Leroy McFadden was a rare Big Ten recruit out of the NIC-10 ... sort of. He played more for Michigan State (391 yards rushing, 224 receiving in 1997 and 1998) than he ever did at Auburn, leaving Rockford to move in with his uncle in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, after his sophomore year.
“I had to get away,” said McFadden, who grew up “in the heart of the west side” of Rockford. “I found a better opportunity for me sports-wise and academically.”
“We are trying to instill in these kids that no matter where you are, you can do what you can do and be the best you can be,” McFadden said, pointing to two current NFL and NBA players from Auburn. “They have Vederian Lowe and Fred VanVleet as role models. I was there, too. I was walking the same streets and hallways they are. It can happen. I preach education and discipline, then sports.”
Now McFadden, one of three new head football coaches in the NIC-10 this fall, is trying to do the same for kids who are in the same situation as he was. And trying to give them that opportunity without leaving town.
Here is a quick look at the new head football coaches in the Rockford area this fall:
More: 'It's a different year and a different feel': Meet Rockford's 4 new football coaches
Leroy McFadden, Auburn
McFadden also preaches a love for football. McFadden, 47, had left football after trying for a couple of years to play as a pro. He got back into the game when Rockford Christian coach Terrence Gulley added him to his staff. But then his son Yorel — Leroy spelled backward — was diagnosed with cancer at age 3.
McFadden left the game again.
“I shut it down and went into daddy mode,” McFadden said. “Cedric Jones heard about it and brought me over to Lutheran, saying, ‘You need to come back. You need to start coaching again.’ ”.
Yorel, now a 7-year-old first-grader, is now free of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. And McFadden is back at Auburn. He moved there when his cousin Willie Tolon became head coach. And now he replaces Tolon after Tolon was unexpectedly let go after going 8-11 in two seasons and leading Auburn (5-5) to the playoffs for the first time in four seasons last year.
“It wasn’t awkward,” McFadden said of replacing his cousin. “We understand things happen in life. We took a different path. I applied. I was applying everywhere. We don’t let things like that wedge between us.”
More: New Belvidere football coach Sean Donnelly hopes community involvement will revive program
Jim Morrow, Harlem
Thomas Wolfe wrote ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ Jim Morrow is about to find out. Or maybe not — because he never truly left. Harlem’s all-time winningest coach, with 101 wins and 13 playoff seasons in 15 years, is head coach again after Bob Moynihan went 36-13 in five seasons with the Huskies. But Morrow, who coached Belvidere for one year and then South Beloit’s 8-man program in his missing five years, has always remained at Harlem as a teacher.
Now he’s back as the coach for a program that has been good for two decades, but usually a step behind Boylan and Hononegah. Can Morrow finally get Harlem to the next level?
“It feels like a victory,” Morrow said after being hired. “I hope there’s many more in the future.”
Morrow was one of the early adapters of spread offenses and RPO plays with a dual-threat quarterback in the NIC-10. He won’t say what his plans are this year — other than guaranteeing the Huskies will score more points than last year, when they ranked sixth in the conference with a 20-point average. Defense has usually been Harlem’s downfall over the years, but the Huskies have improved in that area recently, leading the league with a school-record low 75 in nine conference games in 2021. Can they keep it up?
Sean Donnelly, Belvidere
Donnelly grew up in Rosemont and wrestled and played football for East Leyden High School in Franklin Park. Those two sports complement each other better than perhaps any sports besides track, which can help in almost any sport. Donnelly is also the new Belvidere wrestling coach, which recently dismantled its co-op with Belvidere North.
“Both programs are healthy with the numbers they have,” Donnelly said. “They have grown to the point where they don’t need the co-op. We should have more kids go out at both schools now that there are more openings.”
That’s a good sign for the football program, too. Donnelly said he had 30 kids at his junior high camp and 35 more for a middle school camp and Belvidere will have all three levels of football — freshman, sophomore and varsity — this year. It helps that Donnelly said two-thirds of his wrestlers are going out for football.
Belvidere has a long road back, having gone 7-53 in the last seven years. But Donnelly knows the program — he was an assistant under both Chuck Leonard and Tony Ambrogio at Belvidere — and he knows how to rebuild. He was 28-62 in 10 years in his only other head coaching opportunity at Kirkland Hiawatha, but took over a team that was 9-99 the previous 12 years and eventually made them close to a .500 team.
Matt Trowbridge is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at mtrowbridge@rrstar.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @MattTrowbridge.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Meet Rockford's new football coaches for the 2024 season
Local News
