Jerseyville coach Dave Jacobs makes his point during Thursday’s drills. Jason Johnson/The State Journal-Register
Dave Jacobs hasn’t been able to watch the Rochester High School football team play much since he left the school after the 2004 season to take the head coaching job at Champaign Central.
But Jacobs made sure to watch on that chilly night last November when the program he helped build from the cleats up won its first state title under the bright lights of Memorial Stadium in Champaign.
“I’ve followed Rochester ever since I left,’’ said Jacobs, who was hired as the Rockets’ first football coach in January 1995. “I’m proud of Derek (Leonard) and how he’s taken the program to the next level. I have a lot of good friends there and a lot of them are still coaching. I love the community and the program, and I love to see their success.”
Jacobs, now in his first season as the head coach at Jerseyville, will get another firsthand look at the program he helped to create when the Class 4A No. 2 Rockets roll into Jersey County today for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
It’s been a whirlwind 17 months for Jacobs, who was forced to resign as Central’s head coach in April 2010 despite leading the Maroons to three playoff appearances in five seasons.
“Things didn’t work out there for some personal things, but the good Lord opened the door to get me to U of I, which is one of the reasons why I moved to Champaign,” Jacobs said.
He was a volunteer assistant last season at Illinois, helping Ron Zook and his coaching staff over the course of the Illini’s 7-6 campaign. Jacobs’ duties included everything from breaking down game film to helping offensive coordinator Paul Petrino identify opposing defensive coverages on game days. He also helped defensive coordinator Vic Koenning by drawing up the pass plays of opposing offenses.
“I had two notebooks: one to write down things for Illinois and my own personal one,” Jacobs said. “I was pretty busy, but I loved it. It was a great experience for me. I got away from actual pressure of coaching and enjoyed what I was doing.
“But you miss that pressure and actual relationship stuff you get with players. I was anxious and hungry to get back and I relished the experience at Illinois. I loved every second of it.”
One of the things Jacobs also learned was that the lifestyle of a major college coach wasn’t for him.
“God bless ’em, those guys work hard and make a lot of money, but they’re not home,” Jacobs said. “I have a son who is 12, a daughter who’s a senior, another one in college. I want to be there for them.”
Jacobs said he turned down two other job opportunities to make the move to Jerseyville, which is his fifth stop as a head coach in Illinois. He previously was head coach at Illiopolis and New Berlin before moving to Rochester.
Jacobs went 43-48 in nine varsity seasons at Rochester, making the playoffs in each of his last five years there.
He’s found another rebuilding project in the Panthers. The football team made the playoffs in 14 of 15 seasons between 1990-2004. Since then the program has gone 13-41 with a high-water mark of 4-5 in 2009.
Jerseyville has been outscored 51-0 in its first two games under Jacobs, including a 21-0 loss to Jacksonville in Week 1.
“I guess throughout my career I asked for mountains to climb, going back to what we built at New Berlin,” Jacobs said. “I’m proud of their success and resurrecting that program, and Illiopolis, too. And hoping to do same things here.
“There are a lot of similarities, I guess. This place has the right ingredients: a very supportive administration and a hungry community. We have great kids and an excellent staff.
“We started a youth program which goes down to 6-year-old kids. When we started that program at Rochester, some of those kids were on the championship team. The formula is there. We just have to be patient, keep chopping wood and plowing ahead. It’s going to happen here too, it will just take a little bit of time.”
For Rochester it appears that this game will be nothing more than a tune-up before next week’s highly anticipated home opener against Sacred Heart-Griffin, but Leonard knows better.
“There’s been a little bit of talk, but they’re at a different point,” Leonard said. “They’re trying to get that thing going there.
“More from that standpoint, I’m just excited to see him. He did start he program, and he gets a lot of credit for what’s going on here.”
Jacobs wants Jerseyville to emulate Rochester’s success. For him, tonight’s game will be one important step in getting there.
“It’s going to be great lesson for our kids,” Jacobs said. “That’s where we want to be, and we’ll see how close we are to being at that level and we’ll know what it takes to be at that level.
“This is the sixth or seventh year of his system, and we’ve been doing ours for three months. If you think about it, they’ve played 27 games in the last two years. They got an extra season, and when you go on playoff runs, that’s how programs get better. Extra games, excitement, all that stuff. That’s where we want our program to get.”
Copyright 2011 The State Journal-Register. Some rights reserved
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