Full speed ahead for Bellecomo, Vernon Hills
About seven years ago, loyal assistant coach Bill Bellecomo was elevated to associate head coach at Vernon Hills by then head football coach Tony Monken.
When Monken announced at the end of last season that he was stepping down, Bellecomo was elevated again, this time by the administration, and to the position of head coach.
Bellecomo hit the ground running in about as much time as it took to remove the word “associate” from his title. And the new Vernon Hills head coach hasn’t slowed down yet.
“We’re doing a lot of the same things we’ve done in the past, but the one thing I’ve kind of changed up is the tempo of practice. We are real up-tempo,” said Bellecomo, who officially took over the program in January. “There’s really never any down-time in our practices. Our kids are moving around constantly because I want us to get a lot of reps in and I want it to be like we’re always attacking.
“It’s taken some getting used to. I don’t think the other coaches even realized at first how fast I wanted to go and how I wanted them coaching on the run. But it’s all starting to come together.”
As they run from drill to drill, the Cougars would also like to run far away from the last two seasons, which were very atypical for their program.
After a string of six straight playoff berths, Vernon Hills has missed the playoffs the last two seasons. Last year’s 2-7 mark was only the third losing season in the 13-year history of the program.
“We’re trying not to talk about last year too much,” Bellecomo said. “This whole time, we’ve just been talking about getting back to work and working on the things that will help us be a better team.”
Most of those things are what Bellecomo likes to call the “little things.” He says they hurt his team last year.
“When you look at our schedule last year, we had three close games that could have easily gone the other way and made us 5-4,” Bellecomo said. “In those games, we just killed ourselves with little things: things like penalties, turnovers, a dropped pass here or there.
“Our motto this year is “The Little Things.” In practice, we’ve been stressing the need to be focused and to pay attention to details so we don’t get hurt by those little things this year.”
A big thing that was being tended to deep into training camp was the starting quarterback spot. Senior Jordan Friebrun and sophomore Connor McNamara have both been impressive.
“It’s been pretty even (between Friebrun and McNamara) over the summer,”Bellecomo said. “They both have nice arms, they can both run the option, they are both well-rounded athletes.”
The Cougars also have a pair of nice athletes at running back in Richard Clark and Kyle Thomas. Clark was in the rotation regularly over the last six games last year. He and Thomas will help run the triple option behind a veteran offensive line that includes three-year starter Chris Lannan (6-foot-2, 235 pounds) at center and returning tackles Jeremy Babicz (6-foot-4, 225) and Matt Kahn (6-foot-3, 245).
Defensively, eight starters are back, and overall, 10 players return who played a lot last season. Lannan will also play on the defensive line and linebacker Josh Harris will be the vocal leader.
“We’re not changing much about our defense, we feel like we’ve always had a good defensive scheme at Vernon Hills,” Bellecomo said. “We just want to make some adjustments on offense and improve on some things from last year.
“Most of our staff stayed together and we’ve always had a good group. We’re ready to get going again. We’re all excited.”