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Public School Advantages

Dan Sharp was 24-18 with 3 playoff appearances in 4 seasons at Minooka before he left for JCA. At JCA, he was 199-51 with 6 titles in 20 years.
All.... Defeated the Cyclones one year in the postseason while at Minooka.


How about the reverse. It was only four seasons at tiny Gridley before Ken Leonard took over at Griffin. While GHS had a successful program at the time he took it to a much higher level. Below is a past article from 2018. Ratsy

Please don’t let this happen

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all. If you think Illinois Football is crazy try Tennessee. Don’t let it happen in Illinois. They split public & private schools years ago. Some Public Schools who won state in football say oh we would have beat those Private School champs if we played. Thanks to the split we have 3 watered down classes in private & 6 in public. There are 8 regions in each class & the top 4 go to the playoffs. Some regions have 6,7,8 teams in them & some have 4 so you realistically can have 3-7,2-8,1-9 or 0-10 teams in the playoffs!!! Some teams petition to be put in those 4 team or 5 team regions to level it out but those mostly get declined. Some teams 5-5 or 6-4 get left out. Alcoa is like East St Louis. They are a 2A school playing in 3A & just won their 10th state title in a row. They are now 3A & opting to play 4A. They have a difficult time getting teams to play them. They had to play a team from New York last year & only had 9 games(Tennessee plays 10 game seasons & has a week 0) this year. Bad flooding cancelled games & teams that ended up having a open date would not play them. They play many 6A schools & lose close or beat those teams. If you go on Coach T look up the Milan(starting a separate school for students to keep their enrollment low) & Alcoa threads for one but like I said if you guys think Illinois football is crazy. Oh & trans trying to build up their football programs can play Independent but can’t make the state playoffs. Also if you do a Co-Op they don’t total your enrollment. So a 300 student school combines with a 400 student school it only counts as the host school enrollment 300 not 700 total.

Public School Advantages

I would like to see some of the top-tier private school coaches take over a mid to low-tier public program and see how long it takes to create their "culture" of winning.
It would probably take quite a while. The head coach is a small slice of an institution's football culture. You need administrators that are giving the thumbs up for camps in the summer for middle schoolers and not punishing their coaches for insisting on mandatory winter lifting sessions. You need alumni and parents that volunteer their time. You need teachers in the building that don't have an adversarial bend toward the football program (it happens). Etc. Etc. So no, a simple coach swap would no doubt help a "mid to low-tier public program" if they came from a "top-tier private school", but changing out one single person in an institution does not a culture create. And in the real world, good coaches are drawn to places with a "culture" that supports their mission (like any job).

And some more food for thought - there's a bunch of anecdotes being thrown around as if it's a "gotcha" statement that most legendary private school coaches haven't replicated their success at a public school. Why would they? How many examples are their of a truly successful coach who is winning titles at a private school leaving to go to a public school? It rarely happens, I'm sure in part due to what I described in the paragraph above. Coach Buzz is the favorite example, I don't know too many others. And Buzz didn't exactly perform any miracles at Driscoll - he inherited a machine, stayed the course for 3 years, broke the streak, and then the school failed.
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Coach of the Year Candidates

If your considering a D-Coordinator for Coach of the Year then you can't have defensive performances like they did vs ESL and St Francis. Beating Jack Elliott who couldn't run wasn't getting him at his best. They had a great second half vs Williams but he still had 280 yards and 3 TD passes. That isn't exactly shutting him down.
Had the defense not jumped off sides I think he would have brought them down the field and scored. If not a TD a field goal. Just my take but Williams was able to make plays and with the game on the line I believe they still had a chance. Great game and LA deserved to win and was the better team in the 2nd half. This is what a championship games should look like not the blowouts.
East has another shot next year. Oregon is going to get a good player!
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Public School Advantages

So it was in his fifth season at York that he matched his success at St. Francis by reaching the semifinal round of the playoffs, in this case in 8A.
Not equivalent programs he took over either. Purnell had obviously established a strong program that he took over at St Francis. 5 years to reach semis (and repeat so it wasn't a fluke) is pretty impressive given where he took the program and being in a deep 8A.
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Public School Advantages

I would like to see some of the top-tier private school coaches take over a mid to low-tier public program and see how long it takes to create their "culture" of winning.
To my knowledge it has only been done successfully one time in recent history. It took five years.

Mike Fitzgerald had a two-year run as head coach of St. Francis for the 2014 and 2015 seasons. He compiled a 15-7 record and took the 2014 Spartans to the 6A semifinals.

After two years of not being a head coach he took over the York program for the 2018 season. The prior season, 2017, York had a 1-8 record. Their only win was over Proviso West, I think by nine points. They pretty much got pounded by every other team they played.

Mike Fitzgerald's six-year tenure at York went as follows:
2018 (4-5)
2019 (4-5)
2020 (4-2)
2021 (8-2)
2022 (12-1)
2023 (11-2)


So it was in his fifth season at York that he matched his success at St. Francis by reaching the semifinal round of the playoffs, in this case in 8A.

I raise this example merely to be fair. It was done once. Your point still remains valid. Such a transition is almost unheard of.

Mike Fitzgerald is, of course, now at Marist. He certainly qualifies as a "top-tier private school coach".
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