That's it for Mitz: Stevenson coach wraps up standout career

After the Stevenson football team got a big victory over archrival Libertyville about five weeks ago, head coach Bill Mitz was in a good mood.

Little did he know that he was about to be sent over the moon just hours later.

On his way home, his assistant coaches ushered him into a local restaurant for what they billed as a celebratory gathering for the staff.

Turns out that dozens of Mitz's former players had gathered in his honor.

"It was quite a night," Mitz said. "I think there were about 250 guys there. We had guys fly in from California, Florida, Washington D.C. I didn't know anything about it. It was amazing."

With rumors swirling all season that this was Mitz's last hurrah and that he would be retiring at the end of the school year, from both teaching and coaching, his assistants wanted to organize a tribute to Mitz, just in case this was indeed his final season.

Good thinking.

Mitz announced earlier this week that his football career at Stevenson is in fact over. The Patriots were eliminated from the Class 8A playoffs last week by Mt. Carmel 23-16 at Gately Stadium on Chicago's South Side in what now goes down as Mitz's last game.

Mitz's retirement marks the end of a 28-year tenure at Stevenson in which he won 197 games and secured 21 straight playoff appearances dating back to 1989. Since then, the Patriots have averaged 8 wins a season and have hit double-digits in wins five times, in 1995 (10-1), 1996 (12-1), 2002 (11-3), 2005 (11-1) and this season (10-1).

"I talked to the team after the (Mt. Carmel) game and I told the seniors, 'I'm going out with you guys,'" Mitz said. "It was tough. It was a little emotional.

"It's not like I'm an old man here and I still love coaching football. It's a big part of my life. But I'm retiring from teaching and I really believe that the head football coach at Stevenson needs to be in the building so unfortunately, my time there is over as head coach.

"It's time for someone else to lead the thing."

Mitz's successor, who is expected to be named before Thanksgiving and could actually come from his current staff, will have big shoes to fill.

Not only did Mitz win a lot of games and take Stevenson to the state championship game in 2002, he also made player development such a high priority that many college coaches made his office a required stop on the recruiting trail each year.

Mitz says that he's had well over 100 players continue on to play college football, which is about four players a year. Also, three of his best players wound up playing in the pros: Matt O'Dwyer, Brad Cieslak and Drew Mormino.

Many of those players were back at Mitz's tribute.

"The biggest thing I always strived for was that I wanted to coach my young men the same way I would want my own son coached," Mitz said. "You might have seen me get after guys sometimes, but you also saw me put my arm around them and tell them that I love them and from that came a lot of really strong relationships with those guys. That's what I'm going to remember most, the guys who have played for me. They're family.

"This whole thing has been built around that. The kids' families are No. 1, but this is a little family for them, too. We tried to go out there and win football games but there were also a lot of other really great things going on in this program."

Now Mitz is ready to enjoy some of the other really great things in his life.

His son Brian, a former standout at Cary-Grove, is a junior wide receiver at North Michigan and Mitz has followed him as closely as possible. Next year, that could be much easier to do.

"You never know where I'll end up, you never rule anything out. Maybe you'll see me on the sidelines somewhere else next year, who knows," Mitz said with a bit of a laugh. "But part of me wants to take a year off and just watch Brian play and enjoy his last season.

"I was up there (at Northern Michigan) for Senior Day and all the seniors ran out of this tunnel one by one and their parents were on the field and it was really, really nice. That's going to be Brian next year and I just thought to myself, I don't want to miss that."

Now, Mitz won't have to, but in the meantime, Stevenson and its fans sure will be missing him.