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Whatever Needs To Be Done: The AD Who Got Forklift Certified

Aug 19, 2026

5 min Read

Mike Hennen scrubs floors and runs Friday nights at Forest Lake. With Hudl, the Friday night part is easier than ever.

Mike Hennen figured that after 22 years teaching math and nearly three decades on the sidelines, becoming an athletic director would finally mean a good seat at the game.

Eight years into the job at Minnesota’s Forest Lake High School, he now knows better.

"You're kind of a do-it-all. Whatever needs to be done, you do," he said of the job. "If I have to scrub a floor, I scrub a floor."

The part of his role that surprises people most is the part nobody sees. Getting officials, scheduling games, booking buses — everyone expects that. What they don't picture is their activities director on a forklift at 11 p.m., moving porta-potties from the softball tournament over to the track meet.

He had to get forklift certified to do it.

A Surprising Standard

With everything on his plate, Hennen doesn't make calls alone. When a new tool comes up, he gets his coaches in the room first, to "make sure they want to use it and they're going to buy into it," he said. And he holds himself to a standard most people wouldn't expect from an AD.

"Technically, we're customer service," he said. "I feel like I'm customer service, trying to get a good experience for our kids, for our families, for our community."

Hennen runs the department like customer service, and one system is how he delivers it.

Watching from Grand Marais to Bora Bora

For years, Hennen thought of Hudl the way a lot of ADs do — the film system he used back when he was coaching football. That's not how he uses it now.

"The biggest part of it for me is just that livestreaming," he said. "I was in Bora Bora watching our hockey game on Hudl."

The reach is the whole point. "Grandma's up in Grand Marais? Jump on here, let's watch this on the Hudl livestream," he said. Somewhere between 15 and 17 Forest Lake programs stream through Hudl now, from football down to the alpine ski team that asked for an account this year.

Principal Jim Caldwell has watched the same shift from his office. "It's how our fans enter the game. It's how they experience the livestreams from our gyms," he said. "It's grown to be a huge part of what we do with all of our sports."

"The bigger the [Hudl] package, the better the value. The payoff is in saved time for coaches, for ticket takers, for counting money." Jim Caldwell, Principal, Forest Lake HS

A Game Changer at the Gate

This year, Forest Lake moved to Hudl Ticketing, and the change showed up fast. Fans tap a phone or a card and walk through — no typing in a code, no punching a card number at the gate. About 95% of fans tap through digitally now. "It's been a game changer," Hennen said. He folded the same system into their concessions, which used to be cash only.

The money that comes back from every ticket through the Hudl Ticketing rebate goes somewhere specific. "It goes into a fund to put back into our facilities," said Hennen. Forest Lake recently put $5,000 into grooming its infields. "Things like that that we don't have in our maintenance budget,” he explained.

The gate math isn't abstract for Caldwell, either. The school ran its prom on Hudl Ticketing this spring. "We loaded 700 people into prom in probably less than 20 minutes," he said.

His advice to any principal whose AD comes asking: "The bigger the [Hudl] package, the better the value. The payoff is in saved time for coaches, for ticket takers, for counting money."

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Film Junkies

For all the ways Hudl runs game night now, film is still the foundation. And for Hennen's coaches, its biggest gift is time. Head football coach Brad Bisco calls his staff "film junkies," and Hudl gets them what they need fast.

"We film every single practice. We put it into our system, we push it out to the kids, we draw things on it for the kids," Bisco said. "Hudl has given me so much time back. It's nice to just pull up a game or a practice and see what we need to do."

That time amounts to something bigger: kids who can see what their coaches are telling them. "You can physically see it for yourself," Bisco said. "Here's exactly what I have to do next time."

One of his defensive linemen used that edge to break Minnesota's career record for sacks and tackles for loss, then moved on to Division I football.

Left it Better

Hennen measures the job in relationships, not results. The moment that gets him is the text that lands after a kid graduates. "They'll say, 'Hey, you're around more than my college AD,' or 'I appreciate all you did for us,'" he said. "The relationship part of this job is by far the best part of this job."

Forest Lake gives him plenty to be proud of. The football program went from the worst in the state to one of the best, Caldwell said, and Ranger Stadium sold out the whole way through. It's a blue-collar community, close enough to the Twin Cities to be a big school, far enough out to still feel like the lake town it is. "It's really a family," Caldwell said.

Ask Hennen what he wants people to remember, and it isn't the forklift, the gate lines or the record book. "I want people to know I left it better than when I got here," he said.

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