Monken leaves St. Charles East for Metea Valley

A coach who revived a Tri-Cities football program is leaving to see if he can build one from scratch in Aurora.

After five years at St. Charles East, Ted Monken will start coaching and teaching next fall at Metea Valley. Monken will start with freshmen and sophomores for one year until the school fields a varsity team for the first time in 2010.

He'll be building a program at Metea, and he'll bring plenty of experience rebuilding one. At St. Charles East, he took over a team that had gone 1-8 the year before he got there in 2003, improved them to 4-5 the next year, then averaged 8 wins while going to the playoffs four straight seasons.

"There's a ton of mixed emotions," Monken said. "Starting with (principal) Bob Miller and (athletic director) Jerry Krieg, I don't know if I'll ever find anyone better as far as support and doing what I need to be successful. I'm going to miss those guys.

"The staff at St. Charles East has a ton of great people, kids and parents. There was a booster club, and the parents did it the right way. I didn't have parents lobby for playing time for their kids, they did what they could to help the program. The kids did a ton of work, everything I asked. It's definitely sad leaving. The place has been very good to me, but any time you take something new you have to leave something good."

Overall, Monken had a 36-17 record in five years. The Saints went 8-3 in his final season, beating defending 7A state champion Lake Zurich in the playoffs before losing to Cary-Grove.

Besides the wins, Monken helped add excitement in the Tri-Cities. He and St. Charles North coach Mark Gould started awarding the "key to the city" every year to the winner of the North Stars-Saints game.

In the nonconference schedule, area fans were treated to Batavia-St. Charles East games the past two years and a Geneva-St. Charles East game this past year, in addition to a Vikings-Saints playoff game the year before. All those games drew huge crowds and added to the buzz surrounding high school football in the Tri-Cities.

"One of things we did was turn St. Charles East-North back into a rivalry," Monken said. "We had lost 3 straight times, it isn't much of a rivalry when they kick your tails every year. It's been great to start competing with North again."

Monken also pointed to a win over Neuqua Valley in the Saints' Upstate Eight championship season in 2007 as something he's most proud of.

"To beat Neuqua, anytime a school of 2,100 beats a school of 4,500, they were the Goliath," Monken said. "To knock those guys off is something the kids will remember forever."

Monken listed several reasons for leaving, including being closer to his home in Oswego and the opportunity to teach PE instead of math. Monken said his commute will be 11 miles instead of 20 to St. Charles, and that over five years he figures he'll save "500 hours in the car."

"Teaching PE instead of math frees up more time to focus on running a program," Monken said. "It's a big, brand new school. It's a little bigger, all the facilities are brand new. The money is a little better. I think the Indian Prairie school district has a wealth of talent. You can build a football program from scratch, from ordering the mouth pieces to blocking sleds. It's an exciting endeavor to take on."

Monken, who has two children age 5 and 6 months, said he will build his coaching staff with teachers from Waubonsie Valley and Neuqua Valley. In a couple years, the new District 204 school is expected to even the enrollments somewhat: Neuqua Valley will still be the largest at 3,800 students while both Waubonsie Valley and Matea Valley are expected to have 2,800.

Monken also looked a couple years into the future when Matea goes through what South Elgin did and fields a varsity team without any seniors.

"We'll take our lumps," Monken said. "I'm sure it will be a good homecoming in a couple years, St. Charles East will take a little pleasure pounding us and saying thanks for leaving.

"It was an opportunity I felt like I needed to look at. It wasn't one major factor, just a lot of little things put together."