“
It’s the discipline you instill,” Westendorf
said. “It’s the program. It’s the offseason work.
It’s A, B, C, D. It’s all of the above.”
He could have said continuity. The most com-
mon denominator you’ll find among the “haves”
in high school sports is strong coaching that
spans years. That often comes in the form of one
dominant figure staying in the job for decades.
Think Dick Van Scyoc ruling the Manual bas-
ketball roost for 28 seasons or Chuck Buescher
doing the same at Central for a quarter-century.
Notre Dame’s Mike Sullivan easily predates the
Bergan-Spalding merger coaching cross country
and boys track and has produced state cham-
pions (teams or individuals) in four decades.
Denny Winkler ran Manual boys track for 31
seasons and lost all of 23 dual meets (he won
505) —
and that was practicing in the hallways
until Winkler oversaw the building of a practice
track at the southside Peoria school just before
his 2000 retirement.
Even Pat Ryan, yet to hit
his 50th birthday, has 22
seasons and counting at the
Metamora football helm.
That’s nothing to Ryan’s one-
time teacher Gene Jones, who
started coaching cross country
runners in the late 1970s at
the sports-crazed Woodford
County town with its single
stoplight.
Every coach mentioned, save Ryan and
career assistant Westendorf, is a Hall of Famer.
Retirement is not a condition of eligibility in the
cross-country world. Retirement, however, is
inevitable, and what a school does when one of
its institutions steps aside is the No. 1 predictor
of whether the dominance will continue.
We look to the dominant football programs
from their respective side of the river for the
greatest examples.
Richwoods has not only kept its program
guided by the same coaching tree for 50 years,
it implicitly requires the successors to serve
decades as assistants before they run the show.
“
Each coach has his little things he is going
to tweak and put his own mark on, but each of
us have learned from hall-of-fame coaches and
realize the solid base that creates Richwoods
football,” said Roland Brown, who boasts 10
playoff wins in his first three years on the job.
“
You want to do well so you can make your
former head coaches proud.”
All those coaches are around. Tom Peeler
(21
seasons; Class 5A title in his final season of
1984),
Rod Butler (1988 Class 5A champ; .848
winning percentage in nine seasons) and Doug
Simper (.669 in 14 seasons) all talk regularly to
Brown and the Knights.
“
The coaches and players were very excited to
see Coach Tom Peeler, who showed up on our
first day of contact this year,” Brown said. “He
is the reason we are all here and the reason the
tradition continues at Richwoods. Our practice
field is named after him because he made us
understand the most impor-
tant part of the season takes
place during practice, not the
games.”
The same takes place at
Metamora.
“
Mr. Stromberger is in his
80
s and is still really sup-
portive,” Ryan said of “the
father of Metamora football,”
Marty Stromberger, whose
pair of undefeated, pre-
playoffs teams paved the way for John Helmick
to win a Class 3A title in 1975.
“
After that, in just the second year of playoffs,
things really took off,” Ryan said of a program
that has played in 10 state-champion games,
seven under Ryan. “Then it was like, ‘This is
something we can do.’ “
Between Helmick and Ryan came Rich
Koehler, a Peru native who won no playoff
games in seven seasons. While Ryan remembers
Koehler fondly as “an absolutely fantastic man,”
Koehler does exhibit a coaching move that tends
to derail prep dynasties — going outside the
program.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 20
DERRICK BOOTH, HEAD BASKETBALL COACH AT PEORIA MANUAL HIGH SCHOOL, LOOKS AT PICTURES OF SUCCESSFUL MANUAL TEAMS AND COACHES
OF THE PAST, INCLUDING ONE IN WHICH HE WAS THE BALL BOY UNDER COACH DICK VAN SCYOC. BOOTH KEEPS THE PICTURES IN HIS OFFICE NOT ONLY AS
MEMENTOS, BUT AS A REMINDER OF WHERE THE MANUAL SUCCESS, WHICH HE HAS CONTINUED, STARTED.
(
PHOTO BY DEANNA MCCONNELL) MEMBERS OF THE
2009
METAMORA HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM REACH
TO TOUCH THE TROPHY PRESENTED THEM AFTER THEY
WON THE STATE CHAMPIONSHIP THAT SEASON.
19
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