Marmion’s O’Connor reflects on 300
Marmion boys soccer coach Kevin O’Connor became a member of the “300 Club” with the Cadets’ 3-0 win over East Moline United in the Class 2A Freeport sectional semifinals.
That landmark is now No. 2 on his list of significant victories.
After Tuesday’s 2-1 overtime victory over Lakes at the DeKalb supersectional, O’Connor sits at 302 career wins. The magic number he’d like to take into retirement is 304 lifetime victories — with it a state championship — to conclude his 18-year Marmion coaching career.
“It’s extraordinary,” said O’Connor, a native New Yorker who started Batavia’s boys soccer program in 1983 and did the same at Marmion in 1994.
“So much has happened,” he said. “To me, it’s a credit to the kind of players we have on this team. It’s almost surreal in a sense, a storybook you might say. It’s a storybook that still has a couple chapters left to go. And those chapters would be Friday and Saturday.”
Many weekends ago, O’Connor grew up in Chateaugay, N.Y, at the base of the Appalachian Mountains in what he said was the poorest county in New York. By sixth-grade he’d figured out his life’s goal — to teach and coach.
For the past 26 years he’s been teaching physical education at Gary Elementary School in West Chicago.
“I finish teaching there at 3 o’clock and go directly here to the practice field at Marmion and get to practice at 3:30. I’ve been doing that for 18 years,” O’Connor said.
A soccer player at the State University of New York at Cortland, O’Connor first realized his childhood goal after moving to Illinois in 1976 and teaching physically and mentally challenged children with the Joseph Kennedy Foundation in Palos Park. Two years later he went to Laraway Elementary School in Joliet, where O’Connor met his wife of 32 years, Mart. In 1980 O’Connor directed Laraway’s unbeaten baseball team to an Illinois Elementary School Association state championship.
Along came his founding of Batavia’s boys soccer program, and he also spent three years coaching soccer at Waubonsee Community College. By 1994 Marmion was interested in starting soccer, and contacted O’Connor to submit a proposal.
“I said, shoot, I’ll write a proposal. I have no visions of coaching there,” O’Connor said.
There were two potential stumbling blocks — his soccer-playing sons Reilly and Cory, then in seventh- and fifth-grade, respectively. They were deciding between attending Marmion, St. Francis and Benet.
O’Connor — who also has a daughter, Mollie, a drama teacher at an Oak Park middle school — asked them: “If you happen to choose Marmion, if you’re good enough to play, would you want the opportunity to possibly have me as your high school coach? Because if you don’t I won’t take the job.
“They said, ‘We would embrace that opportunity.’ The rest is history.”
It’s obviously been a good history for O’Connor, whose Cadets on Tuesday advanced to their first state finals.
“It means I’ve been around doing this a long time,” O’Connor said of the 300 wins. “It means I’ve been blessed with some wonderful players who have really accepted my coaching and my instruction. They bought into the style of soccer I like to teach.
“It also means I’m very humbled by it, because I have a lot of friends in this coaching fraternity who have reached that goal. The coaching fraternity has connected me with a lot of very good friends and outstanding coaches that I’ve learned a great deal from. Being in the 300 club means that a lot of guys along the way have influenced my career as a coach in a very positive way.”
Aside from traveling with Mart and doting over their two grandchildren, O’Connor doesn’t plan on disappearing in his retirement.
“I’m still going to be present at Marmion because Marmion is in my heart, and I hope I’m still in theirs,” he said. “Marmion means too much to me to go. I’m just going to be an ambassador for a wonderful school. It is a special place.”
Catching up with ... Lauren Zima
This 5-foot, 4-inch St. Charles North senior didn’t consider a collegiate swimming career until after she helped the North Stars to seventh-place in state in the 400-yard freestyle relay as a sophomore. She placed eighth in the 100 butterfly in the 2010 finals and, more recently, followed in the footsteps of North graduates Chris Peterson and Kaylee Jamison by committing to Minnesota. Zima will enter the Nov. 12 St. Charles East sectional swim meet off 100 butterfly and 200 freestyle victories on Oct. 29 at the Upstate Eight Conference meet. She entered St. Charles North as a freshman straight out of Apex, N.C., arriving with younger sisters Rachel and Julie and parents Jim and Karen. Lauren gave up softball, volleyball and jazz dance to concentrate full-time on swimming; with the St. Charles Swim Team, a club, she has competed in several national events including last summer at Stanford — and St. Paul, MN. Out of the pool, she was St. Charles North’s representative for the annual Wendy’s High School Heisman Award honoring scholastics, academics and athletics. Zima sports an overall 4.7 grade-point average (5.3 when weighing in Advanced Placement courses), was nominated for the school’s “Unsung Hero” award, volunteers weekly at the Lazarus House homeless support facility and for the past two years has packed food for the Feed My Starving Children organization.
Q: You chose Minnesota over Iowa and Northwestern. Why?
A: I’d heard a lot about it from Kaylee Jamison, she’s graduated now (2011). I had a few meets up there in club season before, and I loved the people. I just love the campus itself and the area. The coaches are so nice, they’re like family.
Q: No fear of Minnesota winters?
A: I haven’t been up there in winter so I’m not really sure what to expect, but I’ve heard it’s not much worse than St. Charles.
Q: You started swimming in fifth grade. What was the appeal?
A: I started just doing it with my friends. We had a neighborhood swim team so I started then. I started with the club team, and I had a lot of good friends (swimming) so I stuck with it.
Q: Was it hard adjusting to the move from North Carolina?
A: It wasn’t bad. I met a lot of nice girls from the team before the school year had even started. I made a lot of friends when club season started with girls on the East team. I had a lot of nice friends to help me adjust.
Q: What’s the farthest you’ve swum?
A: The mile (1,650 yards) is a regular event, but I did a 5 (-kilometer) once in open water in North Carolina. Never again.
Q: What do you like about school?
A: I guess I like seeing my friends and I like the AP biology class I’m in. That’s about it. I’m not a fan.
Q: What would you change about school?
A: It’s be a lot shorter. And you could probably go home for lunch.
Q: Here’s one of my usual questions: What do you see as the biggest problem today?
A: I think people spend too much time on their phone and texting and not enough time physically talking to people. And playing games on their phone. Kids get phones at such young ages.
Q: You’ve swum in the state meet as a sophomore and junior; what was that experience like?
A: It was crazy. The state meet was like nothing I’d ever been to before. It doesn’t even compare to nationals, I don’t think, in the energy and how much support every school has there. It’s pretty crowded, in such a tight space. It’s pretty intense but fun at the same time.
Q: Were you nervous?
A: I actually had been down my freshman year, not to swim but I went down as an alternate. (North Stars) coach (Rob) Rooney just felt like that year I was the only freshman who didn’t qualify — I think it was me and two seniors, we’d been on the sectional team and didn’t qualify for state so he brought us down to state. I guess the senior, it was her last year, and for me, to get a feel for the environment. If I made it my sophomore year — and I did — I wouldn’t be nearly as nervous, and I think that really helped.
Q: How difficult is competitive swimming?
A: I think it’s really hard, but I think you get what you put into it. So, it’s easy if you don’t work at it. The harder you work the harder it is, but the more results you’ll see.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com
Who’s next?
Tom Roderick, Jamie Wu, David Potter and Lon Erickson were the 2011 recipients of St. Charles East’s Jodie Harrison Lifetime Achievement Award, named after the Saints’ former athletic director fatally injured in a 1991 automobile accident.
Nominations are being solicited through Dec. 1 for the 2012 class of Harrison honorees. The four persons receiving the highest vote totals from a selection committee representing the high school, Boosters Club and St. Charles business and civic communities will get the nod.
The nomination form is available at the school website, east.d303.org, by emailing stceast@mac.com or by contacting the Saints’ athletic office at (630)377-4775.
Inductees will be presented during a ceremony before the boys varsity basketball game of Jan. 14, 2012, between the Saints and visiting Larkin.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com