There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to let go of competing in the sport they love. It can come by way of injury or it can be the result just not having the competitive drive anymore.

For Austin grad Nate Justice, the drive is still strong. Justice, a former Packer quarterback, recently took on his first full-time coaching job as he is the quarterbacks coach and pass game coordinator at Southwestern College, an NAIA school that offers athletic scholarships in Winfield, Kansas.

At Southwestern, Justice is part of a rebuilding project as the Moundbuilders football team went just 1-10 overall last season. The team is off to a 1-2 overall start this season.

Justice didn’t just pick Southwestern randomly, he ended up there because of his connections with University Minnesota head football coach Jerry Kill. Justice was a student assistant when he was at the University of Minnesota and he was a grad assistant and wide receivers coach at Winona State University for the last two years.

When Southwestern hired Brad Griffin, who played under Kill at Emporia State University, Justice saw his chance to coach with the Moundbuilders, who Kill once played for.

After a phone call to Kill, Justice was able earn a job on the coaching staff at Southwestern and he now has the freedom to take what he’s learned over the past few years and apply it to an offense.

“I just love being out on the field and getting to coach the guys up. Watching them have success after you coach them up, there’s something about it. It’s rewarding,” Justice said. “There’s nothing else I can see myself doing at this point in my life.”

When Justice was a the U of M, he saw a group of coaches who came up from smaller schools take over a Division I program and turn it into a respectable team. He said he was able to observe and learn from that experience and now he’s being thrown into a full-time coaching job a little sooner than he thought he would out of college.

“I learned a lot and not just from [Kill], but the guys that worked for him. They’re all passionate about what they do and they all started at the lower level,” Justice said. “Sometimes it can be harder to keep the passion at the lower level, but you see guys like that and it gives you extra motivation that it can be done.”

Justice said his workload is a little diminished now because he has grad assistants who have to do some of the busy work, but his position he has a lot more pressure on him.

“It’s exciting and challenging at the same time,” Justice said.

For updates on local sports, follow Rocky Hulne on twitter @RockyHulneADH.