Coach Tim Dougherty Inducted into IHSFCA Hall of Fame

April 1, 2009

Ask Tim Dougherty how he feels about his being named to the Illinois High School Coaches Hall of Fame, and you'll hear a very unselfish reply: It's a culmination of a lot of players and coaches . . . a great badge hung for me that serves as a summation of the last 30 years of coaching a great team sport.

It's the kind of response you'd expect from a man who will tell you almost instantaneously that his life revolves around those he's learned from, those he's coached, and, of course, the game of football itself.

Family has also been key in terms of Dougherty finding success; as such, his being named to the Illinois High School Coaches Hall of Fame is as much a celebration of those he loves the most and the perseverance they've showed throughout the duration of his culminating a beloved pastime as it is recognition of past accomplishments. These are the people that sacrificed, that moved from small-town to big-city, that endured the ups-and-downs of state championship seasons and first-year coaching assignment which saw Dougherty finish a disappointing 1-8. Family is where a young sophomore at Edwardsville High School in 1994 engaged the difficult task of existing as both an up-and-coming all-state quarterback who would later play at the University of Missouri and someone constantly reminded that he was, before anything else, a son to the school's head football coach. It's the foundation upon which a daughter would work to become a cheerleader for the same program her father was employed by. It is the entity that served as a much-needed escape from the year-round demands of coaching winning football programs -- even in those times when winning seemed the furthest thing from reality.

Family too, it becomes obvious, also describes that collective group of individuals who have said time and time again that they all expected Dougherty -- the coach, the husband, the father -- to be in the position he'll be in on April 4, 2009, along with 16 other fellow head coaches at the University of Illinois, as an inductee to the state's High School Football Coach Hall of Fame.

Dougherty is undoubtedly proud of his achievement, regardless of how reluctant he may seem in being willing to accept it. Nevertheless, what stands out even more is the degree of humility he embodies in recognizing the role his "team" -- whether past or present players, those comprising previous or current coaching staffs, or the very members of his own family -- has played in getting him to where he is today -- having spent 30 years as a head coach for six separate high schools, where, to this point, Dougherty has compiled an overall record of 149-58, multiple state championships, and led five different squads to an undefeated season.

The current head coach for Lincoln-Way Central, located in New Lenox, Illinois, comments that heading to the Hall of Fame isn't "like winning the lottery," but, nearly in the same breath, will speak with excitement about the honor he feels in joining his inspiration and mentor in coaching high school athletics, Tom Peeler, as one of the most influential coaches in the history of Illinois' high school football. It was Peeler's vision of what the game of football is and how it should be played that served as the foundation for Dougherty's own career: always work to make your players achieve their best, both on the field and in the other facets of their lives; make your players work hard given the opportunity to lead them down the road of maturing from young men to adults; enforce that commitment to anything in life pays off huge dividends.

It's a philosophy embodied by the simple belief that as football is to life, so is life to football; recognize and succeed in one, and you're destined to do the same in the other . . .

Peeler's influence can also been seen in Dougherty's desire to push himself constantly toward new challenges. Yes, he'll tell you, he achieved great things at Edwardsville; in fact, the crowning moment of his coaching career is embodied in Dougherty's transitioning the program at Edwardsville from a relatively unknown, lightly-regarded rural football squad to one of the powerhouse programs in the state of Illinois. But this coach has always possessed a desire to do more, to break for the stars, even after he's already proven in command of the skies.

You can't get too comfortable in what you do, right, Coach? I asked. Absolutely, he responded.

It's one of the main reasons why he explains he took the job at Lincoln Way-Central at the beginning of the 2008 season. So what, Dougherty might suggest, if he ended up with what most would color as an underachieving 6-4 season. Win-loss records tell only a portion of the story. They're merely numbers.

Players and coaches, however, are not. They're flesh and blood -- living, breathing people. Success, in Dougherty's eyes, is measured by how much each person associated with his program came to learn and understand themselves as an individual comprising a collective high school football team.

Did a player fight to do his best at all times during his high school career? Did that player put everything he had on the line every single time he took the field? Did that person become not only a better athlete, but more importantly, a better person as a result of coming under Dougherty's tutelage? Is a given player's ability to achieve and contribute as a member of his team an illustration of what he can supply to his surrounding community, in no small part because of coming into contact with Coach Dougherty's program?

These are the questions that matter to this particular Hall of Fame coach.

Yielding affirmative answers, they are also what Dougherty believes make a good football player -- someone who "buys in, heart and soul" to a program, uses an opportunity to work for the benefit of a program -- even from the bench as a three-year backup that doesn't get to play much until his fourth year -- as a means of directly contributing to bettering himself.

It's that particular belief which ultimately served as a foundational attachment to the idea of coming on board with NATS. Dougherty recognized that the process of recruitment for the average student-athlete coming out of high school, who fostered a deep-seeded desire to play football at the collegiate level, was often skewed by false pretenses on the part of the player (and associated family members) about his chances of being recruited and awarded a scholarship to a premier college football program. At the same time, recruitment often denigrated the individual student-athlete through an unhealthy infatuation with mechanical, measurable quantifiers such as 40-times and bench reps by scouts representing the collective whole of these same programs. As such, Dougherty desired to be part of a movement which sought to foster change to commonly accepted recruiting practices. He looked to become associated with something which could "level the playing field" when it came to recruiting, a program that would reveal the true (and realistic) abilities of a particular student athlete, guide that individual toward an appropriate fit academically and athletically, in terms of a prospective university, and provide him with all the necessary resources to make an informed, confident decision when it came to selecting a college-of-choice at which to play a favored sport.

And that, Dougherty says, is exactly what he found in NATS.

NATS, Dougherty expresses, is valuable many different ways. There are, of course, those reasons alluded to above; simply and directly, the student-athlete remains first and foremost when it comes to the NATS way of doing things, and, ultimately, success, according to NATS, is found in having a member student-athlete find a proper fit in attending and playing collegiate sports at Nebraska-Wesleyan as well as the University of Nebraska. Yet, perhaps most valuable, the coach mentions, is that the organization helps to lead potential recruits away from committing the single-most common mistake he believes student-athletes manage to make in the recruiting process: being caught completely off-guard for the "tornado" of chaos and commotion which surrounds them athletically and academically as a result of being unprepared for the start of the recruiting season in either the junior and / or senior year of high school. Through a web-based, user-friendly interface, NATS guides student-athletes "every step of the way" when it comes to college recruitment, but does so with the explicit understanding that those it seeks to help are, as Dougherty states, "students first, athletes second."

This being the case, an association between a well-respected high school coach like Tim Dougherty and one of the premier recruiting resources available today in NATS seemed a natural pairing; it simply worked, and has lasted the test of time, with Dougherty there from the program's inception.

It is with that in mind that all of us here at NATS congratulate Coach Dougherty for his being named to the Illinois High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame's Class of 2009, and celebrate, along with colleagues, family, and friends, all the achievements he's compiled in his 30 years of coaching high school football.