Gary Korhonen is still a nervous wreck.
The Richards football coach is still a worrier’s worrier, fiddling nervously with his rosary beads during games and adding tooth marks to his St. Christopher medal.
He’s still the consummate organizer as well, sweating the smallest details and awaking well before dawn without an alarm clock because he figures his only edge is outworking the other guy.
“I’m not a natural at anything,” he still protests. “I’m just a hard worker.”
Korhonen, though, is still not as bad as he was back in 1989, when the morning after his Richards football team won a second straight state title he looked like a coach on the bad end of a 20-game losing streak. Apparently 300 victories gives even him a little peace of mind and an appreciation that he’s not some accidental success.
That’s how many games Korhonen’s teams have won in his 37 years as a head coach, the last 35 in Oak Lawn. It ties him for total victories with former Providence coach Matt Senffner, the winningest football coach in state high school history.
A victory over Eisenhower on Friday at Korhonen Field was going to move Korhonen past Senffner on that list, but the Illinois High School Association changed course this week and said he will stay No. 2 awhile longer because nine of his triumphs came in Iowa.
Korhonen really doesn’t care. All he worries about is that defeating Eisenhower would give Richards its sixth victory this season and thereby officially clinch a mind-boggling 22nd straight state playoff appearance.
Besides, if you pinned him down he’d no doubt tell you his favorite number isn’t 300 or 301, but rather 252, the number of athletes he has sent off to play some level of college football. Of that total, 215 have gone to four-year schools.
Adam Sanders apparently will join the latter club because Korhonen prodded him to be a complete person, not just a complete player. The two-way senior lineman figured to attend a junior college and then work in a relative’s construction company until his coach went to work on him.
“I really didn’t plan to go to a four-year college after this, but he talked me into it,” Sanders said. “He explained to me how much college is needed for anything nowadays.
“He even mentioned it to my dad, and now he’s helping me fill out applications. He has opened my eyes to a better understanding of college.”
Korhonen is just returning a favor for about the 253d time. Almost half a century ago, he was an aimless Amundsen senior who had barely known his father when a coach got him to raise his sights and see the big picture.
Korhonen went on to play linebacker at Upper Iowa University and spent two seasons as a young head coach in Iowa before arriving 40 years ago at Richards as a freshman coach. In 1972 he became head coach and immediately led the Bulldogs to their first winning season. In 1978 Richards won the first of 24 state playoff berths.
Talent, of course, has played a major role in this stunning run of prosperity. So has Korhonen’s ability to attract good assistants and–by delegating authority and credit–keep them.
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He is hardly the X’s and O’s dunce he makes himself out to be, but he has played to his strength by focusing on the administrative side of his job, which covers everything from practice schedules to college recruiting to washing towels and water bottles himself.
It also covers establishing an attitude, which at Richards means high expectations and toughness, whether it’s the 8 a.m. Saturday practices that follow Friday night games or Korhonen’s intolerance for mistakes.
“If it’s raining outside, he’s the only coach without a jacket on,” Sanders said. “He’s got his nose into the game. I’d say pound for pound he’s tougher than anyone on the team.”
At 66, Korhonen still has a young man’s energy and little desire to slow down, even if he now teaches two history classes a day instead of five. If it’s a part-time job, he still manages to spend at least 12 hours a day in the building, even in the off-season, when he mans the weight room before and after school.
“I have no timetable as far as retirement,” he said. “I have no idea when it will happen.
“The good Lord placed me on this earth for a reason, and it was to work with high school kids, which I truly enjoy.”
This year’s team proves he has lost nothing off his fastball.
Richards has just 14 seniors and lacks the big-time Division I prospects that have been almost routine there, but the Bulldogs are 5-1 and ranked 20th in the Tribune poll.
They also are improving steadily, which more than 300 victories is Korhonen’s measure of success.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be where I am right now,” he said. “Coaching is a career and obviously you have to have goals, but I never sat there hoping to win 300 or 200 or 100.
“It’s not necessarily winning this or that but improving, getting better as players and people . . . helping them.”
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