HUNTLEY – In 2011, football coach John Hart had it all. He was sitting on top of the Indiana high school football world as head man at Warren Central High School in the Indianapolis area, with one state championship and a perennial state contending record on his resume.
His success and reputation spread across the Midwest. He was starting to get phone calls and emails from many schools. Some of the calls that year came from Huntley athletic officials and football boosters in Illinois.
Hart was understandably reluctant to make a move at first. He had only been at Warren Central four years and felt like his career was in great shape. He was a head coach at a first-rate school with a high-profile program and first-rate facilities. He definitely wasn’t job-hunting.
But then he started to find out about Huntley High School, the community, and feeder programs. Hart learned that 500 kids played youth football in Huntley and more than 3,000 people attended high school games.
Most significantly, he remembered how much he liked a challenge.
HHS Football Head Coach John Hart speaks to the freshman team during the Red vs. Black scrimmage game on August 23. (Chris La Pelusa I Sun Day Photo)
All of this came together in 2012, when he brought an impressive 28-year coaching record to the Red Raiders. A high school football program is too complex and challenging to turn around in one season, but Hart impressed anyway. In his inaugural season, he guided the Red Raiders to a 6-3 regular season mark, where they qualified for a playoff berth. There the Red Raiders gave perennial post-season participant Fenwick all they could handle but bowed 10-9 in the Class 7A playoffs.
On August 30, on the renovated Red Raider stadium (featuring colorful new bleachers and field turf) Hart will begin his second season against Bartlett in a non-conference game.
“I appreciated the calls from Huntley, but I hesitated at first,” Hart said as he prepared for the opening of formal team practices earlier this month. “I had so much success in my career, especially at Warren Central. But the more I learned about Huntley, the more impressed I was. I decided to come because I became convinced that the Huntley community fully supported the high school program in more ways than one. You can’t have a successful football program without a solid, comprehensive support system from the community.”
Hart, who is also a weights and conditioning coach, grew up in downstate Newton, Ill., where he played football in high school. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, without playing football. While at EIU, he joined the coaching staff of a local high school in Charleston, where EIU is located. This began an impressive coaching career now in its 29th year. His first two stops were at Edwards County and downstate Mt. Carmel high schools, and then he went to Evansville Rietz in Indiana, where he won his first state gridiron championship. He moved over to Warren Central in 2008 and won his second state title a couple of years later.
“I have grown programs not because I do a lot of fancy things, I just talk to kids about the game, and it grows from there,” he said. “We had 67 kids in the upper levels of the program here at Huntley when I got here. Now we have more than 150. I surround myself with coaches who feel as I do, and the whole love of the game filters down to the students and the community.
“I also believe heavily in conditioning. I teach weights in some of my physical education classes, and we have established weight-lifting in the PE curriculum here. We are starting to develop some outstanding athletes in many sports.”
Huntley has made the IHSA football playoffs four times, three of the appearances coming in the last five years. They are 4-4 in eight playoff games, and their high water mark in the post-season was a Class 4A state semifinal game in 2001 against former Driscoll Catholic, where the Red Raiders bowed to the eventual state champions, 24-21. The Red Raiders also played postseason games in 2008 and 2009.
Asked about his coaching style, he said, “No one will be bored watching us. We play a high-tempo, high-octane offensive style, with four or five receiver sets in a passing game. I also am an emotional guy on the sidelines and in the locker room. Football is an emotional sport; I want my players to play with emotion.
“I like our chances to make the playoffs, but we’re not assuming anything,” Hart said. “Last year, we were fortunate to win some games, and we were unfortunate to lose a few. Luck enters into it always.”
1 Comment
Good luck John and the entire Red Raider team in your 2013 season.