A tough football reclamation project needs a tough coach.
That’s why Palatine needed Tyler Donnelly, someone tough enough and stubborn enough to carry it through the inevitable rough spots, when the brutal workload that accompanies football resurrection would seem as effective as a fumbled snap.
Donnelly knows all about high-perspiration, low-reward football. The former De Kalb star spent the 1989 through 1993 seasons as a walk-on running back at Illinois, battling anonymity in return for a long-shot stab at playing time and a scholarship.
He seemed close to breaking into the playing rotation after the 1991 season, but a head coaching change and a broken leg ended that dream, and Donnelly sat for the final 26 games of his Illini career.
He figured he couldn’t control that. He could control his effort, and that’s what he has preached to his Palatine players since becoming head coach in December 2004.
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“It’s not in me to quit,” he said of his college career. “I just couldn’t do it.
“That’s the message I’ve been trying to get across here for three years: Don’t quit on things.
“We just don’t quit at Palatine.”
His players apparently have gotten the point. The Pirates didn’t quit after the 2005 season, when they finished 4-5 and just missed the state playoffs, and they didn’t quit last year, when a 2-1 start dissolved into a 2-7 finish.
They didn’t surrender this year either after they came up inches short of the goal line at the end of a 21-14 loss to unbeaten Rolling Meadows. That result left Palatine with a 1-2 record, but the Pirates have gone 3-1 since; and one win in its final two games will ensure their first winning season and playoff berth since 1997.
That was its first season without Joe Petricca, who had led Palatine to 11 straight playoff berths before stepping down as head coach after the 1996 season with a 103-40 mark and the 1994 Class 5A runner-up trophy. The Pirates were 11-1 in ’97 but only 13-50 in the seven seasons after that, and Donnelly, an assistant the last four of those years, took charge with an attitude.
“He said, ‘I can get you guys where you want to be,'” said senior running back Dan Sutton, a Palatine football fan since grammar school. “‘If you are willing to pay the price I can definitely take you there.’
“He’s kind of a hard-nosed guy. He knew to get to the playoffs we had to do everything 100 percent perfect, no room for error.”
Donnelly’s first move was to hire Petricca as defensive coordinator. Petricca had been an assistant at the school in 1997 and 1999 before taking a similar job at Prospect, which he helped win two state titles.
He was a formidable presence, especially at Palatine, but Donnelly, only 33 then, was secure enough to hire him and listen to him because he knew it would help turn around Palatine football.
Petricca retired after last season, leaving as perhaps his most important legacy a stepped-up weight-training program that has let the Pirates match up physically against top Mid-Suburban League teams.
“We didn’t have enough kids athletic enough to compete with the Fremds, Prospects and Barringtons,” Donnelly said. “What Joe sold me on is you’ll never have a ton of them at Palatine, so you have to build them, and the only way to build them is in the weight room.”
The other problem Donnelly had to solve was turnout, which had been too low for Palatine to play two-platoon football — where players play on only one side of the ball — which he knew was essential to success.
He started recruiting the hallways, working hard on building relationships to attract and retain players. He still remembered his walk-on days, when coaches sometimes didn’t even seem to know non-scholarship players’ names.
“You can’t let kids come to you,” he said. “You have to reach out to kids, make them feel at home and wanted.
“You can yell at them and push them, but at the end of the day put your arm around them and say, ‘Nice job.’
“I want to make kids feel a part of something.”
The numbers crunch came to a head last season, when Palatine had 38 varsity players, only nine of them seniors. It has 50 players this year, about half seniors, which has given it the ability to go two-platoon as well as more experience.
“This year we have the leadership, that never-quit attitude,” senior wide receiver Nick Busch said.
Palatine also has its share of talent, including senior wide receiver Tim Williams, junior quarterback Matt Rossi, junior linebacker Ryan Cortez and senior defensive lineman Monroe Brooks, whom several Big Ten schools are recruiting.
The future looks promising as well. Palatine has 55 players on its sophomore team and 73 freshman players.
It’s the present, though, that consumes the Pirates, who want to maintain their newfound success and the buzz it has generated in the school and community.
“To be on the first team in years to make the playoffs would be quite an accomplishment,” Sutton said. “I dreamed of playing here my whole life, and to be part of that … I can’t tell you what that would mean.
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“We want to put Palatine back on the high school map, just get the bandwagon rolling.”
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*Read and comment on Temkin’s blog, “Upon Further Review,” at chicagosports.com/temkin