Minooka Head Football Coach Kooi Resigns: Legacy of Hard Work

Bert Kooi recently announced his retirement from the head football coaching position at .

The news of his resignation came after eight years at the helm of the football program, but he will remain on at the school at the instructional leader in the physical education department.

This year’s starting quarterback, Joe Carnagio, a high school junior, said Kooi is the major reason the Minooka football program went from a sub-par to a winning program.

“He’s one of the hardest working people at any sport that I know.  I’d drive by the school at nine o’clock at night and see his truck in the parking lot, on weekends and week nights," Carnagio said. “He strives for perfection, that’s why people have so much respect for him as a person.”

Carnagio said he really got a thrill to see Kooi come and watch him play when Carnagio was a freshman.  It was the commitment to the whole program that raised Kooi’s profile in the high schooler’s eyes.

Kooi’s reasons for stepping away from the coaching ranks were simple.

“I’m going to spend a little more time with my family," he said. "For thirty plus years my family has been put on the back burner; the real hero in the situation in my wife. She’s been the one who picks up the slack at home, which allows me to do something that I love to do.”

He said that his son, Drew, is a freshman football player at Wartberg College in Iowa, and his daughter, Lyndsay, a junior volleyball starting center at Quincy (IL) University. 

“It really bothered me; I didn’t get to see my son’s games, and only a handful of my daughter’s," he said. "That means the most to me, the relationship to our kids.”

He explained that coaching football is a twelve month a year program, which involves strength and weight room training in the off-season. That is why is it so difficult to juggle sports coaching and family life.

“We really, truly believe it (time spent in the off season) makes our players stronger and more resilient to injuries," he said. "We allow, we encourage our players, to be multiple sport athletes, but it they are not competing in other sports, we expect them to be in the weight room.” 

It’s the off-season, though, when he gets to know the boys in the program, he said. During the regular season, with the intensity of practice, playing, and managing the program, there isn’t as much time to get to know the players.

But he recognizes that the off-season is a different level than during the fall.

“In the offseason, football is a commitment by the families, a commitment by the boys,” said Kooi. “When things get tough for a team, when we are losing, those young people who have stayed in and committed themselves during the off-season, are less likely to hang things up.

“As a team, we have come through our share of tough times.  We’ve had some lean years, but our kids believe in what we preached.”

 And that is Kooi’s legacy, a commitment to trying, even when times are tough.

One of his former players, Cole Tyrell, now living in South Carolina, who has been out of high school for six years had this to say about Coach Kooi.

“He is a great football guy with a tremendous passion for competition. The best thing about him, though, is his overall character,” said Tyrell. “You are not going to find a more genuine, caring person that Bert Kooi is, and I think his decision to step away from football for his family is a very respectable one.

"As great a coach as he has been, his commitment to the Physical Education department and the high school is even greater. He has done so much for that place, and I'm glad he is staying on as an educator because I think that is where his greatest ability lies."

"My Junior and Senior years were Coach Kooi's first two seasons in Minooka, and to try to fill the void left from Mike Briscoe's departure was a tall order. The success the program has seen after the first tough few years is unreal. That kind of restructuring of a program shows a tremendous amount of time and commitment, by him and his staff. Bert Kooi is the type of person people want to rally around because of his commitment to what he believes is the right way to do things."

Kooi finished his Minooka tenure with a 42 – 36 record as a head coach.  This year his team lost in the first round of the playoffs.  His team reached the playoffs in 2009 and reached the quarterfinals in 2010.