Highland Park had a gentleman in Scottish garb playing the bagpipes during warmups for its football homecoming game Saturday. Once competition commenced, however, it was the hosts who were blown away by Washburn, 49-0.
Henry Eichten ran 17 times for 181 yards and three touchdowns, and backfield mate Kevin Hayes III ran 13 times for 73 yards and two touchdowns while the beleaguered Scots didn’t produce a first down until late in the fourth quarter.
“We came off our best game of the season, and we had a good week of practice,” said Dave Zeitchick, Highland Park’s 22nd-year head coach, whose team beat Como Park-Washington Tech last week, 42-6.
“We thought we were progressively getting better, but they just outmuscled us and knocked us down a peg. We’re devastated after falling off a cliff.”
Washburn quarterback Andrew Backhaus ran seven times for 23 yards and a touchdown, and he completed 6 of 15 passes for 49 yards and another score. He had a pass intercepted.
Highland Park was led by quarterback Eric Reed, who ran 18 times for 47 yards, often while escaping a collapsing pocket or downfield congestion caused by a lack of blocking. Reed completed 1 of 5 passes for 1 yard.
Zeitchick said Reed is truly a running back filling in under center for junior Leo Clifford, who has been out since suffering a knee injury late last season.
“We’re trying to use his skills, and he has done a great job. But he’s not a traditional quarterback,” said Zeitchick, noting that Clifford chose to sit out the current football campaign in hopes of being able to play basketball this winter.
“We had to reconfigure our offensive plan and we love (Reed), but we just have to help him more.”
Washburn pounded away on the ground, although coach Ryan Galindo wanted more precise execution from his troops, who improved to 4-2 while dropping the Scots to 2-4.
“The point is to chase greatness, and the process for that is what we want to focus on,” Galindo said. “It’s all about doing the little things to make the bigger things come out the way you want.
“We have some blocking scheme things we need to clean up, and some of our playmakers didn’t make plays like they normally do.”
Eichten, 6 feet and 184 pounds, and Hayes, 5-10 and 225 pounds, wore down a Scots defense that spent most of the game on the field.
“They’re tough runners,” said Galindo, in his 11th year at the Millers’ helm. “They’re seniors who want the ball in their hands, downhill runners who don’t mind contact. They’re going to make their one cut like they’re taught and then go as fast as they can.”
Highland Park’s highlight was a Ronald Thompson interception inside his team’s 20-yard line that ended the visitors’ first drive after halftime.
The Scots host St. Paul City Conference rival Central next week, while Washburn, winner of three of its last four games, clashes with Minneapolis Southwest.
“All we did was lose one football game today,” Zeitchick said. “It was a horrible loss, and we’re super disappointed. But we just have to wake up and get ready for Central.”
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Stuart Sellars, founder of Travel Graphics International, a map-making company, talks about his career in his Roseville office on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. The company is celebrating its 50th year in business. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
Sellars holds a map of downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
Sellars talks about his career in his Roseville office on Tuesday. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
A map of larger Minnesota cities that Stuart Sellars, founder of Travel Graphics International, has in his Roseville office on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. The company is celebrating its 50th year in business. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
Stuart Sellars, founder of Travel Graphics International, talks about creating this map of Hawaii. The company is celebrating its 50th year in business. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
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Stuart Sellars, founder of Travel Graphics International, a map-making company, talks about his career in his Roseville office on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. The company is celebrating its 50th year in business. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
Bitten by the travel bug at an early age, Stuart Sellars has spent most of his life helping others with the same affliction get to where they want to go.
Born in England and trained as an engineer, Sellars is the founder and art director of St. Paul-area map-making company Travel Graphics International, which marked 50 years in business this week.
An impressive milestone in any industry, TGI weathered the Internet boom and the rise of GPS mapping with a custom illustrated, 3D map style that emphasizes major thoroughfares and prominent geographic and architectural landmarks.
Popular in the travel and hospitality industries, clients of TGI have ranged from visitors bureaus and chambers of commerce to the Four Seasons Hawaii and United Airlines. With more than 10 million maps distributed, if you’ve ever grabbed a map from a brochure rack, there’s a chance it’s one of theirs.
Founded in 1975 in Minneapolis with about $10,000, TGI wouldn’t reach its height until the mid-1990s when it did nearly $1.5 million in sales and relocated to Roseville as a home-based business. Nearly 30 years later, the business today is still finding ways to remain relevant and keep its maps in travelers’ hands.
Mapping a map: 1970s
A map of larger Minnesota cities that Stuart Sellars, founder of Travel Graphics International, has in his Roseville office on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. The company is celebrating its 50th year in business. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
When the company launched in 1975, it was the first of its kind in many ways, Sellars said.
Without Google Earth or satellite imaging, researching a city in order to document it was a monstrous task.
“I would charter a helicopter and fly over the downtown areas, strapped in and leaning out to take 200 to 300 photographs,” Sellars said. “Then I’d have to drive every street to match the aerial photographs with the buildings.”
Thousands of pieces of reference materials were needed to draw the maps in 1970s and 1980s, including aerial images from the newspaper, blueprints from the planning office, travel books and postcards, Sellars said.
At the time, an average hand-drawn map would cost $70,000 to $80,000 to create, Sellars said, with the lion’s share going to production and roughly $15,000 earmarked for research, including flights, room and board and onsite photographs.
“I tried every other way of doing it less expensively, but I found that you could not get the view that you needed,” he said.
Compiling the research usually took a few weeks, Sellars said, and the artist would then take two to three months to draw the map.
“That research was the key part,” Sellars said. “I think one of the reasons we really didn’t have competition for 20 years was because it was so expensive to produce.”
The little competition TGI did have, “We’d usually end up suing because they would trace our maps,” Sellars said.
Mapping a map: 2020s
Instead of hanging out of the side of a helicopter to snap a reference photo, TGI’s Illustrator Arkady Roytman consults Google Maps, Google Earth, social media and company websites.
Using Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop, Roytman painstakingly crafts entire cities, one digital building at a time.
“I make an isometric grid, then I try to capture the essence of the building I am trying to illustrate,” Roytman said. “Using the photos and the reference material, I try to find a good face of the building, something distinct that somebody looking at the map could recognize.”
While the maps are accurate, they are not drawn to scale and certain liberties must be taken, Roytman explained. For example, a building might be rotated so its most recognizable features are apparent to a visitor.
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Roytman, the company’s sole artist, earned a degree in sequential art, worked at several art galleries and illustrated coloring books before joining the mapping business in 2018.
“Their main concern was the unique style of the map,” Roytman said of his hiring. “They wanted someone who could mimic that style and that is one of my skills.”
Roytman likens the colorful, whimsical nature of the maps to Martin Handford’s “Where’s Waldo” and Spanish-Mexican-American cartoonist Sergio Aragones, known for creating the comic book “Groo the Wanderer.”
As opposed to the months it would take to draw a map in the 70s, Roytman said he can create a map from scratch in just weeks with certain projects taking only hours.
Most maps of the continental U.S. are printed at the John Roberts Co. in Coon Rapids and the company’s Hawaii maps are printed at Edward Enterprises in Honolulu, Sellars said.
Staying relevant
Throughout its 50 years in business, TGI needed to evolve in order to stay afloat.
What began as promotional poster maps of Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean would soon expand to maps of major U.S. cities and eventually grow to offer the now-ubiquitous map-brochure.
In 1979, TGI entered its first deal with United Airlines to supply maps of its major destinations. During the 1980s, the company researched and published maps of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, Phoenix, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.
“What’s really cool about the business model is that he created these maps ages ago and he is still able to use them and customize them to each client,” Roytman said.
In the 1990s, the company created online versions of its illustrated maps and developed proprietary software that allowed businesses to customize its products for their customers. In the late 90s, TGI entered a deal with Hawaiian Airlines and its second deal with United Airlines to supply in-flight maps.
In more recent years, TGI created a map for Visit Inver Grove Heights, the city’s convention and visitors bureau.
A custom map made for Visit Inver Grove Heights, circa 2021, by St. Paul-based Travel Graphics International. The map was placed at hotels to connect visitors with local businesses. (Courtesy of Travel Graphics International)
“I was looking for a custom map to help promote hotels, sports facilities, restaurants and shopping to visitors,” said Eric Satre, former executive director for Visit Inver Grove Heights, in an email.
TGI was able to create a map that fit the bill and they were placed at hotels in the city as a way to connect visitors to local businesses, said Satre, who now works as the destination marketing manager for Destination: Woodbury.
Today, TGI’s maps include QR-linked digital versions that update in real time and a virtual concierge service, ConciergeMaps.com, that recommends activities and helps with reservations.
Jennifer Wedel, Sellars’ daughter, is currently working part-time for the company, helping to rebuild its Hawaii business. The company hopes to reopen its Honolulu office next year, which closed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks put a damper on travel.
“The maps and the way they’re enjoyed so much still by tourists, that’s always been an especially successful model and product in big tourist destinations like Hawaii,” said Wedel, who has worked full- and part-time for the company over the last decade. “It’s a natural place for us to work on rebuilding.”
TGI also has plans to offer territory-based equity distributorships so local entrepreneurs can own territory rights, sell ad space and share in map revenue.
False starts, mafia run-in
While it is the most successful of Sellars’ map companies, TGI was not the first nor the second.
Prior to TGI, Sellars worked for Vancouver-based Trans Continental Cartographers where he sold ad space for the vibrant, cartoon-style map maker.
When Trans Continental Cartographers went out of business, Sellars and three friends picked up where it left off with their new business, Inter Continental Cartographers. What seemed like a good idea at the time, it would unfold in ways Sellars never saw coming.
Sellars recounted a particular business trip in 1971 where, upon returning home to Vancouver, he discovered that members of the Canadian mafia had commandeered Inter Continental Cartographers due to unpaid debts by one of the co-owners.
As Sellars describes it: The organized crime cell planned to transport drugs into the U.S. by storing them in the rolled up maps inside of polyethylene tubes. The thinking at the time was that K9 units wouldn’t be able to detect the substances due to the tubing and the ink on the map, he said.
During this time, Sellars said he and his family were threatened and followed by a black limousine. Out of fear, he decided to send his family back to England, he said.
After alerting the Canadian authorities to their situation, Sellars and his business partners safely relocated to Toronto.
With Vancouver, and the mafia, behind him, Sellars would go on to have an ownership stake in map-making businesses Archar Inc., Archar Western Inc. and finally as the sole owner of Archar International Inc., which now does business as Travel Graphics International.
Looking for buyer
At 85 years old, Sellars is hoping to retire soon and pass the business on to a fellow traveler.
Sellars, who is the sole investor with 90% ownership of the company, said he has invested around $4 million into TGI since its founding. The other 10% of the company belongs to Paula Hylle, a longtime employee of TGI.
“I’ve never become wealthy in the business, but I’ve felt wealthy and I got to do things,” said Sellars, who has visited nearly 100 countries.
His home office in Roseville is proof of a life lived on the road: brochure maps strewn about, a floor globe in the corner, cartography-themed wallpaper and a bookshelf where each title lists a different country.
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Of all the places he’s traveled, he said a safari in East Africa remains his favorite. Sites still on his list include Iceland, Greenland and parts of Central America.
When asked if he’d take the reins, Roytman said with a chuckle, “I’m happy to continue my role as the artist, but I don’t have the business acumen.”
Wedel isn’t interested in taking on the business either, she said. “I am in a part of my life where taking major business risks doesn’t align with my other responsibilities,” said the mother of a 13-year-old.
“It’s been a significant joy in my life that I’ve been able to work so closely with my dad. Most people don’t get that opportunity,” Wedel said.
While she wouldn’t take the company’s top spot, Wedel said she would “jump at the chance” to work as a salaried marketing director under new ownership.
As for Sellars, just because he wants out of the office doesn’t necessarily mean he’s out of the game.
“I’d love to stay involved and help someone else take over and be successful,” he said. “If the opportunity arose and there were more places to research — I’d go!”
Tucked away in a jewel box theater, the performers of Minneapolis’ Open Eye Theatre are preparing for their upcoming show, “LIZZIE: The Rock Musical.” It’s a modern retelling of the infamous American true crime case, the trial of Lizzie Borden, that opens Oct. 9.
“LIZZIE: The Rock Musical” is a punk rock retelling of the folkloric Borden Murders, written ten years ago by Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt. Now at Open Eye, under the direction of Joel Sass, Borden’s story is being shared with a new audience by a four-member cast and a live band.
The story of Borden garnered attention in 1882, after the double homicide of her father, Andrew Borden, and her stepmother, Abby. Borden was accused of the brutal axe murders but was ultimately acquitted after a short trial in June 1893.
Nearly 200 years later, her case still invites interpretation.
“It’s a direct juxtaposition to the time period that its set in,” said actor Lux Mortenson. “The Victorian era is famous for being really button up and prim. And this show tears that all apart.”
Mortenson will be portraying the titular Lizzie Borden and has worked previously with Open Eye in their rooftop musical performances of “Log Jam,” “Loch Mess” and “Hairball!” at the Bakken Museum.
“Stepping into the role, it’s a very interesting thing because on the one hand, you are portraying a real person. But this show looks at Lizzie Borden through a folk hero lens, or even a folk anti-hero lens,” Mortenson said. “It’s not as rigid.”
The cast will be familiar to Open Eye audiences, with performances from Mortenson, Abigail Olson, Marley Ritchie and Grace Hillmyer. The show is led by director and set designer Joel Sass, a veteran of Open Eye Theatre and the theater’s producing artistic director.
“It’s a great place to be as a creator because it takes this notorious true crime of the century story and allows a lot of very contemporary considerations to be woven through it,” Sass said.
One contemporary aspect of the story is its costuming design by Samantha Fromm Haddow. Her designs blend traditional Victorian silhouettes with punk and modern influences. The costumes feature corsets and belts, mirroring the restrictive and suffocating nature of Borden’s time.
“These women are really confined and covered throughout the course of the musical; they just kind of explode into your face,” Haddow said. “There’s this stripping away of confinement, as they’re acting out of their normal roles.”
“LIZZIE: The Rock Musical” will be Haddow’s first project at Open Eye.
“Part of the joy of working with Open Eye, it’s much more collaborative,” Haddow said. “We’re all in this together.”
The show treats Borden’s story as a Greek tragedy, like Medea or Clytemnestra; a conscious choice made by the original creators, asking the audience if they can accept the brutality.
“You’re without an easy place to sit in terms of deciding for yourself whether the violent act is justified,” Sass said.
The Open Eye Theatre was founded in 2000 by Susan Haas and Michael Sommers to serve audiences and artists with unique programming, including live performances, intimate plays and musicals and puppetry.
“We exist to develop primarily Minnesota-based artists and those who are emerging and looking for well-produced opportunities to develop their professional skills,” Sass said. “No matter what type of performance art lover you are, there’s a layer of our programming that would appeal to you.”
‘LIZZIE: The Rock Musical’
What: A punk-rock retelling of Lizzie Borden’s life
When: Oct. 9 through Nov. 2
Where: Open Eye Theatre, 506 E. 24th St., Minneapolis.
Funny thing about Roald Dahl. Describe one of the English author’s macabre tales to a parent and they might be horrified that their child would be exposed to such a story. But the kids are usually just fine with it.
That has a lot to do with the sense of playfulness with which Dahl permeated his children’s books, and “The Enormous Crocodile” is a prime example. No story of his was more clearly designed for younger readers, yet the central figure is a beast intent upon eating a child.
Siobhan Athwal, left, and Ryan Crellin-Simpson in “The Enormous Crocodile,” a musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book from England’s Roald Dahl Story Company, which will receive its U.S. premiere at Children’s Theatre Company. The production will run through Nov. 23, 2025, at the Minneapolis theater. (Glen Stubbe / Children’s Theatre Company)
But fear not: The theatrical adaptation currently being presented at Children’s Theatre Company’s smaller street-level space is wonderfully fun for all ages. Sporting a clever script and marvelously imaginative puppets, it’s an hour-long, smile-inducing delight.
Friday night marked the first U.S. performance of a production that comes to us from England, where it was co-produced by Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and Leeds Playhouse. Overseeing the staging is the Roald Dahl Story Company, which, interestingly, is owned by Netflix. But there’s nothing corporate about what’s onstage at CTC: It still has the homespun air of a performance in the park, intent upon engaging with the children in the audience and throwing in some funny easter eggs for the adults, too.
Yet don’t mistake its groundlings-friendly feel for a lack of professionalism, as the résumés of several among its cast and crew list stints with two of the world’s great theater companies, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain. Be it in the varied characterizations, colorful choreography, rapid-fire costume changes or a dazzling design scheme, this is a slick staging.
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The story is a simple one: The largest crocodile in the jungle has decided to consume a child for lunch. That seems an unlikely option until a troop of “Jungle Juniors” arrives for a campout in the wild. But the other anthropomorphized animals overcome their fears to save the kids.
Employing an Afropop-tinged score by Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab and a witty script and lyrics by Suhayla El-Bushra, there’s cleverness around every corner. For example, the story begins at a dental clinic where the crocodiles are having their teeth cleaned by birds. The Cockney crocs and Scottish birds introduce us to the idea that this cast will use a plethora of (all easily understandable) accents, most humorously the French-flavored snails.
Each animal is an imaginative amalgam of human and puppet. The title character is a stage-length beast built around a rolling chair on which the imperiously expressive Taya Ming sits and dreams up serving suggestions for her meal of children.
Blocking her path to this repast are Nia Stephen’s towering elephant; Ryan Crellin-Simpson as an endearing hippo who farts when frightened; Alison Arnopp as a vainly insecure avian showgirl; and Siobhan Athwal pulling impressive double duty as a monkey straight off a nightclub dancefloor and the adult troop leader.
Speaking of that troop, they’re the funniest puppets of all, bearing adult heads and child bodies. Their appearance was one of many instances in which laughter rang out from both adults and children at the opening night performance. Throw in some clever, catchy songs and you have the makings of a very enjoyable family theater outing.
Roald Dahl Story Company’s ‘The Enormous Crocodile’
When: Through Nov. 23
Where: Children’s Theatre Company, 2400 Third Ave. S., Minneapolis
