By FRED KRONER
Twenty eight years.
Three hundred and twenty six games.
Those are some of the numbers in Dick Duval’s football coaching career at St. Joseph-Ogden.
His tenure, which ended with his retirement following the 2015 season, included spending approximately 2,600 days at the football field, whether for games or practices.
If that is put in terms of years, it’s a little more than seven.
Duval, who has been battling pancreatic cancer since April, 2020, is no longer coaching, but his presence at SJ-O will still be felt. And recognized.
Nearly 15 months after the St. Joseph-Ogden Board of Education voted to name the football grounds as Dick Duval Field, the official ceremony took place in front of a packed house on Friday night (Aug. 20) before the current Spartans’ squad conducted a preseason intrasquad scrimmage.
“As good of coach as Dick was, he is a better man and that’s something we all aspire to,” said football assistant Marshall Schacht, who worked on Duval’s staff for 23 years. “It’s appropriate they named the field that way.”
Current SJ-O football coach Shawn Skinner was convinced for years that his former coach would receive this honor.
“It wasn’t a matter of if they would do it, but when,” Skinner said.
***
Dick Duval wasn’t the first choice to be football coach at SJ-O when the search was on in 1988.
“They hired a man from Ohio to be the coach,” recalled a former player who was about to start his sophomore season at SJ-O, Shawn Skinner, “but he quit two weeks before the season.”
Duval was then offered the job, one which started so quickly after his hiring that for weeks he had to commute to the school from his home in the Kankakee area.
St. Joseph-Oden, an eastside Champaign County high school, didn’t have a reputation as a football hotbed at the time. In 14 of the previous 16 seasons leading up to 1988, the football team had a sub-.500 record.
There was one postseason playoff appearance in school history and that was only achieved the year before Duval arrived.
“Coach Duval came in under less-than-ideal circumstances,” Skinner said.
Some assistant coaches, upset with the ouster of the previous coach, chose not to return.
One of the first-year assistants who began working with Duval in August, 1988, was Bob Glazier.
Glazier worked with linebackers and wide receivers.
It’s the same Bob Glazier who, in 2021, is still coaching linebackers and wide receivers at SJ-O in his 34th – and final – year on staff.
He learned quickly some of the special attributes that Duval brought to the program.
“He was very organized and had a tremendous attention to detail,” Glazier said. “He knew what he wanted to do, and he stuck with it.
“So many times now, guys go for the flavor of the day. People knew (when playing the Spartans) they were going to get a heavy dose of the tailback and play action.”
The transition into one of the state’s premier football programs didn’t happen overnight at SJ-O.
“His first year, for the first game, we had something like six plays (in the playbook),” Glazier said. “We were trying to figure things out and get something started.”
History showed how that worked out.
In the second year that Duval coached at SJ-O, the 1989 Spartans played in the Class 2A state championship game.
As he worked to build the football program, he aimed at something more. Duval wanted to see success across the board for all athletic programs at SJ-O.
“He truly believed you were not just a football player, but you could be a track star or a basketball or baseball player,” Glazier said. “That’s what turned things around for St. Joe.
“Athletes were doing more than one sport.”
Skinner – then a teen-ager who is now in his fifth year as football head coach at his alma mater – picked up on that mindset.
“It was the right time,” Skinner said. “I think kids and parents wanted that kind of leadership and guidance.
“There were not two- and three-sport athletes walking around the halls. He said, ‘If you’re good enough to play football, you should be doing other sports. You’re not just a football player.’”
Duval led by example. For 16 years, he also was the head baseball coach at SJ-O. His first 13 teams had winning records.
“And when the basketball team won state (in 2016), he was so proud because a lot of those kids were football players,” Schacht said.
***
The respect for the job Duval was doing, taking over a football program that Glazier said, “was floundering,” was noticed beyond the school district where he taught mathematics and coached.
In the fall of 1994, Tolono Unity hired a young football coach who found himself in a situation similar to what Duval faced the previous decade when he arrived at SJ-O.
Prior to Scott Hamilton’s coaching stint at Unity, the school had endured sub-.500 seasons in nine of the previous 12 years.
The southside Champaign County school had three playoff appearances on its resume.
“When I came here, it was very easy to tell the respect Dick had from everyone,” Hamilton said. “He was the face of the conference, the guy everyone looked up to.
“There are two ways you can go about things. You can sit and find excuses or you can find out what they are doing to be successful and try to do as many of those things as you can.
“When I started in ’94, it was the veteran against the young guy trying to get things turned around.”
Much like Duval, Hamilton got things rolling almost immediately.
His first Unity team made the playoffs as did the next 23 teams he coached at the school. Hamilton has guided five of his teams into state championship games.
When Unity and SJ-O met on the field, it was a fierce rivalry between neighboring schools.
The two coaches, however, became friends, which is how Hamilton describes their relationship.
“Two really good friends in a heated rivalry,” he said. “Up towards the end of his career, we’d do 7-on-7s and then go to Old Orchard for pizza and sit for hours talking football.
“More important than talking football, we talked about fun things we’ve experienced while working in Central Illinois.”
Hamilton believes the naming of Dick Duval Field was a natural choice.
“He changed the culture in this area when it came to football,” Hamilton said. “He demanded excellence, and he set the bar high.
“He’s probably as deserving as anybody.”
While Duval’s won-loss record was outstanding (251-75), Hamilton believes the recognition reflects more than his football coaching.
“He not only had good teams, but they were disciplined and did things the way you’re supposed to do things,” Hamilton said. “I believe he was rewarded equally for all of those things as much as the 250-plus wins.
“It’s for what he has done for so many people, not just at St. Joe, but for coaches and athletic directors around the area.”
**
For those looking for one word to describe Duval, Skinner offers his selection: “Consistent.”
Not only was Skinner a three-year player for Duval, he was an assistant on his staff the final four years that he coached.
“My oldest son (Shane) was a member of his last team that went to the Final Four (in 2013),” Shawn Skinner said. “The things he was saying before the Bloomington Central Catholic game (in the quarterfinals) and the Unity game (in the semifinals), he said to me as a junior in 1989.
“That’s because those lessons and those concepts don’t go out of style. That’s why he was able to endure. Those things don’t expire. They are universal.
“No matter the school or the sport you’re doing, they are truths.”
Duval helped make the playing experience so enjoyable that his former players want to help the tradition continue.
Among the current staff members for Skinner are former Spartans Nick Bialeschki, Ben Gorman, Dylan Koss and Dalton Walsh.
“We are molded in his philosophies, ideals and beliefs,” Skinner said.
Schacht points the finger directly at one person for the willingness of former players to return as coaches.
“The love and desire to come back is amazing,” Schacht said. “There truly is this family, and it all starts with Dick.
“Without Dick, it doesn’t go that way.”
Bialeschki teaches History at Danville High School and coaches the offensive and defensive lineman at SJ-O.
The 2006 graduate joined the Spartans’ coaching staff in 2012.
“A lot of the reasons I’m doing what I do are because of what he did for me,” Bialeschki said. “I love him more than he knows.”
Duval always had an emphasis on community and it was not a concept he merely gave lip service.
“When I came back (to coach), my wife and I had just started dating,” Bialeschki said. “In the football season, you are always busy.
“He showed me how to work through things as a husband and a father.”
In particular, Duval insisted that family time was of vital importance, even during the season.
“He always respected our family life and included family in his football functions,” Schacht said.
“A lot of programs have a lot of expectations, but there are a lot of sacrifices during the football season. Here, family was a priority. Every coach’s child has sat on Dick’s lap (at staff football functions).
“I don’t know if other coaching staffs have that because I have only coached here, but some of my friends in the coaching profession don’t understand that aspect.”
Schacht was schooled in Champaign and graduated from Central. His first connection to SJ-O was when he was assigned to do his student teaching there in the spring of 1994.
“I was a volunteer assistant in the baseball program for Dick and Bob (Glazier),” Schacht said. “They made me feel like family right away.
“Because of Dick and Bob, I participated in something special, and I haven’t left.”
While Duval’s players learned about football – and life – the assistants felt his teaching guidance as well.
“I became addicted to coaching with him,” Schacht said. “I learned about being a coach. I learned about being a man.
“He became like a second father.”
Schacht especially appreciated Duval’s management style.
“He never over-coached or over-reached into the different positions,” Schacht said.
***
St. Joseph-Ogden enjoyed unparalleled success during Duval’s tenure.
The football team never had a losing record in his 28 years on the sidelines. His teams won more than three-fourths of their games and he directed 25 consecutive teams into the postseason.
He coached teams into state championship games in four different decades. And, he is tied for 14th on the all-time IHSA list for football coaching wins at one school with 251.
As the success mounted, so did Duval’s image.
Dalton Walsh – a current assistant coach – remembers entering high school in the fall of 2010 knowing that his football head coach was already enshrined in the state Hall of Fame.
“Coming in, I’d heard a lot of people say they were nervous, scared and intimidated (by Duval),” Walsh said. “I had those feelings as a freshman.”
Walsh soon gained a different perspective.
“He cares about his players,” Walsh said. “He pushed me to be a better player and a better person every single day.
“I’ve gotten to know him as a person the past few years and it’s cool to see that side.”
That side has little similarity to the image Walsh had pictured.
“As his kids say, he’s kind of a big teddy bear,” Walsh said. “The most special part for me is to know that side of him.”
Skinner said that Duval’s caring nature wasn’t reserved for those involved in athletics.
“He was easily one of the best teachers I’ve ever been around,” Skinner said. “If the best you could do was a C-plus, then you got a C-plus.
“If you were an A student and had a C-plus – if you were not living up to your potential – he sought you out and wanted to know why.
“He established expectations at the beginning, of doing things the right way. Some things he said in the middle of geometry were the same things he said on the field.”
Though intense on the field, Duval was fun-loving away from the game.
“On the field, he was all business,” Glazier said. “Away from the field, he liked to joke around and have fun.
“If anyone was having a problem, he’d be the first to step up and say, ‘How can I help?’ He’s a good guy who would go out of his way to make you feel welcome.”
Skinner said one lesson that Duval preached has remained with him throughout the decades.
“He taught me if you’re five minutes early, you’re late,” he said. “Get there 15 minutes early and show you’re invested and locked in.
“You know your expectations. Do your job, do what’s right whether it’s in math or on the football field.”
When that path is followed, Duval was confident that the end result would be positive.
“He really made school or life or sports that simple: ‘If you do the basic stuff well, you can’t ask for any more and most of the time, it will work out.’”
Duval remained committed to his players even following their graduations.
“One of the proudest moments in my life was as a senior in college (at MacMurray), he came to watch me play,” Skinner said. “I had one of the best games I had in college.
“He knows how much that meant to me.”
The football field at SJ-O is part of a bigger athletic area that – thanks to the urging of Duval – was named the Glenn Fisher Complex in honor of the school’s long-time janitor who cared for many of the facilities.
Now that Dick Duval Field has been officially christened, it’s up to the players to continue the football legacy.
Among the possible players in the future are three young boys whose grandfather is the person for whom the field has been named.
