published on April 25, 2024 in today

15 for 15: Pat Fitzgeralds love affair with Illinois high school football

Before Northwestern plays in its second Big Ten championship game in three years on Saturday, the Wildcats will sign the majority of their recruiting class on Wednesday. The class currently ranks 11th in the 14-team conference, according to the 247Sports Composite, and it features two players from the state of Illinois.

Neither number is abnormal, but each fails to capture what exactly goes into Pat Fitzgerald’s recruiting methodology when it comes to his home state.

Through 15 years as Northwestern’s head coach, Fitzgerald has lent a local flavor to a private school just beyond the Second City’s borders that bills itself as “Chicago’s Big Ten Team.” That Fitzgerald, an Orland Park native who went to Sandburg High, has been able to do this despite only once signing more than five in-state players in a class speaks to the force of his personality in Cook County and its surrounding locales.

Spend any time in this area, and you will hear folks from all walks of life gush about Fitzgerald, who was a catalyst for Northwestern’s greatest heights during his playing days. Assuming any one individual to be beyond reproach can be a tricky proposition, especially as the narrative takes hold over time. Too often, coaches are spoken of in generalities, especially when it comes to recruiting. Either this coach is dirty or that coach is pure. In Fitzgerald’s defense, he has had only two recruiting classes ranked better than 10th within his own conference, so if he or his staff have been pulling any shenanigans, they haven’t been particularly effective at them.

Still, it is worth peeling back the layers behind what makes this man and this program so beloved locally, especially because this is not, by any traditional measure, a local program.

“I’d love to be able to recruit and keep every young man home in Chicago and experience what it’s like to play for Chicago’s Big Ten team and experience the things that our guys are right now, competing for championships,” Fitzgerald said. “And then even going back when I was playing, winning Big Ten titles and going to the Rose Bowl. I mean, there’s nothing sweeter than doing it in your hometown, so that’s a priority to us.

“But we also know that we can’t recruit everybody, and at times we’re not gonna maybe be the right fit for some families, but we’re gonna be relentless in building those relationships. We’re gonna do anything and everything we can to support the great high school coaches here in the state of Illinois and Chicagoland and throughout the country.”

Here are anecdotes from 15 area high school coaches from Fitzgerald’s 15 years to shed a little more light on a connection like few others.

1. St. Rita High has an annual professional development day that takes kids outside of the classroom. Mustangs coach Todd Kuska likes to take his group up to Northwestern every spring, to learn the ins and outs of a college football program.

The teenagers get a tour of the equipment room. They learn all the dynamics of running a video room. Before day’s end, they assemble for a few words with Fitzgerald, even though the coach usually has to do most of the talking.

“Some are awestruck,” Kuska said of his students. “And he’s like, ‘All right guys. You’ve got a Big Ten head football coach standing in front of you. Any questions?’”

Mind you, these are not Kuska’s players, at least not all of them. They are mostly non-football players whose only possibility of a future on the gridiron will come in off-the-field capacities.

This is the side of Fitzgerald that so many like Kuska get to see, the side that helps explain why the seasoned college coach has developed such deep relationships with the area’s high school coaches. It doesn’t hurt that they happened to both coach an All-Big Ten quarterback in Mike Kafka, who is now a rising star in the coaching business himself as the Chiefs’ quarterbacks coach. That specific player connection also isn’t necessary for Fitzgerald to open his doors to coaches like Kuska.

“He puts guys in a relaxed state, he just handles himself so well in front of crowds,” Kuska said. “He’s a great guy to know. He’s an outstanding football coach, but I think he’s a better person than all of that.”

2. Like Kuska, Dave Inserra has helped Fitzgerald out a bit, too, having just sent him standout freshman left tackle Peter Skoronski and, in a much more visible role, assistant strength coach/program hype man Alex Spanos.

Like Kuska, none of that really matters when the Maine South coach discusses his relationship with Fitzgerald. Their campuses are only a half-hour away from each other, meaning Inserra can regularly visit for practices during bowl season and in the spring.

“They have a lot of fun,” Inserra said. “Football is way too demanding to make it so hard and difficult on individuals, and you’ve got to be able to joke, you’ve got to have fun things going on at practice.

“He once put a machine near the top rows of the bleachers at spring practice and shot a football to a linemen having to catch it, and if he caught it, they’d get out of sprints and conditioning. Their overall culture is tremendous.”

And sure, it helps that the hair-on-fire Spanos keeps the 46-year-old Fitzgerald young at heart and in the weight room.

“He’s not old by any means, but he’s been there for so long,” Inserra said. “He’s still a young guy. I know Alex Spanos is kind of his right-hand man as far as keeping Coach in shape. I get those stories as well at that level.”

3. Where do you start with Rob Zvonar? How about back in the spring, when the coronavirus pandemic slowed the country to a halt and had both high school and college athletes wondering what to do next on their own.

Zvonar’s problems weren’t all that different from Fitzgerald’s problems, so the latter dialed up the former.

“He’s a guy that called me up when this pandemic started and said, ‘Hey, wanna talk?’ ” said Zvonar, head coach at Lincoln-Way East High School. “And we just talked about how we handled our teams. He’s got kids my kids’ age, so he relates so well to college kids and younger kids and coaches.”

Zvonar has been coaching at the school since 1994, before Lincoln-Way split into two (and later three) campuses. In 2013, his quarterback, Tommy Fuessel, signed with Northwestern as a receiver. As a freshman, Fuessel suffered a concussion during practice. An MRI revealed a mass in his brain. He returned to practice a year later, but two more concussions ended his football career. Fuessel went on to become an outfielder in the United Shore Professional Baseball League, his athletic dreams taking hold in another sport.

“The crazy thing is,” Zvonar saud. “I still think Fitzgerald calls him once a month.”

4. Retired Libertyville head man Randy Kuceyeski coached in the area for 34 years and never sent a player to Fitzgerald, though it wasn’t for a lack of effort. Kuceyeski was adamant with Fitzgerald that he had a difference-maker on his team who would do the same for Northwestern. Fitzgerald saw differently.

“It’s hard news to accept because I wanted in the worst way to have someone play for him,” Kuceyeski said.

In rejection, though, Kuceyeski earned even more respect for the Wildcats’ leader. Things worked out just fine for that unnamed player, Kuceyeski said, and the honesty throughout the process only strengthened Kuceyeski’s relationship with Northwestern, where he played nose tackle from 1972-76 and where his daughter served as a student manager on the Rose Bowl team that Fitzgerald led as a linebacker in 1995.

In 2010, Kuceyeski’s son, John, was weighing his post-college options. He had a spot on Penn State’s staff, where he had served as a student assistant through his graduation the year before, or he could go home and work for Fitzgerald as a quality control coach.

He chose Northwestern, a move that worked out for a number of reasons, beyond the obvious timing there with Penn State. The younger Kuceyeski spent three years in various roles with Northwestern before climbing the ranks elsewhere. When Wildcats O-line coach Adam Cushing became Eastern Illinois’ head coach in 2019, he hired Kuceyeski as his offensive coordinator.

“I admire the way he handled the situation with my son,” Randy said. “He could’ve rejected him. He interviewed him like anybody else. It turned out to be a great decision for both Pat and John.”

Fitzgerald grew up in Chicago, played at Northwestern and has coached there since 2001. (Patrick Gorski / USA Today)

5. Matt Battaglia also had a close call with Northwestern that could have soured more bitter men. Battaglia assisted at several high schools in the state after playing guard at Northern Illinois from 2009-13. In January 2018, Kent State coach Sean Lewis hired Battaglia as a grad assistant. Months later, Northwestern called and asked him to interview for a similar role. Battaglia didn’t get the job but learned so much in his two years under Lewis that he ended up becoming the head coach at Fenwick High in Oak Park after the 2019 season. One of the first people to visit Fenwick upon Battaglia’s hiring was Matt MacPherson, the Northwestern defensive backs coach.

Battaglia’s early coaching career in college and high school has taught him one thing: Northwestern means what it says. The school does its homework on every potential prospect. Only Fitzgerald, the head coach, offers scholarships on the program’s behalf, a rarity at the FBS level.

And that goes a long way toward establishing trust locally.

“It starts with Fitz being a Chicago guy,” Battaglia said. “They don’t need to recruit one single guy from Chicago, but it’s home. They’re gonna make sure anyone that fits their program from Chicago isn’t gonna get away from here easily. The staff has been there a long time. He’s not pulling in mercenaries. Those guys are bought into their message. MacPherson came in, and you can see he’s a guy with great credibility who’s not BS-ing you. A lot of high school coaches can get a vibe from who’s doing homework or who’s BS-ing you with saying they need more film or something else.

“They’re not gonna beat around the bush. There’s not 1,000 offers from Northwestern in Chicago. You know those offers are real.”

6. When Jordan Lynch was hired as Mount Carmel’s coach after the 2017 season, Fitzgerald was one of the first people to call and congratulate him. He promised the former Northern Illinois Heisman finalist that Northwestern’s doors would always be open to him and his staff.

As important, he regularly sends Lynch reading material to keep his mind fresh. Earlier this season, with Northwestern playing football while the state high schools were not, Fitzgerald texted Lynch to see how he was holding up, encouraging the young coach that brighter days were ahead for the sport and that he would need to have his players ready.

“The thing that makes him so special is he remembers everybody he meets,” Lynch said. “He knew our athletic secretary, Sue Doheny, by name. He’s on a first-name basis with Pete Kammholz, who works security here. For a guy like that who is meeting thousands of people, it says a lot about his character.”

7. John Holecek is two years older than Fitzgerald, so they come from the same generation. Both were standout area high school players: Holecek at Marian Catholic and Fitzgerald at Sandburg. Both became All-Big Ten linebackers, the former at Illinois and the latter at Northwestern. Holecek jokes that he never got a Northwestern offer, while Fitzgerald never got an Illinois offer.

When Holecek became the head coach at Loyola Academy in 2006, not long after his eight-year NFL playing career, then-Northwestern coach Randy Walker came to his office to spend an hour with him. When Walker died unexpectedly later that year, his successor, a then-31-year-old Fitzgerald, did the same.

Loyola is just five miles west of Northwestern. Fitzgerald’s oldest son, Jack, is on Loyola’s sophomore team. Holecek, like many of his peers, can be considered something of a regular at the Walter Athletics Center, be it to watch a Northwestern practice or to bear the brunt of jokes from Fitzgerald and the Wildcats’ linebackers, given their history.

The phone lines are always open, and it is a two-way conversation.

“Pat will forward me stuff that he would think that I would think is interesting,” Holecek said. “Like, where the hell are you gonna have a relationship with a Big Ten coach like that? He’s a dude’s dude, a guy’s guy, a coach’s coach. Everyone respects the hell out of what he does and what he represents. What you see is what you get. That is all Coach.”

8. Rochester High coach Derek Leonard likes to joke that his program is the only school south of I-80 that has been attending Northwestern’s 7-on-7 camps for more than a decade. His father, Ken, has been the head coach at Sacred Heart-Griffin High in Springfield for 37 years. When Liz Leonard, Ken’s wife and Derek’s mother, found herself in a lengthy battle with cancer, Fitzgerald regularly provided comfort and support. Liz died in 2017.

“There were real ups and downs and he always kept track,” Derek Leonard said. “Kirk Ferentz is a little like that, too, along with a few others. But Fitz always called and texted my dad, he was always on top of that and you could tell it’s genuine. It wasn’t just checking in. There’s a true genuineness of care and respect.”

Whenever ’Cats receivers coach Dennis Springer is in the area, he calls Leonard and invites him out to dinner to talk ball through all hours of the night.

“That’s what high school coaches want,” Leonard said, “just a personal relationship and to be respected.”

9. Chad Hetlet has coached at Glenbard West since 2007, winning four state tiles and sending several players to Power 5 schools. In 2014, a high school in California called, offering the Illinois native a bigger job.

Who helped him talk through the pros and cons of the potential cross-country move? Fitzgerald, who has faced similar overtures in the past and who just happened to have been recruiting a player from that same school. (And not, Hetlet emphasized, any players from Glenbard West at the time, meaning he had no dog in the fight.)

“That’s who he is. He’ll come into your school and he means what he says and he says what he means,” Hetlet said. “There are very few that have a recruiting process like him. We’ve had Power 5 kids that Fitz didn’t offer. But he goes after the best fits, not the best football players, and I respect that even though a couple of our kids didn’t get that offer.

“Once he has offered a kid, he won’t recruit that position.”

Fitzgerald has won the Big Ten West in two of the past three years. (David Banks / USA Today)

10. Glenbard North coach Ryan Wilkens has sent a number of players to Northwestern, from Wildcats all-time leading rusher Justin Jackson to current starting cornerback Greg Newsome. In 2017, Fitzgerald visited Glenbard. Wilkens had his twin daughters at the school that day and was going to take them out to celebrate their 12th birthday.

“Coach asked if he could meet them, he took the time to ask them about school, asked about what sports they played,” Wilkens said.

When they told him they played softball, Fitzgerald told them all about the Wildcats’ program, which has made 13 NCAA tournaments under coach Kate Drohan

“He was cool enough to take a picture with them,” Wilkens said. “He left a lasting impression on the twins.”

11. In 2016, at the American Football Coaches Association convention in San Antonio, Fitzgerald told the story of how his high school defensive coordinator, Larry Lokanc, nearly broke him. First, Lokanc asked Fitzgerald during his sophomore year to squat every morning in the weight room before class. Later, he would make everybody run again if Fitzgerald wasn’t first during team sprints. One day, the 16-year-old snapped, asking why he always had to be first.

“Because you’re our best player and I believe you can play Big Ten football, but you just don’t see it. And it’s my job to get you there,” Lokanc told him, per Fitzgerald. “So now you know my little secret, so don’t ever be nothing less than first.”

Fitzgerald learned then that he wanted to become a football coach.

One of Lokanc’s sons, Lance, is an assistant coach at Lincoln-Way East. Whenever Fitzgerald gushes about his father, Lance can’t help but smile.

“Whether it was that speech, or I remember when he did the seventh-inning stretch with the Cubs and was talking after and he mentioned my dad, it’s obviously special to hear someone at Fitz’s level mention your father the way he does,” Lokanc said. “He respected him for the way he coached him and was hard on him and saw something in him, but he wasn’t gonna pave the way. He wanted Fitz to earn his way.”

12. Lance and his brother Luke, now the head coach at Lincoln-Way West, were ball boys for their father when Fitzgerald was a tight end and linebacker at Sandburg. Pre-teens at the time, they looked at the future College Football Hall of Famer wide-eyed. They would occasionally badger him while he was on his way to the gym or the practice field, and he was never too cool to make time for them. When Fitzgerald took his talents an hour north to Evanston, the boys would go to games at Ryan Field and watch Fitzgerald do to college opponents what he did to high school opponents.

Shortly after Fitzgerald graduated from Northwestern, he drove down to talk to the New Lenox Mustangs, the youth football program the Lokancs played in. Kids ranging from fourth through eighth grade got some group and personal time with a college All-American, as he stayed for two hours after the banquet to honor any request.

“I remember the Northwestern jersey he signed and brought down for me,” Luke said, laughing.

13. Larry Lokanc never really yelled at Fitzgerald. Both made that point clear when speaking about the other this past week. Off the field, Fitzgerald was a pretty normal high school kid, Lokanc said. He partied, but never too hard. On the field, the player never disappointed his coach. The player never wanted to disappoint his coach, Fitzgerald reiterated. Lokanc had a calm demeanor but demanding approach.

When Lokanc was a young coach, someone once taught him that when you go to the circus, you follow the elephants, not the clowns. Funny advice, but applicable to certain situations on the football field, too.

Late in Fitzgerald’s prep career, Sandburg was playing Reavis. Northwestern had sent several coaches to the game, prompting Lokanc to tell Fitzgerald that it was time to step up. Fitzgerald knew to read Reavis’ O-line more than its backs, and sure enough, the opponent tried to run a fumblerooski on a third-down play.

It fooled everyone but the linebacker.

“There were 20 guys going to Pat’s right, and two guys — a guard and Pat — going to the left because he was reading that guard,” Lokanc said. “It was a no-brainer who was gonna win that.”

14. Marty Balle was the defensive backs coach on those Sandburg teams. He still teaches at the school, but he is now an assistant coach at Naperville Central. He regularly refers to Fitzgerald as “Patrick,” and he still goes up to Northwestern for a practice or two every spring. It never gets old seeing how the Wildcats program has become an extension of Fitzgerald’s personality.

He picks up something new every time they talk. It’s hard for Balle to boil their conversations down to specific lessons, but authenticity and trust are the key themes throughout.

His memories of Fitzgerald the linebacker from just outside Chicago can probably sum up why Fitzgerald has had such an easy time building relationships in the area.

“If you were to look up ‘Southside Irish’ in the dictionary, his picture would be there,” Balle said. “He was a big, hard-nosed, tough kid who played hard and was super competitive, but at the same time he had a great personality.”

15. Ahead of Northwestern’s game against Ohio State this weekend, Fitzgerald was self-deprecating when talking about his team’s last meeting with the Buckeyes, a 52-3 Friday night home loss last season. He joked that the Buckeyes probably shouldn’t even have gotten off the bus, and he said the visitors would have had a tougher game against their own second team.

What he didn’t say was what happened the day after the loss.

Jack Fitzgerald and his Loyola sophomore team had their only 9 a.m. game of the year, on the road at Rolling Meadows. His coach, Greg Jacobson, always worries about games that early, because you never know if a group of 15-year-olds is going to be well-fueled by then.

Jack’s mom Stacy — Pat’s wife — was one of the two “team moms.” When Jacobson pulled into the parking lot at 6:45 that morning, he saw the team moms handing out breakfast burritos and orange juice to players before they boarded the bus to the game.

He also saw Pat Fitzgerald doing the same.

“I pull up, unload the car and he looks at me, ‘Coach, how you doing?’” Jacobson said. “The way Fitz is, so positive. ‘How do we look today?’ I’m like, Good, Coach.

“I’m looking at him, and I’m like, ‘Coach, I’ve been coaching 30 years. I’ve got to take a picture of this.’”

And 12 hours after Pat Fitzgerald’s team lost, Jack Fitzgerald’s team won.

(Top photo: Steven Branscombe / Getty Images)

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