Nick Sterling returns to his roots at Hall

Nick Sterling never played football as a freshman at Hall High School.

He ran cross country and filmed all the Red Devils varsity football games from the sidelines.

“My mom didn’t want me to play football,” Sterling said. “I ran cross country my freshman year and I was not a fan of that. I’m not a long distance runner. Never have been, never will be.

“I recorded all the games, home and away. That was my job, the old VHS recorder.”

His friends and Hall of Fame Hall head coach Gary Vicini talked him into playing his sophomore year, even though he didn’t know much about it.

“My sophomore year, I was clueless,” Sterling said. (Former Hall assistant) Lou Zecca said, ‘Just go hit the guy with the ball. That’s all you’ve got to do.’ And that was all my knowledge of football, because I really didn’t watch it on TV. I was a Bears fan, but not a fan that truly knew the game. I just watched it.”

“Stick” played on passing downs as a sophomore throughout the playoffs and state championship game in ‘95 and was a starter on the 1996 state runner-up team. He was also a 6-foot-7, 210-pound force on the Red Devils state runner-up basketball teams in 1996-97 and 1997-98.

He was recruited by Vanderbilt University to play football and transferred to Western Illinois after a year and half there and played for the Leathernecks before a back injury forced him to retire.

Twenty six years after graduating from Hall, he’s returned to the Red Devils football program as an assistant this fall under first-year head coach Logan Larson. He is coaching the linemen and the JV team.

Sterling said it’s been exciting to come back, even if the era of Red Devil football is a bit different than when he played.

“It’s hard to see the numbers down a little bit,” he said. “When you’re in the era when you’re playing, the only thing everybody was thinking was football. So it’s different that you have to spark that interest again.”

Sterling said Larson, a first-year head coach, was a great hire for Hall and the right man to get the job done.

“Kudos to Hall High School for putting in a great fit and great guy. In my opinion, he’s doing all the right things,” Sterling said. “He’s interacting with the kids and he’s talking to them about football and getting that fire going.

“Our numbers were pretty lean this summer, but seems like when camp started, we’ve picked up 8 or 10 more.”

Sterling said it’s especially exciting to coach the younger kids on the JV, who are not too much unlike him when he started out.

“They’re young kids. Some of them have never even done a sport before,” he said.

Sterling, who has coached his kids’ (senior daughter, Ella, and freshman son, Chase) travel teams for many years, uses his own life story to encourage the young kids to play.

“It’s never too late,” he said. “I tell them I was a cameraman and never played football until my sophomore year. I use that example all the time for kids and use that as a motivational thing.”

Larson said Sterling has been a huge help this season.

“He’s an alumni that had a ton of success in both football and basketball, and then continued on to play college ball. Those experiences are big to share with the kids,’ he said. “He matches my intensity very well which has been huge for being with the JV kids to get them ready for varsity.

“He’s coached his son since a young age and it was obvious he coached him up very well. Not many freshman come in ready to play at both a physical and technical standpoint.”

Despite their record, Sterling said Hall is still having success at practice and getting better every day.

“The energy is still there. And it’s very easy to lose (when you’re not winning), so it’s fun to see that it’s still there and that we can build on that energy instead of dwelling on the past,” Sterling said. “We’ll have those conversations, ‘Hey, this is what it’s going to take.’ Right now the image they’re portraying is they’re going to do it. That’s good. That keeps me motivated and keeps Logan motivated.

“It’s not just going and playing on Friday nights. It’s all these little things that add up to their bigger picture. And all the kids are buying in.”

Sterling said it’s been fun to work with a great football mind like Larson.

“Logan’s been Xx and Os guy. It’s fun to interact with him, because he played Div. 1, too. Lot of things we’re doing are same things we did (as players) and it’s fun,” he said.

One of the biggest differences Sterling has found that is different in today’s game than the era he played in is the technology involved for game and practice filming.

“I still sit here, and say, ‘Wow, how would we had been if we had that,’” he said. “Kind of makes you jealous being older and saying, ‘Where was that when we were young?’ Especially for me, not knowing the game.”

As far as his success in high school, Sterling doesn’t talk about it much. He would rather let his past stay in the past, than talk about it.

“I think every kid gets tired of hearing their old man talk about how good things used to be,” he said. “We’ll talk about it briefly here and there or if a kid brings it up we’ll talk about it, but it’s not something I like to dwell on.

“I feel there’s a lot there at Hall that can be successful. So my conversations have been more what can we do from now until the time you graduate versus what people did in the past.”

Kevin Hieronymus has been the BCR Sports Editor since 1986. Contact him at khieronymus@bcrnews.com