West Chicago baseball coach makes tournament a learning experience
We often hear high school athletics is an extension of the classroom. West Chicago baseball coach Dan McCarthy gives that hope a literal application.
As has been the case for more than a decade, McCarthy's teaching and coaching responsibilities meshed in last weekend's Upstate Eight-Suburban Prairie Challenge at Benedictine University in Lisle. It was a grand slam for Wildcats baseball and for the students in McCarthy's sports marketing class.
The challenge dates back 12 years, when West Chicago was a member of the DuPage Valley Conference and McCarthy ran the Challenge while serving as an assistant to John Walters, now Glenbard East's football coach. The Wildcats joined Naperville Central in the DVC-East Suburban Catholic Conference Challenge that brought in Joliet Catholic and Benet in a one-night doubleheader.
Every other year McCarthy had his sports marketing students help produce and promote the occasion and donate proceeds to charity. In the penultimate year of what will be a 40-year teaching career, he decided to swing for the fences.
“Because this is my last year running it — I'm retiring at the end of next year — I decided, let's try to expand it, let's try to make it a little bigger,” McCarthy said.
This UEC-SPC challenge offered two doubleheaders at Benedictine on April 17-18. McCarthy's students threw their full weight into a project that, when all was said and done, raised more than $13,500 to be donated to the V Foundation for cancer research.
The V Foundation holds a special place in McCarthy's heart. From 1976-90 he taught and coached at Joliet Catholic, and one of the Hilltoppers' basketball players, Terry Gannon, played on North Carolina State's 1983 national championship team coached by the late Jim Valvano.
Now an announcer for NBC Sports and the Golf Channel, Gannon sent an appreciative letter to McCarty's class, thanking the students for “helping to save lives and make a dream of my late, former coach come true.”
On and off the diamond, Upstate Eight Conference clubs West Chicago, Batavia, West Aurora and St. Charles North and Suburban Prairie Conference teams Oswego, Minooka, Oswego East and Plainfield South aided the cause.
“It was a joint effort from all eight schools to pull this off,” McCarthy said,
The Suburban Prairie schools went 3-1 on the field, West Chicago earning the Upstate Eight's sole victory by scoring 2 runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to beat Oswego — whose coach, Mark Johnson, coordinated the Suburban Prairie teams.
McCarthy's sports marketing students, about 25 of them, had a multitude of duties over the two days. A couple baseball players in the class got home from Friday's ballgame after midnight and returned to Benedictine on Saturday morning to work the event.
It wasn't a two-and-done deal, however. The class planned everything from start to finish — designing T-shirts and selling them, selling advertising for the more than 500 programs they had printed, working with the art department for fliers and banners, soliciting nifty items for the seven gift baskets people bid on at the Challenge, creating “fan-fun” games for prizes during the games, producing a promotional video as part of school announcements.
“All the schools complemented our kids for the way they ran it,” said McCarthy, who noted every team purchased T-shirts to help the cause. The effort received a sizable donation by a single donor sympathetic to the cause of cancer research, McCarthy said.
Each student was responsible for bringing in at least $70 by selling tickets, T-shirts and advertisements and soliciting donations. Each student needed to sell a minimum of five T-shirts and five tickets to the games.
“One of the things I've always emphasized is if you want to market an event you've got to bring in a little bit of your own capital to finance the thing,” McCarthy said.
Students were graded on their contribution to the money donated to the V Foundation, which turned out to be the biggest one-year haul since McCarthy started doing it.
“They did what they said they would do and that's important because without their 'buy-in' for this challenge it wouldn't have been possible. They came through with flying colors and everyone we spoke to really appreciated what they did,” McCarthy said.
“Those hands-on events the kids are involved in, I think they enjoy that much more than the classroom, paper-pencil material because they really get a chance to market something and they get to see the end result of all their hard work. They know their effort is going to a charitable organization, and they just feel better about themselves knowing they contributed to a good cause.”
Meanwhile at West Chicago ...
On Tuesday West Chicago held its second mini-triathlon, the field comprised of students from each of the eight physical education classes.
In 2014 the event drew a mere 12 students. This one saw more than 90 transition from a 200-yard swim to a 3-mile stationary bike to 1 mile on the track, all under a half-hour.
“We were just trying to add a little something to the physical education curriculum, give the students something fun to do,” said West Chicago physical education instructor and football coach Ted Monken.
After doing their own class workout, students who didn't participate sat in the stadium bleachers and cheered on the competitors, who by that point were running their laps outside.
Some faculty also participated, including organizers Bill Lech, the P.E. department chair, and boys track coach Paul McLeland, himself an ironman triathlete. McLeland kicked off the event by racing “neck and neck” with a student, Monken said.
“The kids enjoy seeing the teachers sweat,” he said.
Getting the call
Morgan Kasperek, a three-time Academic all-Big Ten selection at Iowa and a star for Hinsdale Central's 2002 Class AA girls basketball state championship team, has been hired as girls varsity coach at Glenbard South. She succeeds Julie Fonda, who remains the Raiders' softball coach and assistant athletic director.
Kasperek served as Fonda's varsity assistant last season and was sophomore coach in 2013-14. In the past she'd coached at Glenbard West and Hinsdale Central — where, in 2008, she was called in as interim coach when Steve Gross abruptly resigned.
Also, 2006 Naperville Central graduate Lauren Grochowski was announced April 24 as the new girls basketball coach at DePaul Prep, formerly Gordon Tech.
Grochowski, who played college ball at Coastal Carolina and has taught and coached at DePaul Prep the past three seasons, was a key to Naperville Central's back-to-back Class AA state titles in 2003-04. She came in first off the bench as a freshman in 2003, and averaged about 6 points and 4 rebounds as a starting forward the next season for the Redhawks.
Here's the pitch
Last week 24 teams began group play in the 18th annual Naperville Invitational. Those matches produced a final eight that reached the championship bracket this weekend.
Barrington hosts Naperville Central in a quarterfinal 5 p.m. Thursday. Wheaton North hosts New Trier at the same time. Naperville North is the site for a soccer doubleheader — Waubonsie Valley-St. Charles East at 5 p.m., Naperville North-Plainfield North at 7.
The winners advance in the championship bracket to semifinals at 5 and 7 p.m. at Naperville Central with the championship game also at Naperville Central, noon Saturday.
Half the field — Waubonsie, Barrington, St. Charles East and New Trier — won 2014 sectional titles, with New Trier beating St. Charles East 1-0 for the Class 3A title.
Hot streak
Over two days earlier this week, Benedictine University senior outfielder Tim Hendricks broke the hits record for his school and his conference.
In the second game of a doubleheader April 26 against Rockford, Hendricks delivered a run-scoring triple that gave him 229 career hits, snapping the Eagles' program record held since 1997 by Mike Kowalewski. The 2013 Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference MVP and second-team All-America pick by D3baseball.com, Hendricks added a single to tie the NACC record of 230 hits.
The next day in Game 2 of a doubleheader against Marian, Hendricks led off the bottom of the first inning with an infield single. That gave him the NACC record, breaking the five-year-old mark of Aurora University's Tony Wellner.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com
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