Matt Lombardi trades football coaching spotlight at Maple Grove to join an ensemble cast at Minnetonka

Reviewing the cast list sheet for “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” Matt Lombardi felt disbelief, so he checked it twice.

As a student at Rich East High School in the southern suburbs of Chicago, Lombardi assumed he was better suited for the Pharaoh role, which required an Elvis impersonation. Playing the lead role of Joseph that Donny Osmond played in the 1999 musical comedy-drama film — an adaptation of the 1972 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical — ranked as what Lombardi called “my pièce de résistance” of his 11 plays in high school.

Today, his friends on Facebook reflect both his time in theater as well as the connections he made as a three-sport athlete (football, wrestling and baseball) at Rich East.

“You’re in the spotlight,” Lombardi said. “You have to come prepared. There are butterflies to puke whether before a theater performance just like there is a sports performance. It helped my coaching career greatly because it gave me confidence up front to succeed in big moments. I’ve always taken pride in my theater background.”

This season, Lombardi is happy to be part of an ensemble cast with Minnetonka football, deferring to Skippers head coach Mark Esch, a veteran of two championship teams at Mankato West, which won the Class 4A title in 2008 and the 5A title in 2014. The Skippers play Maple Grove — Lombardi’s previous coaching gig — for the Class 6A state championship on Friday night in U.S. Bank Stadium. It would be Minnetonka’s second state title; the first came in 2004.

“He’s an unbelievable coach, and he lets me run the defense,” Lombardi said of Esch.

Lombardi moved in the spring from Maple Grove, where he was the coach for 13 seasons before resigning in March.

Lombardi said his ties to both the Maple Grove and Minnetonka players run deep. At Maple Grove, up to 90 varsity players showed up for the daily offseason workouts at 5:50 a.m.

“They are great kids at Maple Grove, and it’s pretty rewarding to see how far they have come,” Lombardi said. “It’s an interesting dynamic to be outside the painting, but obviously I want a win for Minnetonka.”

Just like a theater performance, football is a shared, emotional experience. It also provides an opportunity for people to gather and cheer on performers. And in both cases, it involves building a community, something that has long motivated Lombardi.

“That was my goal at Maple Grove,” he said. “And I’ve always told my teams, ‘Don’t complain about how many people are in the stands. Be worth cheering for. If you want the Friday night spotlight, you have to be worth cheering for.’ Football is such a powerful vehicle. If we don’t use it to the best of our abilities, we are wasting a great opportunity for ourselves and people around us.”

Deconstructing myths around his championship defenses has also been important. Once he arrived at Maple Grove, he showed his new players the Wayzata 2010 defensive roster and the Trojans players’ unspectacular heights and weights. The size of their hearts was another matter.

“Just because you’re not granted the greatest hand in life,” Lombardi said, “that doesn’t mean you still can’t be great.”

Minnetonka players received the same message.

Senior linebacker Dylan Hudgens said Lombardi “has a lot of FBI … that’s what we call football intellect. We have a lot of smaller sophomores called up right now, but our defense is designed for athletes to fly around and make plays.”

Lombardi is the rare coach to appear in Prep Bowls with three schools: with Wayzata (three), Maple Grove (two) and now the Skippers. He’s eager to see his current players seize the spotlight Friday night.

If he can find a VCR, those players might get to enjoy watching their coach commanding the stage as Joseph.

“I still have a VHS tape of that performance,” Lombardi said.