It was a short bus trip, and Mike Noll was short of breath.

Big things were ahead for McHenry football and the kid coach, who was now in charge of running a high school program for the first time. Not that anyone knew what to expect.

Take a deep breath, Coach.

“I remember riding the bus over,” Noll said. “It was a Saturday game. I remember struggling to breathe on the bus on the way over. I was so wound up.”

McHenry beat host Johnsburg that day to open the 1988 season, and the 25-year-old head coach had win No. 1 in his debut.

The Warriors went on to win six more games that season and made the playoffs for the first time in school history, after winning five games in the past three seasons combined.

“When you look back, I was so young,” Noll, 63, said after his Richmond-Burton Rockets beat host Woodstock North 21-0 in Week 7 this year. “But I had two classes back to back that I coached as sophomores, and they believed in me. We got them working hard. We won our first four games, and everybody started to believe a little. I think we won three games in the last minute that first year – and should have won the playoff game [a 24-22 loss to Rockford Jefferson] too.”

There would be many more opportunities to win football games, in the last minute or otherwise, for Noll. He achieved his latest milestone victory Friday night in Richmond, where R-B clinched the Kishwaukee River Conference championship outright by beating Marengo 42-13 to improve to 8-0 and 6-0 in the KRC.

It was career win No. 300 for Noll, tying him for seventh all-time in IHSA history. He won 142 games at McHenry in 16 years, 82 in 12 years at Glenbrook South and has 76 and counting at R-B, where he’s been coaching since 2018.

The Rockets visit Plano on Friday, before beginning the playoffs. They are ranked fifth in Class 3A in the Associated Press poll.

“Longevity,” Noll said, “is a blessing.”

So is family.

“I have a family that really supports football,” said Noll, whose family, like his win total, has grown. He and wife Brenda have three children – Sarah (the oldest), Brady and Kaylee (the youngest) – and eight grandkids. “My wife never misses a game. My whole family is here. It’s been good for us.”

Noll has been great for every team that he’s coached.

His run at McHenry, which ended in 2003, included 14 Fox Valley Conference titles, six seasons of 10 or more wins and 16 playoff berths. He had nine winning seasons in 12 years at Glenbrook South. In his first season at Richmond-Burton, after he retired as a history teacher in 2018, he led the Rockets to 11 wins and a berth in the Class 4A state semifinals.

The following year, Noll won his first and only state championship, as the Rockets won Class 4A with a 14-0 mark.

R-B’s 2019 state-winning roster included linebackers Dalton Wood, a senior, and Brock Wood, a sophomore, whose dad, Steve, was the team’s defensive coordinator.

Steve Wood had served as head coach at Grayslake North, where he started the program in 2004 and took the Knights to the Class 6A playoffs his last five years. He stepped down following the 2016 season because he wanted to watch his sons play in high school and joined Noll’s staff two years later.

When Wood was coaching at Grayslake North, he said Noll, who lived in the neighborhood by the high school, would walk his dog by the stadium, stop to watch the Knights practice and wave.

“I knew his reputation,” Wood said. “He’s old school, like me. My kids were playing for [Richmond-Burton’s] feeder program, and we knew we had really good teams coming up. They just needed a coach who would give them a little bit of structure and push them a little bit harder than they had been pushed in the past, and that’s no offense to any of the other coaches who had been there. They’re all good guys. I was super excited [when Noll got the R-B job] because I knew that’s what Mike was going to do.”

Noll did exactly what Wood expected. And his kids, Wood said, loved the experience of playing for Noll. Dalton went on to play for the University of Dubuque, where Brock is finishing up his final season for the Spartans.

“They’re meatheads. They’re just like me. They love football,” said Wood, who coached five seasons with Noll and is now coaching at Grayslake North again as its defensive coordinator. “They both played three sports, but football was their passion from the get-go. So knowing that they had a coach with a reputation of winning, who could take them to the next level, they were really excited.”

R-B senior tight end/linebacker Luke Robinson is a four-year member of Noll’s program. Robinson said he didn’t always take criticism well, which led to some not-so-fun confrontations with his coach, who can be tough.

“When I was younger, he and I butted heads a little bit,” Robinson said. “I think it just made me grow as a player a hundred times more. His coaching is the perfect amount of toughness and giving you praise when you do something good.”

Rockets junior linebacker/running back Blake Livdahl says he’s learned “everything” from Noll. Not only about how to become great on the field, but off it.

“He’s a great person,” Livdahl said. “What I like about him the most is he’s a great motivator. He really knows how to control all of us and winds us in. When things aren’t going well, he always makes it go positive.”

Success doesn’t just happen. Wood calls Noll “relentless” in his approach to coaching and preparation.

“He prepares like no one I’ve ever worked with,” Wood said. “I don’t know how he finds the hours in the day to do what he does. And lot of his stuff is old school, like he’s still pen and paper for a lot of things.”

Noll said he still gets wound up before games, just not like he did on that bus ride from McHenry to Johnsburg in 1988 for his first game as a head coach.

One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the process, “all the stuff we always talk about,” said Noll, who was inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2019.

Working hard remains necessary – every day, week.

“I’ve been blessed because I’ve been able to coach talented kids who work hard, and I’ve had good coaches with me too,” Noll said. “I think it’s so important today that kids need to hear from adults who are honest with them, tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.”

That, too, has been a process.

“I haven’t always been the right blend,” Noll said with a laugh. “I was so intense when I started. I was young and full of vinegar. ... I’ve enjoyed every bit of it.”

Including that first bus ride as a head coach.