Mike Kraft/MDN Christian Deadmond signed a national letter of intent last week to play college football at Minot State beginning in the fall. Deadmond was a two-time all-state and two-time all-WDA selection during his high school career with Minot North.

Nov. 1, 2024.

It’s a date that is still etched in the mind of Christian Deadmond.

What started as a day filled with excitement with Deadmond and the Minot North football team playing its first playoff game in its inaugural varsity campaign turned into moments of physical and emotional pain that would span months.

Deadmond still remembers the play call: Panther, a power right running play. It was the first quarter of the Class AA quarterfinals at Sentinel Stadium when Deadmond took the handoff from quarterback Brayden Blikre, unaware it would be the final play of his junior year.

“The running lane was getting a little clustered up, so I broke down a little bit and went to push off with my left, but there was a guy coming from the back side A-gap that just reached his hand across on my left leg that I was cutting off and he pushed it down deeper and when he pushed it down I heard that pop and that’s when I knew that something broke,” Deadmond said.

Deadmond knew his season was over before head coach Jacob Holmen and the training staff made their way onto the field to attend to him. The audible pop he heard coupled with the immediate pain signified to Deadmond that this wasn’t just a stinger or something he could walk off and be back on the field in a matter of plays.

Holmen knew it too.

“That was a gut-wrenching one where you see him down and when I went out there with our athletic trainer, you know something bad was happening because he’s a tough kid who doesn’t go down easily,” Holmen said.

Both Deadmond and Holmen were correct about the severity of the injury. Tests confirmed that Deadmond has suffered a fracture to his tibia plateau, the flat top surface of the tibia where the thigh bone rests, forming the knee joint. It was just the latest setback for Deadmond, who had suffered injuries in both his freshman and sophomore campaigns that ended those seasons prematurely.

As a freshman, Deadmond suffered a fractured ankle at the growth plate against Minot High in the fifth game of the season. As a sophomore, he endured a freak accident away from football, cutting open his hand on window glass in his bedroom. He was attempting to level out the slanted window, unaware that the previous owners of the house had put caulk on it, so his hand slipped and went through the glass, cutting his hand open from his wrist to his pinkie and the side of his palm. The injury cost him the final game of the season.

Deadmond had surgery on his knee, kicking off five months of intense rehabilitation. He couldn’t put any pressure on his leg for the first month. Along with not being able to play in Minot North’s semifinal game against West Fargo Horace, the injury also cost him the basketball season in the winter as well as the track and field season in the spring.

Deadmond spent the winter and most of the spring in physical therapy, attending sessions 3-4 times per week at Trinity Health under the guidance of an instructor that happened to be the father of one of the Minot North coaches. They worked on building back up the muscles in his leg as well as working on his sense of balance.

But there was a problem. Deadmond noticed that his knee kept swelling after the PT sessions and there was still an abnormal amount of pain in the area. He brought his concerns to the doctor and additional imaging revealed a torn meniscus that initial testing had failed to identify. That meant a second surgery and even more recovery time. After five months from the initial injury, Deadmond was back under the knife in May, which would keep him out of activities for another month.

While the setback was frustrating, Deadmond remained upbeat and stuck to his rehab assignments. However, as someone who had aspirations of playing college football, he worried that his inability to participate in football activities over the summer would cost him that opportunity.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do any summer camps or show myself to any college programs at all because I wasn’t going to be able to participate,” Deadmond said. “I always thought I was going to be able to play (my senior year). I just didn’t know how well I was going to produce again as a player.”

Deadmond was back on the football field in the summer, participating in preseason practice with the Sentinels, but the coaching staff was cautious with their all-state running back and linebacker. They held him out of their season opener against Williston. And despite his best efforts to suit up the following week, he was unable to convince Holmen and they sidelined him again against Fargo South.

“Going into the year we were going to be very careful with him early on because those first four games aren’t conference games, so they don’t impact any of your playoff seeding,” Holmen said. “We held him out Week1. He wanted to get going Week 2, but we just weren’t comfortable yet and then we started to mix him in Week 3 and on. He was practicing the whole year, but just to be safe and err on the side of caution, we were careful with him. Later in the summer we were concerned about how much we’d have him, but I think being careful with him paid off because it kept him more fresh and he didn’t have the wear and tear that he would have. Originally, he would have been our starter at running back right away and taken a bulk of the carries.”

Deadmond made his season debut in Week 3 against Grand Forks Red River on Sept. 12, carrying the ball three times for 25 yards in a 45-14 win. Deadmond would play in Minot North’s final nine games, making it to the finish line of the season for the first time in his high school career.

The early season rest paid dividends for the Sentinels, as Deadmond had his three best statistical games all in the postseason. Deadmond rushed for 120 yards and two touchdowns on 20 carries in Minot North’s quarterfinal victory. During the regular season, Deadmond never had more than eight carries in a game and hadn’t eclipsed 100 yards.

Despite suffering the first loss of the season at the Dakota Bowl against Devils Lake, Deadmond rushed for 107 yards and a touchdown on 16 carries and caught his only two passes of the year, both going for touchdowns.

Offensively, Deadmond finished second on the team in rushing as a senior, finishing with 545 yards and 10 touchdowns on 88 carries. On defense, he recorded 52 tackles – five for loss.

“This year was really a culmination of a lot of work in the weight room to get to a point where he was a big load to tackle,” Holmen said. “He ran the ball hard on offense and was invaluable on the defensive side for us as well. Just a really good kid, a leader, a guy that would try and do things right all the time.”

While it didn’t end up being a storybook ending for Deadmond, he left his mark on the program that grew as he did. As a freshman, Deadmond was one of the original 22 players who took the field for the Sentinels in their first year in operation and two years before they would become a varsity program.

“It was fun for me,” Deadmond said. “Looking back at it, it was kind of funny because we didn’t even have a full offense or defense to practice. Our coaches were playing as scout players. Coach (Zach) Rudolph would play as a linebacker and so would coach (Steven) Ralph. Coach Holmen would get in there sometimes, too. It was really fun though.”

Deadmond literally grew with the program.

“Early on and this was across the board, but we weren’t very tough and that’s common with freshmen kids that are playing the game of football,” Holmen said. “They have to learn how to play. From a strength aspect, Christian was very long and lanky. He didn’t have a lot of muscle mass on him at the time and if you see him now, he’s a fully-grown man. He put a lot of time in the weight room. With his knee injury, he was really able to hammer out the upper body side of things, so he filled out into his frame really well. We knew we could get him to that point. It was just a matter of time where some kids mature and develop at different rates, but Christian’s a big human whose frame filled out over the course of four years because of his work in the weight room and his dedication to his craft of trying to become a better football player.”

Deadmond’s name will live on for eternity at Minot North as a football history answer, as he was the first Sentinel to score a touchdown. The history moment came against the Bismarck Century JV team in Minot North’s first varsity game in which the Sentinels won 35-7.

Deadmond was 19-4 in two varsity seasons with the Sentinels. As a junior, he led the team in rushing with 872 yards and 10 touchdowns on 117 carries. He also caught two passes for 112 yards and two touchdowns. On defense, he recorded 21 tackles, one sack and five quarterback pressures. Deadmond served as a team captain that year.

Deadmond was a two-time All-WDA selection at both running back and linebacker and was named second-team all-state in 2024 and first-team all-state in 2025.

Football has been part of Deadmond’s life since the third grade when he strapped on the helmet and pads for the first time at the local YMCA. He would later play middle school football at Ramstad before joining the Minot North program as a freshman. Football served as a great way to get out a lot of pent up energy he always carried with him as a kid.

“It was really just the output of being able to be myself and being able to be hyperactive and just have fun,” Deadmond said. “I was a very hyper kid and would do a lot of moving around, so I feel like that really helped me out.”

Deadmond experimented with wide receiver and safety before ultimately settling on running back by eighth grade and safety when he joined Minot North. He was drawn to running back because he wanted the ball in his hands as much as possible and coach Rudolph believed he had the size necessary to be a good outside linebacker.

“Christian’s a tough kid who works really hard and loves the game of football,” Holmen said. “On the football field, from the time he was a freshman, he was our best ‘feel’ guy. Just the knack of playing the game of football and understanding leverage and how to use his body and all that. He was a great tackler and turned into a very physical downhill runner, which is what we’ve been preaching as our style of offense for four years now and he bought into it.”

Deadmond’s high school career is over, but his time on the football field is not. He always envisioned playing college football, and that dream was realized when he signed his national letter of intent to play up the street at Minot State. He will primarily play linebacker and defensive end for the Beavers under co-defensive coordinators Tommy Langford and Darryl McBride.

Deadmond and Minot State have been in contact since the start of his junior season. He also had interest from MSU Moorhead and Jamestown, and Sioux Falls gave him the opportunity to walk on to the team, but Minot State’s proximity to home played a big part in his decision.

“It’s a great community and I have a lot of tools around me that I can still use and I feel like the school is good too,” Deadmond said.

Deadmond intends to major in Biology and plans to attend veterinarian school to become a vet following the completion of his undergraduate degree. His favorite animal? It’s not a dog or a cat, which he shares a household with, but a wolverine.

While his path to playing college football was riddled with adversity, Deadmond learned a valuable lesson from it all.

“I can do anything if I put my mind to it,” Deadmond said. “You can’t keep a negative attitude on anything because it just creates more negativity. You have to stay positive and forget about it and keep moving forward and things will change. You just have to believe in the process.”