Tim Walz’s students introduce America to their teacher and coach at the DNC: ‘Best people for the job’

Jacob Reitan founded the first-ever gay-straight alliance at Mankato West High School in the late 1990s. Tim Walz was the group’s faculty adviser.

When he takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, former students of Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz will be watching from inside the school.

They will also be watching from inside the United Center in Chicago, where Mankato West alumni have traveled to support their former teachers.

“The Walzes are out of central casting for good, decent people,” Reitan, who graduated in 2000, told The Independent at the DNC.

That a “football coach, a person who was well respected in the halls of West high school, would be a source of support and safety as a gay student — it meant the world to me,” said Reitan, now an attorney and LGBT+ rights activist in Minnesota.

Laura Matson, a straight ally who co-founded the school’s GSA, has known both Walzes since she was a freshman in 1998.

When parents protested a day where students recognized LGBT+ rights during a week focused on human rights, Walz and the school’s principal “were steadfast in their support of us,” she told The Independent.

“It would’ve been a lot easier to cave to that pressure,” Watson said.

They didn’t, “and as a result they created a much more considerate and thoughtful and diverse community, and enabled a lot of iother students to be honest with who they were and come out at the time,” she said.

Mankato West’s “Mr. Walz” — who taught global geography and coached football, track and basketball — also helped decorate for prom and built a set for the school’s production of The Nerd, based on a design from his student Amanda Hinkle.

Inside the United Center on Wednesday, Hinkle told The Independent that