Standing Tall: Cottage Grove’s Bridgens rebuilding Lions athletics

By Pierre Weil / [email protected]

COTTAGE GROVE – For someone who grew up dreaming of being a filmmaker, Garrett Bridgens sure has endured plenty of plot twists in life. The Cottage Grove High School athletic director has gone from a reluctant educator to substitute teacher to coach to overseeing the entire athletics department at his hometown school. Along the way, he married and began raising a family of four children. In 2022, his wife, Heather Cunningham Bridgens, died after a battle with cancer. She was a beloved figure in Cottage Grove education as well, and an entire community shared Bridgens’ grief – and provided immeasureable support, he said. 

“That was obviously super hard and traumatizing, and just really hard to go through,” Bridgens said. “She got diagnosed, they told us she didn’t have very long to live, but we went through some treatments, and she made it about a year. That was a hard, really hard, year.”