Remembrances: Nagel's Family Atmosphere, Vision Molded Wheeling Into State Running Powerhouse

Beloved Four-Time Girls Cross Country State Champion Coach and Winner of First Official IHSA Meet Passed Away Sept. 26 at 82

Screaming wasn’t Jim Nagel’s way of getting Wheeling boys and girls cross country and track athletes to believe in themselves.

Nagel was more of a reserved, yet demanding, visionary with the ability to make his teams and athletes see what they needed to do to succeed. The results spoke for themselves and included the first IHSA girls cross country state title in 1979.

Wheeling became a school synonymous with running success throughout Illinois thanks to Nagel, who passed away on Sept. 26 in Yankton, South Dakota, at age 82. Services were held Sunday and Monday in his native Springfield, South Dakota and he had returned to his roots to become a rancher in retirement.

One of the people most synonymous with Nagel was Mark Saylor, who became Nagel’s assistant in 1972 and took over the Wheeling cross country program in 1987. The Mid-Suburban League’s annual indoor track meet in March was originally named for Nagel after he retired as boys track coach in 1994 and was changed to the Jim Nagel/Mark Saylor Indoor Invitational after Saylor retired in 2005.

From left, Jim and Darlene Nagel and Sue and Mark Saylor (Photo courtesy Dana Miroballi)

“The loss of Coach Nagel was a big loss for me,” Saylor said from his home in Arizona. “He was my mentor and taught me all the ins and outs of coaching. My goal as a head coach was to follow his lead with a little bit of my own added in. I can’t say enough on how much he helped me prepare to be a head coach.

“More important was we were friends. Our families spent many hours together. And our wives (Darlene Nagel and Sue Saylor) were together taking care of our kids when Jim and I were coming home late from meets and gone on Saturdays to invitationals. Jim certainly will be missed by me and the many athletes he influenced.”

Among them is one of the greatest girls or boys distance runners in state history in four-time state cross country champion (1984-87) and six-time state track champion Dana Miroballi. 

“He was not a yeller or screamer. He wasn’t a mad coach or a mean coach and he didn’t stomp around and throw clipboards,” Miroballi, who went on to run at Indiana, said last week. “He led by example and action through strong words. That calmness came over to me and I was calm. 

“He was a serious coach and you didn’t mess around with him. You didn’t do drugs or drinking because you’d be off the team with him and Saylor. He had pretty strict rules. They had boundaries and strict boundaries but they were also loving and caring and great leaders. They taught us not to disappoint ourselves in life. They wanted us to be good human beings.”

Wheeling’s 1979 girls cross country title was the school’s first in any sport. Nagel’s girls teams also won titles in 1983, 1984 and 1986 and took second in 1981. The 1984 team set an IHSA record with 50 points, as Miroballi, Darleen Reichmuth and Alice Doyle finished 1-3-4, Lisa Vogt was all-state in 17th and Laura DeVoglear took 45th. Sandra Berlet was 47th and Amber Garland 72nd in a record-setting performance that held up for big schools until last season when Prospect won the Class 3A crown with 39 points.

And 1984 turned out to be quite a year for Wheeling as the boys team finished third in Class AA and exemplified Nagel’s emphasis on “pack running” without an all-state (top 25) runner. Two of its top four finishers - juniors Marc Burns and Wendel McRaven - took what they experienced into long and successful college coaching careers.

McRaven has been coaching in college since 1991 and is in his 12th year as a track and cross country assistant at Texas A&M. He was also an assistant at Illinois, Alabama and Nebraska and a head coach from 1996-2005 at Kent State.

Wendel McRaven (Photo credit Texas A&M track and cross country page)

“Mr. Nagel (I honestly can’t imagine calling him anything else) was a tremendous role model and the kind of coach/educator that I hope still exists,” McRaven said via text this Sunday after Texas A&M competed in Boston. “He could be stern and serious, but, as you got to know him, you could see that he really enjoyed what he was doing and that passion rubbed off on his athletes. The picture of him that I have in my mind is one of him trying to keep a straight face when one of his athletes, or, more likely, Mr. Saylor said something he found funny.

“I think we were really fortunate with him and Saylor working together. They were really great role models of family guys who really loved what they were doing. To me they made coaching look like fun.”

Burns stepped down in 2021 as Missouri’s head cross country coach and track assistant after eight years. He also coached at Bradley, Wichita State and Loyola and is now a volunteer high school coach. He works for Boost Treadmills and his son Connor is a freshman at Oregon after a decorated high school career as one of the country’s top distance runners.

Marc Burns (Photo credit Missouri track and cross country webpage)

“Jim Nagel - Mr. Nagel to the team - was a special leader,” Burns said via e-mail. “He instilled in me a passion for cross country and track that led to a 25-year coaching career and a lifelong love for the sport. He made sure we knew what it took to be great but he also showed us how to enjoy the process.”

Part of that process was Nagel making his teams feel like part of a family, which is a word often overused in sports. Each August before the start of cross country season, Nagel would take team bonding trips up to an old ski lodge house in Iron Belt, Wisconsin, about 15 minutes from Ironwood in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“Nagel had a green Leisure Van, they’re putting up with teenagers and our music and they were part of it,” Miroballi recalled with a laugh. “They let us be part of their families and that’s how I know Cory and Trish Nagel (Jim’s kids) and Amy Saylor (Mark’s daughter). The coaches’ families were part of it. They were very family oriented, including Jim’s family. That’s why you’re seeing everybody talk about Darlene (Nagel’s wife), Cory and Trish (on Facebook).”

Burns ran similar team camps throughout his coaching career. Nagel’s team bonding trips and emphasis on mental preparation through goal-setting, visualization and positive self-talk are the norm now but were ahead of the curve in the 1970s and ‘80s.

“He wasn’t afraid to be a pioneer and the success his teams enjoyed was directly related to his approach to building a strong team and practice cutting-edge training tools,” Burns said. “One year (1984) he gave us all rocks and the boys and girls teams wrote ‘Double Winners’ on them.

“The idea was that we set a goal to win both state titles but more importantly we worked at being the best ‘team’ we could be. If we were going to win both titles it would be because we came together as a team and each individual was willing to do whatever they could to help both teams.”

Wheeling coach Jim Nagel is congratulated by Schaumburg coach Jon Macnider after his 1986 state championship during the awards ceremony at Peoria High School (Photo courtesy Dana Miroballi)

That was true with his first girls state championship team in 1979 with Debbie Rathje (11th), Donna Stewart (29th), Betsy Buenzow (31st), Theresa Picchietti (52nd) and Debbie Bifulco (60th). Nagel said as much to the Daily Herald’s Dave Jacobson before and after the meet.

“I really feel that the team that thinks it can win will be the one that does,” Nagel told Jacobson. “We’re going down (to Peoria) with a positive attitude. If we run well and still get beat we’ll be successful. But our goal is to win.”

And the Wildcats did by a whopping 78 points over runner-up Evanston. It is still one of the largest state-meet margins of victory.

“Last spring before school let out I sat everybody down and gave them little tags with the words ‘State Champions’ on them,” Nagel told Jacobson after the state victory. “I told the girls to put them on their dressers and to look at them all summer.”

Miroballi utilizes Nagel’s positive motivational techniques and emphasis on pack running in her coaching with her eighth-grade son Luke, who will go to Lake Zurich High School, in the Palatine Pack running club run by former Palatine High School coach Chris Quick and Alex Soto. Miroballi recalled Nagel giving the team the Detweiller Park course map so they could visualize what they would do well before the state meet.

And Nagel helped Miroballi see what she was capable of after she won junior high state titles in cross country and track at MacArthur.

“Going into my freshman year I wasn’t sure if I was going to go out for cross country. I was one of those kids who wouldn’t be forced into it,” Miroballi said. “I was still running on my own and Nagel calls my dad and asks, ‘Where is she, why isn’t she here?’ A few weeks into the summer, my dad said, ‘Mr. Nagel is going to come over to dinner tomorrow night if you don’t show up at practice tomorrow.’ I went outside to sit and think about it and said, ‘Tell him I’ll see him there in the morning.’ He pressed but he didn’t pressure.”

Miroballi said there were rumors of her being lazy and not a team player her first year. After her first two meets, she was Wheeling’s No. 6 or No. 7 runner.

“He pulled me into his office and said, ‘Our team needs you if we want to win state,’” Miroballi said. “‘You’re a big part of it and you’re better than where you are running.’ He said, ‘Don’t hold back, because you’re hurting the team. 

“It was about team. The team is relying on you. The team needs you. He showed he believed in me. He kind of turned around my running with that conversation. He didn’t wait too long to let me mess around with the season and he instilled confidence in me, but we never talked my freshman year about individually winning.”

Nagel congratulates Dana Miroballi after the first of her four state cross country titles with Mark Saylor in the background (Photo courtesy Dana Miroballi)

Miroballi said that was in part because of the talented runners Wheeling had with Doyle (third) and Reichmuth (22nd) back from the 1983 championship team. Miroballi said Doyle was better going out with the leaders so she broke out early in the 1984 state race while Miroballi, Reichmuth and the other four Wheeling runners packed together.

“They were way into the team and that took a lot of the individual pressure off,” Miroballi said of Nagel and Saylor. “Not that they didn’t want us to succeed as individuals, but it was, ‘The better I do, the better my team does.’ They always talked about pack running.

“Darleen was the leader of the pack and she taught me about running. She was pretty familiar with all of Nagel’s and Saylor’s lessons and could put them into practice in the middle of a race. At the mile at state, we were in the 100s, the whole team was, and then we all took off and we always passed people as a pack.”

The irony in Nagel bringing out the best in Miroballi is that he was a somewhat reluctant convert to cross country. His first experience coaching the sport was at Sheldon High School in Northwest Iowa in 1966.

“My initial thought about the sport was that it certainly wasn’t very exciting,” Nagel told the Daily Herald’s Keith Reinhard in a column a few days after the 1984 dual-state trophy haul. “On top of that they had told me I’d have about 25 kids to work with and I started with nine. We won exactly one meet all year.”

Nagel applied for a football coaching job in a nearby town but couldn’t afford to move because he had just gotten married and his wife Darlene was still in college. He got the program going with a pair of conference titles and a fourth-place state finish in his five years in charge. But he was also looking for a bigger high school to help fulfill his goal of becoming a college coach.

He told Reinhard he applied for jobs in Mesa, Arizona, suburban Milwaukee, Evanston and District 214. Prospect athletic director George Gattas wanted Nagel as a teacher and football and track assistant but he wanted to be a head coach. A few weeks later, Wheeling athletic director “Bus” Ormsbee was looking for a track and cross country head coach and Nagel accepted.

In the summer of 1975, Nagel was approached by Gail Miloch, Bonnie Buenzow and Chris Rathje about training for distance running. Nagel told Reinhard “they were all super kids and excellent athletes” who were the nucleus in winning the MSL’s first girls team title and first mythical state championship meet run by Downers Grove North’s Bruce Ritter in 1976.

Nagel also told the Herald’s Art Mugalian that he had Wheeling principal Tom Shirley write a letter to the IHSA to push for the girls to have an official state meet along with the boys.

“I thought if a mythical state meet went over well it would help the IHSA take notice,” Nagel said.

“When I was 14 in 1984, to me the sport had been around 6 years and that was almost half of my lifetime,” Miroballi said. “To me it was a really old sport and looking back it was just in its infancy. You think about how much Jim Nagel influenced the sport itself with getting it started.”

Miroballi was a bit stunned when Nagel decided to step down as cross country coach before her senior year so he could devote more time to the Running Unlimited store in Palatine he was operating with Darlene. Miroballi quickly realized she was in good hands with Saylor taking over the program. He led the boys to a state title with Jorge and Ed Torres in 1998 and second- and third-place trophies and the girls to a second-place finish in 2001.

“When I was offered the girls head track and field position I felt that it was my time to step out and see if I was ready,” said Saylor, who ran at Arlington for the legendary Bruce Samoore in cross country and Russ Attis in track. “After about four years and 3 conference titles Jim asked when I was coming back to the boys team. I said, ‘Jim, I am not coming back.’ I think he was OK with that.

“For Jim to ask me to take the cross country head position, I was ready and considered it an honor to replace Jim. I have to admit that when Jim came back as my assistant in cross country I was looking over my shoulder wondering what he might be thinking. Again, I think he was good with me being there. Many have said Jim and I were a good team. I know we worked well together and there were times when Jim felt it better for me to speak to the team. No question it was Jim’s teams but together we made things work.”

From left, Wheeling coaches Tim Falconer, Jim Nagel and Mark Saylor (Photo courtesy Dana Miroballi)

Burns was the individual champion with Rick Timm (9th), Bob Lytle (10th), McRaven (13th) and Javier Salazar (21st) as they led Nagel and Wheeling to its first boys MSL cross country title in 1985. The successful tradition continued as Saylor won the MSL in 1997 and Tom Polak won back-to-back league titles in 2000-01. Nagel stepped down as boys track coach after a fourth MSL title in 1990 so he could watch his son Cory compete for Palatine in the pole vault (8th in state in 1992) and then came back for two more years in 1993-94.

Nagel’s four girls state cross country titles are tied for third in IHSA history with five other coaches - including Palatine’s Steve Currins - behind the 7 from Arlington grad Roger Fredrickson at Winnebago and 5 by Naperville North’s Dan Iverson. Nagel was inducted into the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame and was part of the second class of the Wheeling High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007. He was also a four-time girls cross country coach of the year and the 1986 Distance Coach of the Year by Illinois Runners Magazine.

“A true gentleman who was dedicated to his athletes,” said long-time Daily Herald and prep writer Howard Schlossberg, who covered Nagel’s teams as a rookie reporter with the Countryside Newspaper. “Even during lean years for his teams, he never failed to return a call or stop at a meet for a comment for me. He and Mark Saylor had a great working relationship. I would bet there’s not a fellow cross country and/or track coach who doesn’t have a genuinely kind word of praise for him and the excellence of his coaching.”

Not unlike Nagel’s emphasis on team over individual accomplishments, McRaven thinks more about having lost the two earliest influencers in his running life in Nagel and Keith Vernon, his coach at Holmes Junior High. Vernon later joined Saylor and Nagel as an assistant coach at Wheeling.

“It was always apparent that he wasn’t about the wins and losses,” McRaven said. “It was always about trying to be the best version of yourself. It was about creating teams that were like families. I am so thankful to ‘Mr. Nagel’ and Wheeling High School. I just hope and pray there are more ‘Jim Nagels’ out there helping shape the lives of young people.

“He truly was a dignified, classy man who exuded a great confidence. He gave off a serious ‘vibe’ while making our sport fun. He was passionate about track and cross country and that passion rubbed off on his athletes.”