MSL Football: Elk Grove's Super '72 Season was Perfect In Every Way Possible
Grenadiers Won Mythical State Title Two Years Before Start of IHSA Playoffs
Sixteen football teams from across the state entered this weekend with dreams of accomplishing what Elk Grove didn’t have the opportunity to do in 1972.
IHSA state football playoffs and chasing championship trophies were still two years away when the Grenadiers began their 1972 season. So, the goal for the defending Mid-Suburban League champions was a return trip to its annual Super Bowl between the division champions.
And there was one achievement that coach Don Schnake foretold of after Elk Grove topped Hersey 7-3 in the 1971 MSL Super Bowl to finish the season with a 7-1 record.
“I’ve been 9-0 over a season and the dream of every coach is an undefeated season,” Schnake told the Herald’s Jim Cook after the Super Bowl victory. “But until something better comes along this is it. If you can’t be 9-0, this has got to be second best.”
The best was yet to come for Elk Grove in 1972 as it would cap a 9-0 season with a repeat Super Bowl victory. And when a dominant season where it outscored its opponents 272-51 was complete it would receive a No. 1 ranking and the declaration of mythical state champions based on the final polls of sportswriters.
“We played nine and we won nine,” all-state quarterback Jeff Stewart said on the 25th anniversary in 1997. “That’s the most important thing.”
That the 1972 Grenadiers didn’t have a chance to settle that score on the field was beyond their control. What they could control ranks them among the best teams in MSL history.
Super Coach
Don Schnake was an extension of one of the state’s greatest high school coaches when he inherited the football program at the two-year old school in February 1968. Schnake started in basketball for a state runner-up at Centralia in southern Illinois led by Arthur Trout, whose 811 wins was a state record for 40-plus years until it was broken by Peoria Manual’s Dick Van Scyoc. Trout also won three state titles and was a successful football coach with 153 wins in 26 years.
Schnake, who passed away from lung cancer in 2010 at 82, revered Trout and one of the three books he wrote was the biography, “Trout: The Old Man and The Orphans.” A young Don Schnake also had the chance to watch one of the state’s most decorated athletes at Centralia in Dwight “Dike” Eddleman, a three-sport star at Illinois who was an NBA All-Star, Olympic high jumper and a draft pick of the Chicago Bears.
The impact Schnake had was similar as he became the first football coach to win 100 games at an MSL school or schools when he retired with a 100-74-1 record in 1986. He was inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame and was a Centralia Hall of Fame VIP Inductee. Longtime football PA announcer Ken Grams, who is still going strong as the head softball coach and won his 1,000th career game last spring, considered Schnake his biggest professional influence.
“He was just a remarkable man,” Grams said after Schnake’s death. “I appreciated and learned being around him that he had a great feeling for what was happening around him.”
Schnake served in the Marine Corps after high school and then went to Bradley, where he played freshman football and got into 4 games for the school’s famed 1949-50 basketball team that finished second in the NCAA tournament and National Invitation Tournament (NIT). He split six years as an assistant at Charleston and Aledo before going to Vandalia, where he was the head coach in football, basketball and baseball and was the athletic director.
One of Schnake’s assistant coaches at Vandalia was Brendan Flynn, who came north to Arlington and let Schnake know about opportunities at a new school in Elk Grove. Schnake made the move after going 9-0 and 8-1 in his final two years at Vandalia and took over the program after a year as an assistant to Dick Mudge. He brought Flynn over to run his defense.
“They worked so well together,” said longtime assistant coach Britt Farroh after Schnake’s death.
“Don and I were just on the same page,” Flynn said. “We had a formula and it was great defense, be sound in every phase of the kicking game and run the football.”
And run the football. And run it some more. Schnake subscribed to the belief of many coaches in that era that two of the three things that could happen were bad when you threw the ball. There were recollections of him calling the same running play 13 times in a row because there was no need to deviate from what was working.
“It was basic football but it was coached to excellence,” said Rick Doering, who was a reserve offensive lineman on the 1972 team and a starter as a senior, in 2010.
Doering compared Schnake to legendary Minnesota Vikings coach Bud Grant as “a simple guy and he always downplayed everything.” Mark Smith, who was a successful basketball coach at St. Charles North, Burlington Central and Harper College, also played football for Schnake and in 2011 told the Daily Herald’s Jonathan Cregier, “in my eyes he was like playing for Vince Lombardi or Bear Bryant.”
Schnake was not the type for sideline histrionics or bombastic statements to reporters.
“Once you got to know him, you knew he had an even-keel nature about him and people appreciated that,” Flynn said. “He was a really good listener and paid attention. He was a loyal guy who tried to do the right thing.”
It took a few years to get it going as the Grens went 0-8 in Schnake’s second year. They would win 8 MSL South titles in his 19 years. All four of his playoff teams won at least one game with the 1981 team reaching the state semifinals.
“He established a nice tradition for all of our Friday night stuff,” Grams said in 2015.
One that became firmly entrenched in 1972.
Super Surprise?
Elk Grove lost 11 all-conference and three Paddock Publications all-area players and 18 starters from the team that beat Hersey 7-3 in MSL Super Bowl II. In the 1972 Herald preview story, Keith Reinhard wrote that Don Schnake was “never the super optimist to begin with.”
“We’re going to be about one deep throughout the lineup this time,” Schnake told Reinhard. “And that will probably include more platooning problems than I care to think about. You can’t lose 18 of 22 starters and expect to get any better.”
Paddock sportswriters and MSL coaches agreed as they picked Forest View as a slight favorite to win the MSL South over Elk Grove in a preseason poll. But the defending champs had a big ace card for a repeat with Stewart back at quarterback.
Stewart ran the option attack for 873 yards and 11 touchdowns and passed for 440 yards and 8 TDs in 1972. Those numbers seem pretty pedestrian now but the game was played much differently then and Schnake would frequently play his reserves for much of the second halves of blowouts.
Numbers didn’t capture Stewart’s true value.
“He had a great personality and was the leader of those kids,” Schnake said in 1997. “I’d worry about every game. But when I’d show up for the game and get in the locker room and see him - he even gave me confidence. I thought, ‘We’ve got a chance, anyway.’”
Stewart believed the Grens had more than just a chance even though running back-defensive back Tony Tringali and linemen Rich O’Leary and Jeff Steinbock were the only other returning starters. A lot of talent like linebacker Dan Mincey, running back-safety Jeff Schroeder, nose guard Tim Hurley and ends Frank Bavaro and Bill Butler were ready for their opportunity.
“I thought we were going to win the thing,” Stewart said. “No matter when you talk to Don, Don is going to downplay things. He lays in the weeds. That’s his style. I think we knew we had something special.”
Super Season
The opener at Addison Trail was not a championship-level effort as the Grenadiers pulled out a 20-10 win when Don Weadley picked off a pass and returned it 50 yards for a touchdown midway through the fourth quarter. But they were outgained 316-186, lost 3 fumbles and committed numerous penalties against a team that finished 2-5-1.
“We’ll have to get rid of those if we plan to be successful,” Schnake said.
The arrival of Schroeder and full-time return of Tringali were positives going into a Super Bowl rematch with Hersey. Schroeder didn’t play as a junior because of injury but came back to rush for a team-high 921 yards and 10 TDs. Tringali had also been nicked up for the opener and came back to add a third threat to the running game. Schroeder scored first and combined with Tringali and Stewart to lead a 20-8 victory.
“He’s got the horses again,” said Hersey coach Joe Gliwa of Schnake and the Grens.
Elk Grove then beat Palatine 25-14 and Prospect 22-6 to set up the big South showdown visit by Forest View, which tied Maine East in its opener but won its first three MSL games. Stewart recalled for the 10th and 25th anniversary stories that the weekly Paddock Pigskin Picks projected Forest View as a 21-19 winner.
“I know even Forest View was pretty confident. They had some fine players,” Stewart told Frisk in 1982.
“There was some competition between the Des Plaines players who went to Forest View and those who went to Elk Grove, and it really became a big one for us,” Tringali told Frisk.
It even divided the Mincey house. Because of a boundary change with the opening of Rolling Meadows, Mincey’s younger brother Tim went to Forest View and was a junior starting at cornerback.
“It was a grudge match,” Dan Mincey said to Frisk with a laugh. “And you know how the kids from the neighborhood would egg us on.”
Elk Grove had a little surprise planned as Schnake may have disdained the pass but he wasn’t stubborn to a fault. He even hinted a couple of weeks earlier that something needed to be done to keep defenses from loading up against the run.
Stewart threw TD passes for 35 and 16 yards to Bavaro in the first quarter and another from 14 yards to Butler before halftime. Schroeder ran for 187 yards and the other three scores and Stewart accounted for 203 of the Grens’ 418 yards total offense in a 40-7 rout.
“That Forest View game did seem to start everything rolling to the big finish,” Tringali said.
“We were shocked by those two quick passing touchdowns,” Forest View coach Paul Jordan told Herald reporter Larry Everhart. “That really took our confidence away. But then, if they had continued outhitting us the rest of the way like they did, I suppose those early scores wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”
Flynn’s defense was hitting its peak. The Grens beat Conant 45-6 and blanked Glenbard North 48-0 and Schaumburg 42-0 to finish the regular season. They outscored their last four South opponents 175-13.
“It got to the point where we felt nobody could beat us,” Bavaro said in 1982. “(It) wasn’t from being cocky but just from being very confident in what we could do. We felt we could play two ball games a day and never get tired. The conditioning we got from the coaches was super.”
They were ready for Super Bowl III.
Super Finish
The Super Bowl was the MSL’s showcase that started in 1970 when the league split into divisions. Arlington won the first one and Hersey and Schaumburg won in 1973 and 1974. The game came to an end - with the exception of Barrington winning it in the COVID-shortened spring 2021 season - to ensure both division champions qualified for the playoffs
While Elk Grove knew weeks in advance it was heading to the 1972 Super Bowl it was a much different path for Hersey, led by Stewart’s future Illinois teammates in lineman Kevin Pancratz and receiver Marty Friel. Hersey lost its first two to St. Viator and Elk Grove, which were ranked 1-2 after 8 games, went on a 5-game winning streak but stumbled 14-6 in the finale to Palatine.
That combined with Fremd’s 23-0 win over Rolling Meadows created the first of four three-way ties for a division title in MSL history, with the others in the South in 1985, the West in 2003 and the East in 2013. The tiebreaker to determine the North representative, offensive yardage in games between the three teams, went to Hersey (476) over Fremd (404) and Palatine (278).
No matter who was there, Schnake naturally did not like reversing roles from underdog in ‘71 to definitive favorite in ‘72.
“It’s not all that comfortable a position to be in,” Schnake told Jim Cook in the Herald game preview. “There are too many things leaning toward Hersey for anyone to get the impression we’ve got a cakewalk ahead of us.”
Schnake expressed concerns over not having close games the last month and Hersey’s motivation level after a loss. And the weather didn’t help as Hersey’s field was turned into a quagmire before more than 5,000 fans. The ball was put into play on a towel because of standing water between the 20-yard lines.
None of it would to stop the Grenadiers. They got the only points they needed midway through the first quarter when Stewart deftly faked to Schroeder, who was tackled by Hersey defenders, got to the sideline and raced 66 yards to the end zone. Shortly after the ensuing kickoff was mishandled, Schroeder and Bob Streich nailed scrambling Hersey quarterback Mark Zakula in the end zone for a safety.
And that was it as Elk Grove relied on its staples of defense, kicking game and ball control. Tringali made a big fourth-down stop to prevent a touchdown, Butler punted 7 times and Stewart ran for 143 yards as the Grens fittingly capped their 9-0 season with a 9-0 victory.
Afterward, Schnake told Reinhard “they’ve been just a fantastic bunch to work with.”
Now it was a matter of wondering where Elk Grove ranked among statewide polls. St. Viator suffered a stunning 6-2 loss to St. Francis de Sales and tied its final game to finish 8-1-1. St. Laurence won the Prep Bowl, which still maintained significant prestige, but had a loss. Jack Leese’s East Leyden team just completed its second consecutive 8-0 season. Sterling also suffered a late-season loss to finish 8-1.
The Chicago Daily News tabbed Elk Grove No. 1. Schnake said he found out on a phone call.
“I didn’t even know they had a mythical state champion,” Schnake said. “We never came close enough to anything like that.”
Stewart would earn all-state and Paddock All-Area and MSL Player of the Year honors. His career at Illinois was derailed by injuries but he had a successful high school and college coaching career and won 380 games in 14 seasons in charge of the Illinois State baseball program.
He recalled meeting a few of his future Illini teammates from Sterling at a postseason all-state banquet. That did stoke the fire of wishing there was a playoff.
“Stewart from Elk Grove - we would have kicked your ass if we had the chance,” Stewart said of one of them seeing his name tag. “In that vein, yeah, I would have liked to have lined up and played them.”
Tringali, O’Leary, Mincey and Schroeder were also Paddock All-Area picks. Steinbock, Hurley, Bavaro and Butler earned all-MSL honors.
“A team like this comes along to a school once in a lifetime,” Schnake told the Herald’s Paul Logan in a column pushing for a state playoff. “When something like this happens, I think it’s a shame you can’t see how far this team could go.
“You hear so much about Evanston and the Catholic League, I wonder this year how good we could have done against them. You always wonder how good your team would do against someone else.”
A super season without a defeat was as good as it could get for Elk Grove in 1972.
Stew was and still is the ultimate player, coach, and friend 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🙏🙏
Great story, Marty. I was a sophomore at Conant on the varsity that was manhandled by EG. I got to know and become friends with Dan Mincey as we both went to NIU. So much history in the MSL and everywhere else across the state!