Neuqua Valley's Petit knows what he's thankful for
Somehow, in between dialysis treatments, Gerry Petit finds it easy to give thanks.
"Very much so," said the Neuqua Valley diving coach. "I have no misconceptions about my situation and what's going on."
A life of competitive diving, coaching and teaching did not spare the Aurora resident from kidney failure in 1996. That was solved - temporarily - when his sister, Mary, donated one of hers.
A transplanted kidney, Petit said, lasts around 20 years. After an added year of good grace, the figurative bill has come due. Petit discovered on Nov. 2, his 61st birthday, that the donated kidney had failed. He spent Nov. 4-11 at Rush University Hospital in Chicago.
In the face of thrice-weekly dialysis treatments and the potential to be entered at the bottom of the donor recipient list, Petit appreciates what he has.
"I was fortunate enough 20 years ago to have my sister give me a kidney," Petit said. "I've done my best in those years that I've gotten to do my best as an educator and as a coach and as a mentor. Coaching is my life and I welcome the opportunity to continue to be there for these kids."
His heroic arrival at the Nov. 11 Neuqua Valley girls swimming and diving sectional went above and beyond.
Scheduled for dialysis sessions at Rush over three straight days - Nov. 9, 10 and 11 - he "complained" to his nurse about the conflict on Saturday.
"It would have been the first meet in 46 years that I ever missed," said Petit, a former North Central College diver and a 1974 Marmion graduate. He was hired by another old Cadet, Bill Schalz, to help succeed the man who had coached them both, Jim Kelly. Petit coached Marmion and Rosary diving until he went to Neuqua Valley to coach and teach physical education in 2000.
The nurse at Rush said she'd be back. Five minutes later she told him his dialysis would be moved to 4 a.m. so he could finish by 8 and leave as soon as possible.
The meet started at 9 a.m. Saturday. While doctors processed his discharge from the hospital, Petit used FaceTime to connect with the Wildcats' divers, senior Cloe Pace and junior Sami Carlson. He did that through their preliminary dives and the first five competition dives until finally at the start of semifinals he was released. Mary, his sister - who made the trip from her home in South Haven, Michigan - drove pell-mell to 95th Street and Route 59.
"She said, 'We're on a mission from God,'" Petit said.
Added Neuqua aquatics instructor Chad Allen, "All of a sudden I got a text message from the person selling tickets in the hallway - Gerry's here."
Someone at the gate kindly cautioned, "You're not supposed to be here."
"Yes, he is," Mary said.
Petit saw his divers' last few attempts as they swept the top two spots like they had basically all season. Pace broke her own program record with a 466.80 score and Carlson's 450.15 was more than 50 points above her closest pursuer.
"They were admittedly real nervous that I wasn't there, so I was so grateful to be there for the last three dives," Petit said. "The girls, they stepped up and really rocked out the rest of the meet."
Technically, for the rest of his life Petit could attend his four-hour blood-filtering sessions every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the Aurora Dialysis Center. He said he's well cared for; mothers of divers or family members like brother Barry, right in Batavia, will take him to the pharmacy or fix meals.
One of seven children, there's a chance another of Petit's siblings will be a match for a kidney donation. If not, he'll go on the transplant list.
However things pan out Petit will continue to use his experiences as a teaching tool with his students and athletes. On Thanksgiving and every other Thursday he'll optimistically seek what he called the light at the end of the road.
"I'm very humbled by all this," Petit said. "My overlying philosophy in my coaching has always been that anything is possible in this life if you put your mind to it. And I try and teach that to the kids, that no matter what life throws at you, you can overcome it and it only makes you stronger.
"I'm proud of the fact that I've had many things thrown at me my whole life, including these medical issues, and I will never give up. And probably pass away on the deck, coaching."
Thunder from Down Under
Naperville North and West Aurora boys basketball fans can see how they play in the southern hemisphere when both schools host a team from Sydney, Australia, in early December.
Retired Naperville North athletic director Doug Smith, drawing on connections he'd made when at Woodstock in the 1990s, helps coordinate "educational athletic" trips for Sports Travel Academy. As such he's facilitated Sydney's Trinity Grammar School to play nine games in Illinois and two in Kentucky Dec. 2-15.
Trinity will play at West Aurora on Dec. 2. It'll visit Naperville North on Dec. 4 starting at 4:30 p.m. with freshman, junior varsity and varsity games against Jeff Powers' Huskies.
"They play by international rules," Smith said, "so their 3-point line is pretty much like the NBA 3. So when they come out and see our 3-point line, they start to drool."
Subsequent games are in central and southern Illinois before the Aussies return to DeKalb on Dec. 15. They'll also attend the Bears-49ers football game on Dec. 3 and college basketball games at Cincinnati and at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville.
"It's a nice cultural exchange program, but when it's all said and done they're high school kids who love the game of basketball, too," Smith said.
Multisport men
No one seems to like the sports specialization phenomenon. Chris Korfist and Tony Holler are trying to do something about it.
Holler is a 2015 inductee into the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame for his work at Plainfield North and Harrisburg. His pal Korfist has been a highly successful sprints coach at Hinsdale Central, York and now Montini. In 2011 he won an ITCCCA Dave Pasquini Award for assistant coaches.
The two are particularly interested in the combination of football and track.
"We're trying to push multisport athletes, efficiency in the weight room and more bang for your buck for what you're doing," Korfist said.
Their sixth Track Football Consortium (trackfootballconsortium.com) strength and conditioning clinic, geared toward coaches, will be held Dec. 8-9 at Benedictine's Goodwin Hall of Business in Lisle.
Keynote speaker Carl Lewis, the nine-time Olympic gold medalist and now a University of Houston track assistant, will focus on the relationship between speed and power, and how it applies to athletics, in two addresses on Dec. 8.
On Dec. 9 an expert group of football and track coaches and trainers will discuss a variety of topics in three different rooms at Goodwin Hall.
Korfist and Holler bonded after attending clinics they found unhelpful, so they're dedicated to providing "new ideas, new concepts, so people could get better," Korfist said.
"We're looking more for efficiency and getting what you're looking for out of a weight workout, or a track workout," he said. "If you're working out longer than an hour you're wasting time."
doberhelman@dailyherald.com