These coaches won't surprise each other

Football coaches. They're always thinking strategy, getting an edge any way they can.

Entering Saturday's Class 6A state championship, Marmion has never met Rockford Boylan on the football field. Through annual meetings concerning their educational pursuits, however, Cadets coach Dan Thorpe and his counterpart at Boylan Catholic, Titans coach Dan Appino, are buddies.

The dueling Dans are the directors of guidance at their respective schools. That means once a year they attend a workshop for school counselors, the State Articulation Meeting at Northern Illinois University. Having football in common and enjoying a coaching relationship that goes back a spell, they sit together.

Last September at the Articulation Meeting, Thorpe and Appino passed the time between college presentations by talking shop.

“I asked him what he'd do against the spread (offense) against Montini,” Thorpe said. “I asked him what to do to stop Prairie Ridge, and he showed me.

“Little did he know that now (those comments) are going to come back to haunt him. I milked him back in September.”

Even the friendliest magician knows not divulge all his secrets, however.

Each has a general working knowledge of the other in terms of football strategy and philosophy. Thorpe and Appino also members of the Rockford Diocese have a history dating into the 1980s when Thorpe was coaching Wisconsin teams in Beloit and Janesville to a string of highly successful seasons.

Appino was an assistant then at Boylan, recalls Thorpe, who also struck a friendship with former Belvidere coach LaVern Pottinger. Thorpe's Wisconsin teams, close to the Illinois border, played nonconference games against teams out of the Northern Illinois Conference, such as Rockford Jefferson and Rockford Auburn.

Thorpe also noted that at the 2010 Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Spring Clinic in Champaign, he and Appino spoke at the same time in different rooms on different topics Thorpe on an offensive topic, Appino on defense.

Back in Champaign this Saturday, all the those familiar strategies will go from the chalkboard to the Memorial Stadium turf.

“They know what we do, we know what they do, you've got to go out and execute. And I'm confident we'll handle the distractions,” Thorpe said.

“Our kids have been very focused that seed was planted Aug. 10. We've been humble, we've been focused and now we need to be hungry one more time. And I'm not worried about that.”