Oh, wise Swami, tell me something I don’t know about local sports. Is there anything on the horizon that will make a difference to my favorite football team at Waukegan High? Signed, Stupified In Steubenville.
Dear Stupified,
When Waukegan closed last season with a win over Evanston, it sealed a nice comeback season on a high note.
They didn’t make the playoffs because the IHSA uses that weird “new math,” but it’s always nice to end the season with the Wildkits because they’ve been so bad for so long (which is odd because for several decades between the mid ‘50s and mid ‘70s, there were a state power).
Anyway, Swami fears life got seriously harder this week for Waukegan.
They’ve lost a traditional easy touch at the end of their conference schedule. The difference between a 5-4 record for Waukegan and 4-5 can be as thin as one addition to a school’s payroll.
That’s what has happened to Evanston.
Evanston went out and hired Mike Burzawa whose Addison Driscoll Catholic Highlanders have won the state 4A title three straight years with a snazzy high-octane spread offense. They lost one game over that span. He plans to bring his top assistants, too.
Evanston is one of those big city schools where most of the great talent, for one reason or another, is walking the halls instead of performing on the field.
Maybe it’s because the head coach is disorganized or uninspiring or because the administration is indifferent about facilities and support. Or maybe the school just lost the knowledge of how to win in football and what a successful program works.
The great fear for those who play big-schools-gone-bad is that some hotshot coach might show up and turn them into a fire-belching dragon. Let sleeping dragons lie is the mantra.
That's likely Evanston’s future now. Burzawa clearly knows what he's doing.
For the record not only did Driscoll win three straight titles with Burzawa as head coach, it won the previous four with him as the offensive coordinator.
The Wildkits program has suffered losing records in eight of its last nine seasons, including 1-8 last fall.
Burzawa probably was the best high school coach on the market this year. And by the way, he was a running back and scored four touchdowns in the Highlanders' 1991 state championship victory
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