Here in The Locker Room, we see this as the huge problem regarding Waukegan, North Chicago & Zion-Benton not having head football coaches as of Jan. 14, 2009.
Over at Maine South and Stevenson and Lake Zurich and Glenbrook South, etc., you can bet the football players who do not play a winter sport are in the weight room daily, with their progress monitored by the fb coach.
The kids are on specific programs and you can bet your last quarter that the head coach is keeping close tabs on making sure all the players show up.
Some of our kids may take weight-training as a gym class, but that is not the same as the position-specific workouts designed by a top-quality fb program.
Every day that passes, our teams are falling farther and farther behind. And, heck, we are starting out behind from the get-go. It's tough to talk playoffs in August when your team hasn't put the work in in November, December, January and February.
Every fb coach will tell you championship teams come together in the off-season ... not in August when practice begins.
We are very worried.
prep football: January 2009 Archives
Let's say you are an accomplished assistant football coach at a successful high-school program and you are ready to move up to the next level and head your own program.
Currently, the list of head-coach openings in our area includes Zion-Benton, Waukegan and North Chicago.
If you had your pick of jobs, which one would you take?
In The Locker Room, we think the North Chicago job may best best in terms of having the best chance at winning games.
Waukegan has some built-in losses in its Central Suburban League South Division schedule, and Z-B has some built-in losses in its North Suburban Conference Lake Division schedule.
There are no built-in losses on the North Chicago schedule.
For that reason alone, the NC job looks to be the best.
