Tiger Style Runnin’ Wild into Bureau County Hall of Fame

Princeton had its share of good football teams through the years.

NCIC champions in the 1940s.

The 1979 Tigers, who were the first PHS team to win eight games (they lost to Geneseo), but did not reach the playoffs as only undefeated teams/conference teams qualified.

The 1984 Tigers, who were the first team to beat Geneseo in 23 years, finishing 8-1, and the first team to reach the playoffs, but lost in the first round.

The 1986 and 1988 Tigers (NCIC champs), who also won eight games, but once again lost in the first round of the playoffs.

It was the 1989 season that put Princeton football on the state map.

Feeding off the frenzy created by the team’s theme song coined by assistant coach Steve Kiser, “Tiger Style Runnin’ Wild,” the 1989 Tigers captivated the town and community as they ran wild to the 3A State championship game with big playoff wins over Yorkville, rival Hall, No. 1 ranked Rock Island Alleman and Aurora Marmion.

While they lost in the 3A state finals to a loaded Belleville Althoff team, which featured multiple Div. 1 athletes and played a 5-6A schedule, their remarkable season will forever be etched in the memories of team members and Tiger fans.

No other Princeton team has made it back to the state championship game since.

Tiger Style now runs off into the Bureau County Sports Hall of Fame, created by the BCR in 1995.

“Having coached at PHS on one level or another for 43 seasons, the 1989 Tigers are most deserving of induction into the Hall of Fame,” said Brian Church, who was the Tigers offensive coordinator under the late head coach Randy Swinford. “These players had a chemistry like no other team I coached. Each player knew their role and stayed true to it. Yet when we had an injury and or an issue, someone stepped up and we didn’t miss a beat.”

The Tigers were a well-oiled offensive machine, engineered by quarterback Doug Bruyn. Church said Bruyn’s leadership made his job easy as offensive coordinator.

“I relied heavily on what Doug saw as a weakness in the defense. He was in total control and most didn’t realize how many offensive plays he called from the line of scrimmage,” he said. “I have often said that because of the level of trust I had in Doug that I had the best seat in the house.”

Church said he will always remember fullback Sean Schickel’s “Give me the ball” attitude, Kipp Wahlgren running the “34 counter criss cross,” or Chad Hamel burning a defensive back on “9 Fly,” adding that “our offensive line took great pride in pass protection and opening holes.”

The defense had their share of big, momentum-swinging plays along the way, including Kirk Stevens’ tackle on a goal-line stand in a 14-7 win over Hall, Paul Cater’s game-saving tackle followed by Kipp Wahlgren’s sack to clinch a 13-7 win over the rival Red Devils in the playoffs, and Chad Hamel’s scoop and score touchdown off a fumble at midfield caused by teammate Jay Alter in the third quarter on the way to a 27-14 quarterfinal win over Rock Island Alleman.

Team chemistry

Like Church, team members said what made the Tigers so successful is that they truly played as a team and for one another.

“The commitment to playing for each other as a team is what made our team great. We were focused on doing our jobs as individuals so that we would not let our teammates down,” Schickel said.

“I think what made our team so good was a combination of factors: We were blessed with fantastic talent, leadership, team chemistry. When coupled with enough confidence to believe we would win no matter what. That’s what led to great success,” Darryn Foley said.

“WE, wanted to win. Not ‘me’. Not ‘I’. Not ‘you’. But we, all of us, and we put our egos aside to win because we just seemed to know that’s the way to do it. The team was bigger than the individual in all of our minds.”

Senior lineman Pat “Murph” Cater said the seniors and juniors played very well together and played unselfishly.

“We played team football and may I say we defined what Tiger Style was,” he said. “Of course we had standouts, but all the seniors, we were the nucleus, and it was because all of us playing together since our freshman year going undefeated our freshman and sophomore year, 8-2 our junior year and 12-2 our senior year.”

Todd Stevens, who was a senior on the ‘89 team and now is associate head coach at Washington, credits the coaching staff for creating those team bonds.

“I think the success of any team is determined by how well the team bonds with each other. We were tight. We truly cared about each other and still do,” he said. “We also had coaches that helped form that bond from the beginning.”

Rochelle loss kicked them in gear

With all the big wins along the way to the state finals - 36-0 over Rockridge, 20-0 over Marquette, 29-8 over Rock Falls on Homecoming, 14-7 at Hall, 29-0 over Kewanee - it was a 26-14 Week 7 loss at Rochelle that may have been the most pivotal game of the year. The Tigers fell behind 13-0 at the half and 20-0 in the third quarter and never recovered.

“I think our midseason loss at Rochelle was a turning point in the season,” Church said. “Absolutely nothing went right for us that night and the setback required us to refocus which we most certainly did. In hindsight, it was one of the best things that happened to us.”

That loss cost the Tigers the NCIC Southwest Conference championship, which went to the Hubs, but they bounced back to close out the regular season with wins over Mendota (14-8) and Canton (30-7) and won the program’s first playoff game by defeating Yorkville, 40-21.

Favorite memories

Each player had their own favorite memories from the season. For Schickel and Foley, it was the playoff win over Alleman in front of a raucous, large home crowd of thousands, ringing the field around Bryant Field.

“It was a great day for us as a team and the City in Princeton as a community” said Schickel, who retired from the US Marines in 2015 and lives in Fredericksburg, Va. working in insurance.

“It was a home game, fans were 7 deep around the end zones, it was a beautiful November afternoon, it was the State Quarterfinals, the undefeated #1 team in state was coming into town - who beat us at that last second a year ago,” Foley said. “We focused on them all year in the weight room, practice field, and well, to put it bluntly, we beat the (crap) out of them.

“The crowd was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything. It was just a loud dull noise, but, when Bru (Bruyn), and sometimes Hamel, barked out his calls at the line of scrimmage, we were all able to hear him above the tremendous din of background noise. Selective hearing, I guess.”

Of all the games he played that year, Foley said Alleman was the only game that he didn’t have butterflies before.

“I don’t know how to explain it, but I and all my teammates just ‘knew’ we were going to win, and knowing that before hand let us have a lot of fun in that game,” he said.

After that victory, Schickel famously said, “It used to be, ‘Oh My God, It’s Alleman.’ Now it’s, ‘Oh my God, it’s Princeton.’”

Along with beating Alleman, the two wins over rival Hall always stand out for Alter.

“Beating Hall twice in two nail-biters. Those could have gone either way. They were a good team. We were a good team,” he said.

Alter’s best memories are how the community rallied around the team so much.

“It wasn’t just the team, it was the whole community behind us. I haven’t seen anything like that since then,” said Alter, who works the chain gang for Tiger games now. “It was Tiger Style Runnin’ Wild.”

Alter said the BCR headlines of the playoff victory over Marmion calling it “A win for Princeton, Ill” summed up best what the 1989 season was all about.

For Cater, his favorite memory was getting to play with his brother, Paul.

Stevens said those were great times

“Obviously playing in front of a hometown crowd was a great memory, but the Thursday night team dinners were a highlight as well. We’d have a break between the team dinner and the pregame meal where the entire team would be driving around together,” he said.

Remembering Randy

Head coach Randy Swinford, who sadly passed away from cancer in October, 2017, was much beloved by his players and coaches. He was one of the guys, but stern when he needed to be.

“Our performance dictated what his personality was going to be. Not his personality dictated what our performance was going to be,” Alter said. “If practice was going to well, we could have some fun. When we lost to Rochelle that was not a pleasant week afterwards.

Alter, who often drove Swinford to downtown Chicago for his cancer treatments, said their relationship ran the gamut from coach, to big brother to dear friend. Swinford stood up in Alter’s wedding to his high school sweetheart Jen.

“I wouldn’t have had a 50-year-old dude in my wedding if I didn’t love him,” he said.

And they all loved Swinford.