Roundtable: The Return of Football
There may be snow everywhere, but football gets closer to kicking off in Illinois
(Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune)
As the snow continues to pile up next to every highway and byway in Chicagoland, around the corner lies another twist in the Covid-driven melodrama that is 2020-21.
Football is coming.
In less than two weeks, March 3, the first ever spring football season in the state of Illinois officially kicks off.
TKR publisher Jon J. Kerr spoke with head coaches from each of the most populous Chicagoland conferences—DuKane, Mid-Suburban, North Suburban, Central Suburban and Chicago Catholic League/East Suburban Catholic—about preparations in advance of the most unusual season in state history.
The coaches are: Dennis Piron of Batavia (DuKane), Joe Pardun of Hersey (MSL), Mike Jones of Libertyville (NSC), Matt Purdy of Glenbrook North (CSL) and John Holecek of Loyola (CCL-ESCC).
Here we go with the Roundtable.
So as the calendar flips closer and closer to the March 3 start date for football, describe your emotions about the spring season.
Piron: I’m happy and grateful but at the same time disappointed that we are not getting the season that we thought. I’m not talking about the fall I’m way beyond that. I’m talking Feb. 15 to May 1. That’s what I thought I was getting the kids ready for only to find out we have to cut back more and we have to extend spring. Our Athletic Director, Dave Andrews, our superintendent, Lisa Hichens and principal JoAnne Smith understood this, that this would take effort. All of our coaches understood early on that this is going to be the hardest year we’ve had as coaches because we have to try and stay connected with our kids through this. Every time they’ve given us an inch, we’ve taken it.
Pardun: You go from zero to 60 and you knew that was going to happen. So in a way you are prepared but then it happens. I’m talking to other coaches at other schools and we are all fighting for the same thing. The last week, getting my staff ready and from assistant principals to AD’s and everybody trying to work out space but also do it safely and you have to have time to clean it. It’s a challenge. I just got off the phone with my offensive coordinator and said, ‘I’m not thinking about our install schedule. So you better be.’
Purdy: We’re excited to have this opportunity as a team. We were out trying to shovel snow off our field. I had a four-wheel drive Gator and was all gung-ho and got out there and as soon as I got out there it got bogged down and I realized, ‘OK this is a much bigger task than we thought.’ There’s not a great way to clear (the field). Everybody has done different things. We’re hoping for some warmer weather and some rain to get rid of all that snow out there right now.
What are you doing right now?
Jones: We’re not planning on having any contact days. When we start on March 3, that’s when we start. We do meet virtually with our kids twice a week, going through some game-planning. Just to maintain some contact with them. I think the first two weeks of the season will be really important. To make sure you are in shape and doing all the flexibility things. You can’t cut those short as everything is compressed.
Holecek: We’re allowed six contact hours a week so we are doing to try and use them. We have indoor space at odd hours and are still doing Zooms once a week for offense, defense and special teams. We go over some film. I think it’s progressing but not consecutive days. Six hours a week you can still put things in, but mostly just refreshing kids memories and getting their balance and bodies back to football type activities.
Piron: We’re using two of our three contact days per week. Facility space is a challenge. We are doing things like strength and conditioning, and working on teaching offense and defense a couple of days a week. We’re trying to share field house and gym space every minute we can with other programs that want to use it which is most. When we can, we’re using the basketball court and wearing masks and doing screeners and checking in and mitigating. It’s something we’re very comfortable with. We’re allowed to. Right now at Phase 4 we can scrimmage if we wanted to. We aren’t doing that yet as we can’t quite get outside. Today, I have the track team coming in for a short workout (Piron is the head track coach at Batavia).
You’ve only got six games this spring. There is no postseason. Have you thought through how you will approach the season competitively?
Pardun: In my mind, it’s our seniors first. They are always my top priority and it comes down from there. I try and think about as many things as possible to get us on the field at the right time with a good plan and schedule. So during the two and a half hours I’m with them, I’m all there. My head is all there, my heart is all there and I don’t have to worry about all the other stuff.
Jones: We’re playing this year and we’re playing for fun. There is no state series and as soon as we start playing, we’ve already won. Nobody knew what was going to happen. I’m excited for them to play our six games, give them a great experience and that’s our season. For people that are like, ‘we’re going to go and try and win every game’ well, what are you really winning? I want to try and give kids an opportunity to play. I’ve got to find ways to get kids on the field.
Piron: I can say almost all of us if we have a priority list it’s the senior experience as a high priority. As a group, our seniors have had to deal with the most over the last year. I think they are a priority. Every effort will be made to have them feel that it was worth their time to be a part of what we are doing this season, especially our seniors. That was number one on our checklist when we talked about this year. A big part of being part of these programs is the fun. Not the games, not the practices, but the other things the kids have to do. So I think that is a real challenge. How can I find a way to provide those experiences? It will be really hard to do Tuesday night team dinners in people’s homes. I don’t see that happening. So what do we do to replace that to provide experiences like that so they can have that socialization because that’s what they are missing right now.
Holecek: In our Blue Division games, you want to win first but you want to showcase the seniors and make sure they have the memories of playing in tough games. I’d think that no one would be so selfish as to think we are going to play juniors and develop them because this year doesn’t count. I would hope that all of the coaches around here want to give these seniors a moment, now if it’s four games or three games, I’m not sure but in the blue games you want to have some bragging rights and they will be tough games. So I think everyone is going to try and win the game then after that, once the outcome is decided, now I think there would be a lot of rotation going on juniors and seniors. Certainly you want to reward the seniors for having one of the toughest careers in history.
Purdy: What we’ve talked about the most is focusing on the fundamentals and having the fundamentals lead to our success. You can’t dump the playbook out and say, ‘we’re going to run 500 things.’ Everybody is going to be behind. So let’s be good at four or five runs and four or five pass plays. Our three’s need to be one’s in a blink of an eye just because a starter got a close contact in math class. So we are going to be focusing on the fundamentals across the board in our program. You don’t need a lot of smoke and mirrors. Yes, we want to win as many games as possible but you have to develop your program at the highest level and that comes with the basics and that skill set. Our focus is to have everyone one of our kids play in a game every week. The wins and losses will come with our fundamentals and preparation.
What about the scheduling format? Most conferences are doing five regular season in-conference games with a plus one for week 6. The DuKane Conference is scheduling three games then going into a tournament-style format.
Piron: We’re all trying to get our season started then provide some level of flexibility on the back end for some type of bowl game or playoff. For us right now we are going to have a conference tournament and we are in a pretty good league so if you can win the conference tournament that allows for some pretty strong bragging rights and all of us are hopeful for something more and we’ll have to wait and see if that happens.
Holecek: What our parity committee did with our schedule is we took the seventh game from our schedule last year (2020) and removed one of the weeks. That’s it. It’s the same exact schedule as last year minus one week. I didn’t love it, I thought we could do a more fun schedule this year because it’s non-playoff and think outside the box and maybe just eliminate one of those large cross-overs but the schedule wasn’t easy if you did that. What we have is not a perfect idea, it’s not as exciting as I thought it could be. There was a proposal of going North-South and having a match up game but that was poo-pooed by the administrators. I believe there was a comment that we should be just happy that we are playing.
Purdy: We will play the other CSL South schools and week six is a ‘CSL Championship Series.’ The ultimate goal there is to match up the CSL North and the CSL South, No. 1 vs No. 1, No. 2 vs No. 2, so on and so forth. We’ll do No. 1 vs No. 1 but after there may be some movement to where its not No. 2 vs No. 2 or No. 4 vs No. 4. We want to give every school a chance to have a third home game so if there is a situation like that, we may go No. 2 vs No. 3. Everybody has gone through this. We are all Type A coaches and we want it certain way and that’s how it is supposed to look. But at this point we can’t get bogged down in that. Whatever my week six is, I’m going to take it and go. Whether I’m in the championship game or the sixth place game. It’s another game, another opportunity to build the program and another opportunity to be with these kids that have so desperately needed this sports experience. I’ll never be that guy who complains about a game being moved to Saturday. It’s 2021 and any opportunity we have, just smile and embrace the heck out of it.
Because Illinois High School Association had to shoehorn the season in between winter and spring, there is going to be tons of situations with kids playing multiple sports. Mostly in April, when the football season carries over into the next season with track, baseball, lacrosse, etc. all starting up. How will this overlap be handled?
Purdy: My offensive coordinator is the head baseball coach. My defensive coordinator is the head lacrosse coach. My running backs coach is the head track coach. On my staff we have some serious hurdles to overcome. But here’s what I’ve told every one of our kids. This is not going to an issue for you. The adults will figure this out. Any coach who wants to argue with the baseball coach or lacrosse coach…you can’t do that. You can’t put these kids in the middle. We have to sit down and figure out a schedule that works for these kids. Because they want to do both. We’ll figure it out.
Jones: I’m lucky here (at Libertyville) because I’m a math teacher and the head basketball coach and boys lacrosse coaches are math teachers. We’ve already worked that out. We’ve talked about it and have an agreement. I’ve had a conversation with the baseball coach as those are the big ones that take up most of our kids.
Piron: We have kids in basketball but care about football as well. Why have him do a football conditioning session when he’s playing basketball? We’ll be smart and creative about it so a kid has all the things he needs to have and make sure he gets his state requirements in so he can play in his first football game. I think we’ll make it work and looking forward to the challenge.
Pardun: I’ve been here a long time and have a lot of coaches who enjoy working together. The boys tennis coach is a good friend of mine and he walked in here the other day and was like, ‘is so-and-so your kicker?’ I was like, ‘well, he’s our number two kicker.’ And he says, ‘well he’s playing tennis.’ I’m like, ‘we’ll work it out.’ I’ve developed a relationship with the basketball coach and him and I are developing trust there and we’ve talked about just fine tuning it with each kid. We all want to compete and do what’s best for our teams but we know right now we have to take each situation as it comes. We’ll get there but it’s different.
There are so many details on the operations of just playing football that have yet to be worked out, things like bus travel, locker room space, sideline distancing, mask-wearing over helmets, so many that will make your head spin. What is your degree of concern over these details?
Holecek: I haven’t started thinking about that part, logistics of game day as I’m trying to do all the other things right now like getting practices scheduled getting coaches on board and there are so many things beforehand. Those things seem to be common sense things to me. We have 100-plus guys so we will have to spread out on the track to the 15 or 10-yard line. What really worries me is the travel. Instead of having local games we are traveling to Brother Rice and Marist and St. Rita. How are we going to get there? Are we taking busses, multiple busses? Are we going to change on those busses, are they going to be our locker room? We don’t have an indoor spot? What if it’s freezing, snowing or raining? All of these things are issues and why no one was really excited about a spring season in the fall when we should have been playing but now that we are here I won’t worry about. We are in the same spot as everyone else.
Jones: I got an email from Sam Knox (assistant executive director of the IHSA) and I had never heard of anything or seen anything written about how will kids have to wear masks and mouthpieces? I emailed Sam and said I’ll do whatever, I just want the kids to play. He said, ‘yes, kids will have to wear masks and mouthpieces.’ Well, how hard is that going to be to breathe in? How do you know if a kid even has one? Those are things I don’t have answers for but there are a lot of things we have to work out from now until the time we start.
Pardun: Those are all concerns but my biggest concern is rushing to get them ready for a contact sport. As structured as we try to be and give them workouts and all the stuff we’ve been through in the last year trying to keep them together. Even when we got them together in the weight room you could tell it was not what they were used to and there is an adjustment period. So we are trying hard to do some agility and build them up but there is not much time. You want to make sure their bodies are healthy.
Piron: I talk to some coaches about these things and it’s come up and I tell them, ‘don’t worry. Who cares? Figure it out. Have fun with your kids. It’s going to be a little bit different.’ The parents have to understand too, that’s probably the bigger concern is parents being upset or mad. This isn’t your sport it’s your kid’s. It’s their time. It’s like, ‘we have to make sure the parents can watch.’ Yeah, it’s on the list. The most important thing is the kids get to play and have fun. We had our time. It’s their time.
These are a few last quotes not related to a specific question, but relevant to the topics and highlights from conversations with each coach
Piron: I teach business entrepreneurship. I was talking to my kids about how Covid has accelerated so much in the business world. We were talking about Yum, a company that owns Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. And how now, they are doing things in two weeks that before was taking two years to implement. Because you don’t worry about making it perfect. You just do it and get it going and get it done. That’s what I think schools should do. Don’t worry about it being perfect. Do the best you possibly can. If another person talks to me about lawsuits…I don’t care. What we’re doing requires effort. And that’s where I’m disappointed in some people. I’m disappointed in those who haven’t taken the effort. Well shame on you. Shame on you as it’s always easy to make the excuse ‘abundance of caution’ or ‘our community isn’t ready’ or ‘we want to do what’s safe.’ Well, you can say all those things or you can work hard and try and make it the best you can. I’m frustrated, very frustrated with those people.
Holecek: Previously, you are in this depression after the Super Bowl that football is gone for awhile and not much to do. Now it’s like everyone seems to be a little more excited.
Purdy: You kind of have that crazy late July, August feeling right now. ‘Oh I have to get the end zone camera together, I have to make sure the headphones work right, and I need to make a calendar but I can’t make a calendar because I don’t know what my practice time is going to be from this Monday to the next.’ As football coaches you are so in tuned to going, ‘OK I have practice from 3:30 to 6:00 every day either on the turf or the back fields. End of story. And if it rains, I have priority over the field house.’ Now, I have soccer, badminton, basketball, cheerleading and I have 50 person maximum in those spaces. We are not a huge team, about 55 guys plus our coaching staff and we don’t two-platoon so OK, now I have to split out to skills and bigs. All those things you don’t think about and my head is spinning at an alarming rate. But I love every single second of it.