this inspired run will be a treasured family memory. Not yet. With a berth in the national championship game on the line, sentiment will have to wait.
“Unfortunately, right now I’m not a parent. I’m a coach,” Travis said. “I’m more consumed with what do we need to do better? How can we improve this week compared to last week?
“Sometimes, it’s not a lot of fun. Sometimes, Coach Niekamp comes out and he has to yell at his sons a little bit more than he would like to try to push them because there’s always more to give and more to get going. There’s probably some frustration with that on the sons’ part, which is understandable.”
More than ever, Tye Niekamp is getting coached hard. Head coach Brock Spack calls him “the quarterback of our team on defense,” a title that comes with responsibility and expectation.
“He can’t make mistakes, especially mental errors,” Spack said.
That means the defensive coordinator is frequently in his face and his ear.
“It’s not very much fun. I mean, it happened today,” Tye Niekamp said. “There’s not a lot of happiness with him right now, but it’s fine. It’s a great thing because when he yells at me he does push me a lot, makes me practice a little bit harder even if I don’t want to admit it.
“I didn’t have a lot of options coming out of high school, but I knew if I came here and played for my dad, he was going to coach me the way I wanted to be coached and it was going to help me improve a lot as a football player. I’ve improved every single year I’ve been here dramatically.”
The tough love has helped Tye to a second straight first-team All-America season in which he was named the Missouri Valley Conference Defensive Player of the Year. His 150 tackles and 13.5 tackles-for-loss lead the Redbirds.
Dexter Niekamp also has played in all 15 games, contributing 46 tackles, five tackles-for-loss, three sacks, an interception and two forced fumbles.
He said he “knew what to expect” from his father when coming to ISU, adding, “I’ve learned that if you just do your job and play with effort, you’re not going to get yelled at because you’re doing what you’re supposed to do. As long as you do that and make him happy, you’ll be pretty well off.”
Spack knows what the Niekamps are experiencing. He coached his son, Brent, at ISU and said, “You’re always harder on the ones you love.”
“There have been some interesting conversations, one-sided conversations, between 46 (Tye) and his father throughout the years,” Spack said. “Sometimes I’ll pull him (Tye) over and say, ‘Just listen to what he’s telling you. Just do that and you’ll make him a lot happier.’
“They’re both good students, both good kids, no issues. They play like what you think a coach’s kid would be like.”
Travis Niekamp also played at ISU from 1993-97 and was an assistant coach under Todd Berry in 1998 and 1999. The Redbirds reached the FCS semifinals in 1999.
He is in his eighth year back at ISU as defensive coordinator and calls his sons “fantastic young men who have worked really, really hard to get where they’re at.”
He also said this: “They have to continue to work hard to stay where they’re at and improve. I think that’s the biggest thing. That’s made it easy for me with our relationship as father-sons because they do handle the coaching very well.
“It’s not always fair the way they get treated by me and I sound like I’m an absolute monster. But I can do it sometimes just because of the expectations and the demands that we have. They could freak out and scream and run off the field, but they handle it very well. They take the coaching and keep moving forward.”
Dexter Niekamp said it helps to “hear the message, not the tone.”
“The tone can affect how you take it and if you take it personally,” he said. “If you do that, you’re just going to feel sorry for yourself and not take the coaching. You won’t improve by doing that.”
The desire to compete and improve is strong for the Niekamps. Tye said he and Dexter grew up competing in everything and despised losing, to the point things often became physical.
“There were a lot of fights,” Tye said. “If you lost, there was probably going to be a fight and you’re probably the one who started it. I just think it’s how we were raised, playing sports. Our dad’s a competitive guy, our mom (Tracy) is competitive.”
As the fights became more frequent, Travis and Tracy Niekamp got creative. One Christmas, they gave their boys boxing gloves.
“It was, ‘All right, you want to do it, put the gloves on,’” Travis said. “When it was in the winter they’d go fight in the basement. In the summertime we’d kick them outside. Maybe our neighbors thought we were nuts.”
These days, the brothers argue occasionally, but have “grown out of fighting with each other,” Tye said.
Their shared mission is getting ISU to the FCS title game for the first time since 2014. What a moment that would be for a strong-willed, tight-knit football family.
“Eventually, I will be able to take a deep breath and really, really look back on it and enjoy it,” Travis Niekamp said. “But we’re not ready for this thing to end yet for me to reflect. We have to find a way to keep getting better and win football games.”
That is, keep coaching hard.
Playing that way, too.
