Will we ever see the likes of Parpet, McKeon again?
When Addison Trail lined up for its final football game of the season a couple weeks ago, a few old friends showed up as well.
The home sideline was packed with former players on hand to bid farewell to Paul Parpet, who officially retired as the Blazers' head football coach following their Week 9 game against Leyden.
Parpet, who received much-deserved farewell wishes throughout his 29th and final season at the helm, couldn't have been more surprised by the turnout. Some former players even flew in for the occasion.
Another retiring hall of fame football coach, Naperville North's Larry McKeon, saw his final campaign come to an end with last week's first-round Class 8A playoff loss to Fremd. Plenty of tears were shed last Friday night in Palatine, similar to when McKeon announced his retirement at a team function just before the team's regular-season finale against West Chicago.
It's easy to understand the emotional attachment to the coaching icons.
Beyond the personal element, which runs deep, look at the numbers. Fifty-six combined years with their respective programs, 34 playoff appearances, five state title game berths with a pair of championships for the Huskies.
Perhaps most striking, though, is the question of how often we'll see numbers like that in the future?
Being the point man for a football program has become an overwhelming, year-round grind of a job. Because of that, don't be surprised if coaching tenures shorten in the coming years.
The pressure to win, especially in a talent-rich area like DuPage County, is relentless. Keeping up with the Joneses takes all 12 months between summer camps, weight room work, feeder program development, etc.
Game preparation begins hours after games end, and continues with daylong Sunday coaching staff meetings. Time management turns into an impossible task.
Seventeen of DuPage County's 26 football schools have head coaches with fewer than 10 years at the helm. It'll be interesting to see how many can take the grind for as long as Parpet and McKeon managed it.
Turf time: Speaking of relentless, how about this rain?
Last weekend's deluge forced a number of area teams to find alternate sites to play their first-round playoff games. Local teams with grass stadium fields - Downers South, Glenbard South, Glenbard West, St. Francis and Hinsdale Central - all moved to nearby stadiums with synthetic surfaces.
The last thing a playoff team wants is to give up a home game, but conditions dictated the decisions. And, luckily, DuPage County is packed with artificially surfaced stadium fields. Benedictine University stayed mighty busy, as did Addison Trail, Glenbard North and West Chicago High School.
Given the unstable financial condition of schools in this economy, it's unrealistic to expect mass investment in artificial turf in the near future. Site switches may become more common as schools try to preserve their weakened grass fields.
Road maps: In an effort to reduce travel times in Class 7A, the IHSA divided the upper bracket into two quadrants of eight teams apiece.
While one eight-team group featured a power-packed field of Wheaton Warrenville South, Geneva and St. Rita, the other group included four St. Louis-area schools and a few southern suburban schools headed by Lincoln-Way East.
Needless to say, the split didn't go over too well.
And how about those goals to reduce travel times? Not so good, either.
In the first round all four games in the southern quadrant had travel distances of at least 230 miles. This week both quadrant games require similar road trips.
So where exactly is the reduced travel time?
And is there really that big of a difference between traveling to and from Frankfort and St. Louis compared to Wheaton and St. Louis? Certainly not enough to warrant the split into quadrants.
It's a maddening situation because there simply is no way to avoid long road trips between southern and northern Illinois. Someone always has to make that long trek and, to be honest, no football teams seem to mind it on the weekend.
Please, IHSA, stop messing with the brackets and give the players, coaches and fans what they deserve - a straight bracket seeded 1 to 16 or, even better, 1 to 32 like the good old days.
kschmit@dailyherald.com