Davis out at Dundee-Crown
The Dundee-Crown football program will have a new head coach in 2011.
Mike Davis, who led the Chargers for seven seasons, was told last Friday during a meeting with Dundee-Crown principal Lynn McCarthy and athletic director Dick Storm that he would not be rehired.
A coach in the D-C football program for 17 years, Davis led the Chargers to a record of 12-50. The team finished winless this season for the first time since the fall of 1983.
"(McCarthy) gave me the opportunity to resign and I said, 'No. If you want to get rid of me, you can fire me,' " Davis said Thursday. "The whole meeting lasted about 10 minutes.
"I'm very disappointed for a lot of different reasons. I respect her right to make the decision. I mean, she's the boss and I can't argue with it. But do I like it? No."
The opening will be posted as soon as possible.
"We just want to go in a different direction for the sake of the kids," Storm said. "Going 0-9 isn't the easiest thing for kids. This is hard on me because I like Mike. He's always been good to me and worked well with me, so it's hard to get to this point. He's not real pleased. I don't think anybody that likes their job would be pleased."
Davis said his disappointment centered on not being given the chance to coach the two promising groups of underclassmen currently within the D-C program.
"Our freshman class was 7-2 and our sophomore class was 5-3-1," Davis said. "It's really the first time in the years I've been here, and I'm talking long before I was head coach, that they've had two classes back to back that have been successful. I would have liked to have had the chance to see how that worked out.
I'm very, very sad, but I'm not going to complain about it. Obviously, we didn't win any games this year and we haven't won a lot of games. If that's what you're going to base success on ... I think the program's in much better shape now than it was when I took over."
Davis, 42, who has been involved with football every fall for the last 33 years as a player or coach, said he hopes to hook on as an assistant coach elsewhere next season.
East St. Louis is out: On Thursday, the Illinois High School Association successfully petitioned St. Clair County's 20th Judicial Court to absolve a temporary restraining order that the court had granted to East St. Louis Senior High School.
The IHSA ruled on Oct. 26 that the East St. Louis football team would forfeit 10 victories from its 2009 season, five victories from the 2010 season and be removed from the 2010 football playoffs after the team was found to have used an ineligible player in those contests.
The absolution of the temporary restraining order by Judge Aguirre results in the East St. Louis football team forfeiting the 15 aforementioned contests and being removed from the football playoff field. Belleville West, which was defeated by East St. Louis in the first round of the playoffs, will return to the playoff field and face Belleville East this weekend in a second-round contest.