Chadron State College Athletics

Rose calls himself “an average athlete who loved sports.”  He was a three-sport letterman at Chadron State in the mid-1950s, excelling as a running back and linebacker in football. He also played on the school’s first baseball teams and earned a letter in basketball his senior year in 1957-58.
Rose had an outstanding coaching career. His first coaching stop was at Edgemont, S.D., just a few miles from Provo High School that he had attended. He coached the Moguls just one year, but his football team was undefeated, his basketball team went 18-7 and his track team placed second at the South Dakota State Meet
He spent the next five years at Lusk, Wyo., where three of his teams were unbeaten and he had a 38-5-1 record. After two years at Sheridan, Wyo., where one of his football teams won a conference championship, Rose spent three years at Bayard, where the football teams went 19-8 and won two conference titles, the wrestling team he had started won the Class C state championship in 1968 during its second year of existence and his track team finished second at the state meet ’68.
Rose was the head football and wrestling coach at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Mont., 1969-74, taking over downtrodden programs and making them competitive. He spent the last 16 years of his career as a teacher and coach in the Billings Public Schools.  During a four-year stint as the wrestling coach at West High, he had 11 state champions.  
After he had retired, his son Todd, who was coaching at Shepherd High School in Montana, was diagnosed with cancer and required chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. Todd arranged to have his father fill in for him. At age 63, Francis Rose was back on the mat, demonstrating the moves and holds he knew so well. The Shepherd team missed winning the state championship by three points. One of the team’s three state champions was Emmett Willson, who in 2004 as a senior at Montana State-Northern became the first and only NAIA wrestler to win the Dan Hodge Trophy that goes to the nation’s outstanding wrestler.
“My one year in the program did not create this super wrestler. My son had the most to do with that development.  But it was a thrill for me to work with Emmett. What is more important is that my son beat leukemia and is coaching wrestling again.”
Rose added that he would like to be remembered as a good father, husband and coach and a man of character. He added that the best definition of character he ever heard was, “It is how you act when no one is looking.”