By KEVIN DRULEY - kdruley@kcchronicle.com
Behind every great coach ...
Mentors set area football coaches on path to successful careers
The Rob Wicinski coaching tree sprouted a new branch in March, and the roots extend only one town over.
Well, two blocks, if you want to be technical.
Former Geneva assistant Mike Fields kept his home and keys to the school after leaving the Vikings to be head coach at St. Charles East. Now luck, the locksmith and fortuitous scheduling have brought the Saints and Vikings together in Week 1.
“I hope Mike doesn’t have a key to the game,” Wicinski said.
An insight into Geneva’s schemes undeniably adds spice to Fields’ head coaching debut, but all area coaches have been there. A mentor patiently shows them the way through the inner workings of one team before they can grab the reins of another.
After 10 seasons in blue and white, a run that included last year’s berth in the IHSA Class 7A state championship, Fields values his rapport with Wicinski more than his knowledge of the playbook.
“Rob was just thrilled about it and excited when I took the job at East,” Fields said. “I think that’s a sense of pride for him, as well. It’s a feather in his cap that his assistants are regarded highly enough to get head jobs, too.”
Coaches gradually progress until the day they grow knowledgeable and influential enough for their own trees, learning through experience and repetition just like their players do.
Whether a rising coach prefers the passivity of watching or the activity of asking questions is up to him.
Several Batavia assistants learned by both methods, suiting up for 25th-year coach Mike Gaspari as a prelude to joining him on the sidelines. Matt Holm twice earned team MVP honors as a linebacker in 1985-86, while wide receiver at heart Dennis Piron still remembers fine-tuning his routes with then-assistant Gaspari in 1983.
Regardless of when the association starts, the most successful coach-assistant tandems graduate to friendships before long.
“Mike gives an awful lot of latitude to run plays, make decisions, make mistakes,” Piron said. “He gives you the sense that he has confidence in you as a coach, and that makes you want to do your best for him and not let him down.”
It’s contagious.
Wicinski smiles about the key situation instead of stewing over it, figuring an exchange plan will come up at some point during one of his weekly conversations with Fields.
Kaneland’s Tom Fedderly defers some situations to Joe Thorgesen, his boss-turned-assistant who ultimately found leaving the Knights and retiring was just too boring.
Before starting his own program at St. Charles North, Mark Gould observed and absorbed when another retirement bailout, Buck Drach, held court in his own concise way.
“It’s a great profession,” Wicinski said. “Any chance or any opportunity you get to share knowledge with someone else is what we do and what we love.”
All the better the longer the cycle goes.
“Those are just special relationships that make this an unbelievable experience,” Gaspari said. “I cherish it.”
Though he played coy about naming him, Wicinski said there was a “young buck” on his own staff that he learns from every day. A green assistant himself in the early 1990s under Paul Giambeluca at Niles North, Wicinski struggled through a three-year stretch with his first band of Vikings, going 3-24 in three seasons at Niles North before a jump to Geneva offered a welcome reprieve.
Wicinski and Fields figure to build on their bond for the foreseeable future, with Geneva set to join East in a revamped Upstate Eight Conference beginning next fall. Every other season, they’ll get to coach against each other where they once stood together, on Burgess Field. Fields could even let himself in a few hours early.
Fields aspired to a head coaching position from the moment he joined Wicinski’s staff 10 years ago. He entertained an offer from Plainfield South entering the 2005 season but turned it down after considering a possible commute and the Vikings’ new direction. Geneva went from 0-9 in 1999 to one win shy of a perfect season last year with Wicinski, a White Sox fan, and Fields, who’s pro-Cub, at the helm.
Three months after the loss to East St. Louis, a Vikings caravan that included Wicinski and Fields watched the girls basketball team play for a shot at its own title in Normal. Fields was screaming from the Redbird Arena stands moments before learning the Saints job would be his.
Sitting with Wicinski, Fields remembered what he had heard from him so many times before.
“Rob would always say, ‘When the time’s right [for a head coaching job], we want to make sure that you’re ready,’ ” Fields said, “and I can’t say that any part of my Geneva experience didn’t put me there.”
On Friday night, he’ll channel all 10 years of it trying to win his East debut.