Prep Zone: Noll's dedication makes veteran coach worthy addition to IHSFCA Hall of Fame

Scooter McIntosh realized something when he arrived in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the summer of 2004.

McIntosh relished his days playing football as a running back at McHenry. The Warriors won almost every week and McIntosh was selected as the 2003 Northwest Herald Player of the Year before accepting a scholarship offer from NCAA Division I Western Michigan.

Something struck McIntosh after a few practices with his new teammates, something that made him eternally grateful to his high school coach, Mike Noll.

“I told him this, I was more prepared than every other (freshman) kid out there from a fundamentals perspective,” McIntosh said. “How to read a defense, how to read an offense, how to put your hands in the right spot for blocking, how not to make dumb penalties. Literally everything you learned from pee wee football to what you see on Sundays. (Noll) has a way of doing it better than everyone else and instilling discipline in them.”

Noll’s attention to details and his willingness to not be outworked, ever, has served him well through 29 seasons of coaching at McHenry, Glenbrook South and, now, Richmond-Burton. Noll, who is 235-73, with 27 playoff appearances, will be inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame Saturday at the Hilton Garden Inn in Champaign.

Noll would never say it, but it is an honor long overdue. Glenbrook South coach Dave Schoenwetter, who took over for Noll in 2016, nominated his former head coach this year. It only seems fitting that it comes a few months after R-B finished 11-2 under Noll and took him to the Class 4A playoff semifinals, his first trip that far in the playoffs.

“It’s really quite an honor,” Noll said. “It’s a tribute to all the assistant coaches I’ve had and all the really good kids I’ve been able to coach. It’s an honor for all of them, too.”

Schoenwetter talked with his staff and felt it was their duty to nominate their old boss. He coached with Noll for 12 seasons.

“He had a real clear vision where he wanted to take the program,” Schoenwetter said. “He was good at conveying that idea to the coaching staff. When he talked to the kids, he had a real gift for not just expressing his vision to the kids, but laying out the step-by-step process to get there. He was a master at that part of it.”

BORN TO COACH

Noll grew up in Sanborn, Iowa, a town of about 1,400 people in northwest Iowa, the son of Don and Jean Noll, both educators. Don coached various high school sports. Jean taught kindergarten.

When Noll went to play football at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, it made perfect sense that he follow in their footsteps. He was fascinated with teaching history and coaching, whether it was baseball, girls basketball, travel softball or football.

Don and Jean both passed away in the 1990s, but not before seeing their son turn McHenry into a Fox Valley Conference powerhouse. When Noll took over in 1988, the Warriors had never made the playoffs. They qualified in the next 20 consecutive seasons, four after Noll left for the Glenbrook South job.

Noll has known his wife, Brenda, since they were 4 years old in Sanborn. She knew what she was signing up for as a football coach’s wife and embraced it all.

“We put off the birth of our son (Brady) for a football game, for God’s sake,” she said.

Mike had a game at Luther on a Saturday and Brenda was overdue. Her doctor wanted to induce labor that day, but she took one for the team, waiting one more day.

“That might be the only time I got a little irritated,” she said. “I loved what he was doing. I saw how passionate he was about it and how excited he was. Seeing the things he does, not only coaching, but what he does outside of that with the boys – Habitat for Humanities, having the boys go to grade schools and read to kids – things that have nothing to do with football, but had to do with being a productive and respectful man in today’s society."

Noll was 25 years old, with no head coaching experience, when he took over at McHenry. Administrators saw something with his passion, his organization, his vision, that sold them on Noll. It might have been McHenry’s best coaching hire ever.

In 16 seasons under Noll, the Warriors were 142-28 and won or shared 14 Fox Valley Conference titles. The most losses any of his McHenry teams ever had was three.

By the time 1997 McHenry graduate Dan Philips reached high school, he was well aware of what Noll had created.

“He did a good job of marketing the message and creating an excitement about the program,” said Philips, an equity trader in Chicago who is married with four children. “Kids dreamed about playing football for coach Noll well before we got a chance to even step foot on (McCracken Field). He had the right intensity, pushing us to work harder, have discipline and do it as a team.”

McIntosh, who lives in Texas with his wife and son, is a solutions consultant and said he applies what he learned from McHenry football every day.

“It teaches you discipline, getting up every day at 5:30 to work out,” McIntosh said. “Those things transfer over to adult life. They’ve helped me be successful.”

A NEW CHALLENGE

Noll went to Glenbrook South for the 2004 season, taking over a program that had not been to the playoffs for seven years. The Titans went 4-5 and missed the playoffs that year, but made the postseason the next 10 seasons in a row. The only other time they missed was in 2015, his last season there.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been around anyone who has the kind of drive he has,” Schoenwetter said. “He’s relentless. He’s highly committed. He’s going to push to get the most out of the kids. You get that every minute we were working with the kids. I was always impressed by that.”

Noll retired as a teacher at Glenbrook South after the 2017-18 school year. R-B hired him last spring, so now Noll is back coaching in McHenry County. He misses teaching, but can now devote even more time to coaching.

That, along with R-B’s playoff tradition of 12 consecutive postseason appearances and a strong Stateline Comets feeder program, bode well for the Rockets’ future.

“I don’t think there’s a high school football coach who works as hard as he does,” Brenda Noll said. “He doesn’t take a day off. He’s working on it in some fashion, if it’s game film, watching college games that we have on our DVR, that makes it 75 percent full, he watches for ideas or whatever.”

With Noll’s success at three schools, there likely will be a huge contingent in Champaign on Saturday.

The Nolls have three children: Sarah (39), Brady (36) and Kaylee (33). Brady and Kaylee each have three children. Brenda estimated there will be 25 people just from her side of the family attending. Then there will be former players and assistant coaches, current players and assistant coaches and friends from various places.

“It’s kind of fun when you’ve coached at a number of places,” Noll said. “I have the McHenry connections still, the Glenbrook South connections. It means I’ve been coaching a long, long time, but that's a good thing.”

• Joe Stevenson is a senior sports writer for the Northwest Herald. He can be reached by email at joestevenson@shawmedia.com. You also can follow him on Twitter @nwh_JoePrepZone.