Kaia Anderson, online publishing coordinator

On July 26, the Vixen won their first national championship at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. While many players have attended Augsburg, such as Sam Anderson and Ashley Waalen, the team’s offensive line coach, Michele Braun, started coaching at Augsburg in fall 2025 as an assistant coach for the men’s football team. Then, in the spring of this year, she was appointed head coach of the new women’s flag football team.

Braun played for the Minnesota Vixen for 20 years. She was an original Vixen, joining the team in its first season in 1999. After she retired in 2019, she became part of the coaching staff. On Monday night, Braun joined me over a Zoom call to talk about this most recent Vixen season. During the interview, Braun wore a red-and-white Vixen sweater and showed me her blue championship hat. She was very friendly and showed a clear passion for women’s football.

The Vixen are the longest continuously operating professional women’s tackle football team in the nation. The first two teams were the Minnesota Vixen and the Lake Michigan Minx. “It was ironic because a lot of the Twin Cities or Minnesota players who tried out made the Lake Michigan Minx team, and a lot of the outstate and superstar players they had were on the Minnesota Vixen. Well, we ended up losing every game,” Braun said. After this first season, many more teams were formed in places like New York, Tampa Bay and Houston. “It just grew,” Braun said. When asked how it feels to coach the team she once played for, she answered, “It’s very humbling. I always felt a sense of giving back. I put 20 years into this team, and I really wanted to give back to the next generation of players.”

This past season, the Vixen played nine games with only one loss. The first game was against the St. Louis Slam, their rival. This game overlapped with the final game of the Augsburg flag football season, so Braun was unable to make it to St. Louis with the Vixen. She promised the team that if they won, she would go outside to yell and celebrate. Until April 25, the Vixen had never beaten the St. Louis Slam. This game set the tone for the season, launching the Vixen into an incredibly successful run where they went 8-1. The one game they lost was to the Slam a month later. Braun described this loss as a wake-up call, saying they had to get into gear before the championship games.

When they arrived at the championship games, the Vixen dominated, winning 42-14 in the final against the Pittsburgh Passion. “I never go into a game thinking anything is going to be easy, but I tell you, after the first five minutes I was like, this is really easy, like we got this,” Braun said. After 27 years dreaming of the moment—20 years as a player and seven as a coach—this was a huge moment for Braun, who seemed to get emotional while describing the win.

“Oh, it was glorious […] it was just as glorious as you think.”