Thonn knows tryouts can lead to good things

Any old prep or college football players who aren't quite ready to call it quits, you've got another chance.

Steve Thonn, coach of the Cleveland Gladiators franchise in the Arena Football League, will host an open tryout Nov. 30 at Ackerman Sports and Fitness Center in Glen Ellyn.

Thonn led the Gladiators to a 17-1 regular-season record last season, the best in the league. Cleveland went 19-2 overall, losing to the Arizona Rattlers in the championship, Arena Bowl XXVII.

"A lot of the younger guys who play Arena football want to keep playing so they get that chance at an NFL camp," said Thonn, whose son, Corey, helps run the offense for the Wheaton Academy football team.

"Then there's a lot of guys who just love playing Arena football and want to keep playing it as long as they can," he said. "They're good at it and it's a chance to keep playing football, so they stay with it."

We've written before about this former boy wonder. As a youth Thonn (pronounced "ton") was Wheaton's best athlete. He starred in football, basketball and baseball at Wheaton North, Class of '79. He did the same at Wheaton College - playing football against the Gladiators' defensive coordinator, North Central College lineman Ron Selesky. Thonn was named a Division III All-America receiver at Wheaton College, then known as the Crusaders, and later earned induction into its Hall of Honor.

Thonn went to a minicamp held by the Arizona Outlaws of the USFL and worked out for the Bears but made neither team. In an open tryout held at Triton College by Gene Nudo - who went on to fame at Driscoll, the Arena League's Arizona Rattlers and, now Fenwick - Thonn made the roster of the Arena League's Chicago Bruisers in the AFL's first season, 1988.

"I was a slow, weak kid that probably shouldn't have been at a tryout, that still made it," Thonn said.

He played six years in the league as a receiver and defensive back, and has since coached for seven Arena teams, head coach in Cleveland, Houston and Grand Rapids.

"It really was a great experience because the league was new, the game was new, so it was something to be able to be involved with from day one," Thonn said. "I had the ability to see the league grow and be part of it."

Despite Thonn's claims of being slow and weak, he was neither. These are serious football players motivated by more than the approximately $900 they get a game. It's a group that includes AFL Hall of Famer and Immaculate Conception graduate Bob McMillen, named one of the league's best 20 players in history. He's now head coach of the Los Angeles Kiss, whose owners include Kiss bandmates Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.

Three players on Cleveland's 2014 roster made the club at a tryout similar to what Thonn and Selesky will offer from 9 a.m.-noon on Nov. 30, with 8:30 a.m. registration and an $80 cash fee. The format includes some basic skills testing, position drills and one-on-one competition. Other basics can be found on the Gladiators website.

Great athletes who felt they slipped through the cracks and deserve a second chance should feel free to apply.

"We're trying to find that diamond in the rough," Thonn said.

Protégé

Reader Jill Rodriguez saw the Nov. 6 item on the ongoing relationship between college cross country coaches Art and Chris Siemers and their former coach at Fenton, John Kurtz. She pointed out her son, Tyler, a 2012 Fenton graduate, was a four-year Bison runner who also "looks up to Coach as a model and mentor."

That capital C is a sure sign of respect.

Jill Rodriguez said her son is head cross country coach at Navajo Pine High School in Navajo, New Mexico, and that on Nov. 8 the Warriors were competing in the state finals.

It was a good day to be an old Bison. Competing in the A-2A division, Tylar Rodriguez's boys won a state title behind the first-, third- and seventh-place runners in the division. Rodriguez also coached the A-2A girls individual champion.

All-Americans

Benet forward and Kyle Kenagy and Hinsdale Central goalie Wes Bergevin each were selected to play for the West squad in the High School All-American Soccer Game, Dec. 13 at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, North Carolina. The fourth annual game will be held the same weekend as the men's Division I College Cup in nearby Cary, N.C.

In other Kenagy news, on Nov. 12 he was among 10 Chicago-area student-athletes to receive a $2,000 college scholarship from the Positive Coaching Alliance-Chicago at the organization's fifth annual Scholarship and Awards Dinner at the Chicago Marriott. Kenagy will be attending Yale and playing soccer.

Kenagy joined 30 athletes honored at the dinner, including Glenbard North's Emily Dybowski and York's Sarah Milkowski.

Three decades later ...

The last time Geneseo played Montini in football before this Saturday's Class 5A semifinal in Lombard was 1982. Yet the coaches' names haven't changed.

Montini coach Chris Andriano was in his fourth year coaching the Broncos. On the other sideline in the Class 4A semifinal for Geneseo Darnall, now just Geneseo, was Larry Johnsen.

The ball boy for that Geneseo team was Johnsen's son, Larry Jr. He is now the Maple Leafs' coach, with his father as an assistant.

"Thirty-two years later here we are, semifinals," Andriano said.

Larry Johnsen Jr. said he sees Andriano every spring at the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Clinic.

"There's a little bit of history there," Johnsen said. "He's the best there's ever been. I have nothing but positives to say."

In 1982 the Broncos, led by Bob Westerkamp, stormed right downfield to score. Montini also scored the last touchdown.

"And they scored 46 points in between," Andriano said of Darnall's 46-15 win on the way to a state title.

At the time Andriano was quoted as saying Darnall was the best team he'd ever seen.

"I remember Larry Johnsen (Senior) well," Andriano said. "He was a great guy. I had a tremendous respect for that program, they were one of the top programs and nothing's really changed for them, they still are. The faces have changed, but the names are still the same."

doberhelman@dailyherald.com

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