A busy weekend ahead at state meets
If a coach invented a formula guaranteeing success, he or she could make a million dollars. The following gentlemen can't quit their day jobs just yet, but they're getting there.
This weekend offers state finals in boys soccer and boys and girls cross country. Soccer finals are held at Hoffman Estates High School, cross country at the famed Detweiller Park in Peoria. DuPage County is well-represented.
Benet's boys soccer team, under coach Sean Wesley, will play Class 2A foe Latin at 3 p.m. Friday in Benet's first state semifinal since 2001.
Naperville North soccer coach and alumnus Jim Konrad, fourth in state as a junior in 1987 and again as an eighth-year coach in 2010, leads the Huskies against Bradley-Bourbonnais in a Class 3A semifinal at 5 p.m. Friday.
In cross country, coach Paul Vandersteen's Neuqua Valley boys team enters the Class 3A competition as the team to beat, seeking its third state title. In the 3A girls meet, defending state runner-up Naperville North, under Dan Iverson, comes in ranked No. 1 by DyeStat and chasing its seventh state title.
These four groups have reached the last weekend in their respective sports by a variety of means.
"I don't think I can point to any one theme or reason other than just simply a lot of hard work over the years," said Vandersteen, who coached the first Gatorade national athlete of the year in cross country, Chris Derrick in 2007-08.
"Six of my seven guys running on Saturday are seniors," Vandersteen said. "So it's just been a lot of hard work and dedication, putting a lot of miles in over the summer and winter, and they have really banded together to do what they've done."
That's seniors Jake McEneaney, Josh Mollway, Jeremy Hayhurst, Scott Anderson, Jackson Jett and Matt Milostan, plus sophomore Zach Kinne. This group entered the season ranked No. 1 in the nation.
For Benet soccer, Wesley said the Redwings' seniors have embraced their younger teammates.
"Certainly you get it out of one or two players, but I've never gotten it out of the whole collective," said Wesley, a Bolingbrook graduate whose former youth coach, Manny Aguilar, is now an assistant at Benet. Aguilar's sons, Ben and Nick, led a championship repeat in 2000 and 2001.
Wesley's examples of teamwork spread the entire field. Senior backup goaltender Caden Martin's supports junior starter Brian Gould. Sophomore forward Franklin Rutkowski pairs with senior Ben Kelly while senior midfielder Connor Mote joins freshman Nick Renfro. All-state center backfielder Bennett Curtis clears danger in front of Gould.
"This senior class has shown its maturity by really embracing the underclassmen," Wesley said. "Instead of focusing on their flaws we've focused on what they can add."
Konrad has taken a self-help method to Naperville North boys soccer. The entire team read "The Hard Hat" by Jon Gordon, with the premise "21 ways to be a great teammate." As with the Benet club this team activity has fused a group of disparate ages.
"We read that together and talked about it a lot. We have four freshmen, two sophomores, a ton of juniors and a ton of seniors. I felt like it's a conversation we needed to have, how to be a good teammate just because it's such a mixed group," said Konrad, who has two nephews on the club, junior defender Mitch Konrad and freshman forward Ty.
"Obviously, we've had some success," Jim Konrad said. "Does one lead to another? I don't know. I'd like to think it did and even if it didn't I think it was a good process to go through with the kids."
As well as fielding sons of his brother, fellow Huskies hall of famer Jay Konrad, Jim plays sophomore defender Colin Iverson.
"Poor Dan," Jim Konrad said about the Huskies girls cross country coach, stretched thin with the girls at Detweiller while his son plays at Hoffman Estates.
Dan Iverson's recipe for success this cross country season is consistency.
"Our team's never really had a problem being unified as a group. It's one of the things we work on pretty early on. But I think it's the first time ever that our top seven has essentially been the same from the beginning of the year to the end," Iverson said.
When the girls ran an intersquad challenge in August the top seven were seniors Claire Hamilton, Gabby Champion and Kayla Glowacki, juniors Sarah Schmitt and Hannah Ricci and sophomores Alex Morris and Claire Hill. That'll be Saturday's lineup.
"I think it's really important that the girls build some sort of culture with each other, even the girls who are not running, frankly. I think it's nice to know that the girls, whether they're running or not, have their back," Iverson said.
"It's nice to have that sort of chemistry, that the kids should be able to go out there and do their best even if it's not perfect. And that's usually good enough."
Finishing strong
What a way for Glenbard West girls tennis coach Jim Valleskey to end 27 years in the Hilltoppers tennis program, 41 years overall in high school coaching.
Glenbard West finished with its highest team finish in history, fourth place in Class 2A on Oct. 22 at Buffalo Grove. Now Valleskey gets to retire full time to Scottsdale, Arizona.
That's a win-win.
"This was a real gift this year. We just had a great bunch of girls and parents," said Valleskey, 64, who remained as a coach after retiring in 2009 as Glenbard West's director of Guidance and Counseling Services.
"The way we did it was really more of a blessing for me," he said from Scottsdale. "They just are very team-oriented kids. They put the team first before themselves and there were just numerous great examples of that throughout the season."
Such as ...
Entering the St. Charles East sectional both Katie Snow and Claire Burelbach vied for the second singles spot. Snow won an intersquad challenge match and instead of turning sullen, Burelbach arrived chipper the next day to help Snow prepare.
Or, the case of Sophia Fausey.
On Glenbard West's 2015 sectional doubles team and its No. 2 singles player, this fall an arm injury limited Fausey to only a couple matches. Nonetheless, the week before state she drilled with No. 1 singles player Sienna Lopez, a freshman and offered to be Lopez's warmup partner at the tournament. Lopez went 4-2, reaching the sixth round in the consolation bracket.
"That kind of attitude, no matter who they played with, singles or doubles, they were going to do their best because it was for the team," said Valleskey, who since taking the girls varsity in 2010 compiled a 128-38-3 record with five sectional titles. He earned 92 wins as boys coach from 2004-14.
Valleskey, whose former mixed doubles partner was his wife, Paula - she maintained the Arizona house while Jim coached tennis - came to Glenbard West in 1983. Before that he'd helped Luther South's boys basketball team win a state title and also coached in Minneapolis where the Valleskeys have a daughter, Kenlee.
During Valleskey's 34-year stint at Glenbard West he coached football and boys basketball, including one year as head basketball coach, before focusing on tennis the last 27 years.
"It felt better to go out on the top end of things," he said. After retiring from guidance in 2009 he'd spent eight months in Arizona, but it became more difficult to be away from his wife and another daughter, Jessica.
While Valleskey leaves a strong girls tennis program - 91 girls this season, most ever - he's not done with racket sports.
He's a certified professional in pickelball, played on a smaller court with a lower net, a firmer ball and hard paddles, like giant table tennis. It was designed as a family game and is good fun for players of all ages. Valleskey is the director of pickleball at La Camarilla Racquet, Fitness & Swim Club in Scottsdale.
"This is like a pickelball mecca out here," he said.
It's a different sort of mecca in Illinois. Valleskey's departure may have some serendipitous benefit for other Hilltoppers sports. In his first year at Glenbard West, the football and girls volleyball teams won state championships.
"That's kind of how I started and it's just been an amazing community and group of students, parents and coaches to work with over the years," Valleskey said. "As I told the girls, I couldn't think of a better team to go out with than this one, and it just kind of epitomized my Glenbard West career."
doberhelman@dailyherald.com
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