Terry Stanger, at long last, named to IHSFCA Hall of Fame

One phone call all but buckled the knees of Terry Stanger, something opposing offensive linemen rarely did, if ever, when he was dominating in the trenches on football fields for Woodstock High School, Bradley University and the Lake County Rifles those many years ago.

Dirk Stanger recalled a phone call he received from his mother, Kathy, last month.

“My mom called me one night and said, ‘Your dad’s crying right now,' ” said Dirk, Crystal Lake Central’s head football coach the past three seasons, who coached with his dad at Marian Central. “I said, ‘What’s the matter?‘ ”

There was nothing to be alarmed about. Terry Stanger, Marian Central’s former longtime assistant coach who was a part of the Hurricanes' dynasty teams of the 1980s under head coach Don Penza and coached 22 years at the Catholic high school in Woodstock, had just got off the phone with Jeff Alderman.

Alderman is chairman of the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

At long last, Terry Stanger, 78, is going into the IHSFCA Hall of Fame. He officially will be inducted March 29 in Champaign for his contributions to the profession.

“I was so emotional, just tears of joy,” Terry said this week, almost choking back tears as he recalled his phone conversation with Alderman. “It just astounded me. My whole life has been football, from the time I was a sixth grader up until [I retired] about six years ago. Football has been a major part of my life. It’s been a major part of my kids' life. It’s been a major part of my wife’s life.”

Terry called Mike Lalor “my angel.” It was Lalor, who started at offensive guard and defensive end as a senior on Marian’s last of four Class 2A state championship teams in 1989, who nominated Stanger for the IHSFCA Hall.

Lalor said that the one constant at Marian during its success through the years was Stanger, his former high school line coach. Lalor, who has won five state titles and 219 games at Stillman Valley, has been the Cardinals’ head coach since 1998. He said the process to get Stanger into the hall of fame took about five years.

“He was very demanding [as a coach],” Lalor said of Stanger. “You were expected to work very hard, and he expected you to grow up. He was very disciplined, and you were expected to be a smart player, as well.”

As demanding as he was, Lalor said, Stanger also found a way to have fun. Thursdays, for example, were when Marian practiced special teams. Stanger gave new meaning to the phrase “kick off your shoes.”

“He was our special teams kicker,” Lalor said. “He would kick off barefoot. And he would kick off not only barefoot, but he would do it straight on.”

Players laughed. The 6-foot-3 Stanger, a physically imposing man even today with a lumberjack-strong handshake, knew when to be tough and when to add levity to a practice.

“He would do it just enough that the pressure got off us,” Lalor said. “But when it was time to be serious, he was serious.”

Dirk, who calls his dad “a pretty tough guy,” witnessed the barefoot kickoffs for years.

“Just being around Marian football in my youth, hanging out at practices, I’d always see him take his shoe and sock off and be the scout team kicker,” Dirk said. “He’d just curl that toe up and kick it with the pad on the bottom of his foot.”

You have to be tough when your full-time job is construction. That’s what Terry did full time as a contractor in Woodstock, all while coaching at Marian and later St. Mary Catholic School in Woodstock. He worked more than 40 years as a contractor, starting his own company in about 1978.

On the football field, he starred at Woodstock and Bradley and then for the semipro Lake County Rifles of the Central States Football League as a 265-pound defensive end. He’s in the hall of fame for all three.

He remembers missing one Rifles game in particular. On Sept. 9, 1970, he married Kathy. That same day, the Rifles were playing against the Rockford Rams.

“After we got back from the reception, I called the coach to see how the team did,” Terry said with a laugh.

“He was just a fun-loving guy who was tough on you, but he cared about you. He was old school as old school can get.”

—  Liam Kirwan, current Marian Central football coach on playing for Terry Stanger

He and Kathy have been married 54 years and are the parents of Dirk and Jennifer and the proud grandparents of five. Being the wife of a coach is never easy, but Kathy is no average wife. In fact, at 77, she still works at St. Mary’s, where she’s been an employee for 42 years.

“She loves football so much, too,” Terry said. “She probably knows more than a lot of men about football, and that’s no lie. She’s grown to be such a great fan. She’s always asking questions when something happens [during a game] on TV. She knows the rules about as well as any man. I know that.”

Terry got into coaching in the early 1980s under Penza, who was a University of Notre Dame captain under legendary coach Frank Leahy. Penza coached Marian to state championships in 1983, 1986 and 1987 before dying of a heart attack in April 1989 at age 57.

“I loved that man to death,” Terry said.

In Terry’s 22 years as an assistant coach at Marian – he took a break from coaching when Dirk was playing at the University of Wisconsin in the mid-1990s – the Hurricanes went 202-56 and made the playoffs 19 times. They made it to six title games in total, losing in 1985 and again in 2006 under IHSFCA Hall of Famer Ed Brucker.

Marian head coach Liam Kirwan was a three-year varsity defensive end for the Hurricanes, graduating in 2013, and Stanger was his D-line coach. By then, players affectionately called Stanger “grandpa.”

“He was just a fun-loving guy who was tough on you, but he cared about you,” said Kirwan, who’s led Marian’s program since 2022. “He was old school as old school can get. That’s something that was special to me because he showed me what passion looks like and what it means to care about your players, but also how you can push them.”

Kirwan saw tenderness in his coach, a tough man with a heart bigger than the man himself. Kirwan has a picture of him and “Grandpa” Stanger after Kirwan scored a touchdown against St. Edward.

“I don’t even remember the play that well, but I remember the picture,” Kirwan said. “His arm is around me, and he’s just looking at me. It felt like he cared about you like you were one of his own kids.

“He’d be tough on you in practice. He’d chew you out, but he’d make sure before you left to give you a hug and let you know that he loved you.”

Dirk always has seen that side in his dad. He had a gift, Dirk said, of being intense and yet compassionate.

“He really has been a great example for me as a coach in that it’s really about letting the guys know that you care,” said Dirk, who coached 12 years at Marian with his dad under Brucker. “You can be tough on them, you can coach them hard, and you can love them when they need to be loved.”

Today, Terry and Kathy live in the same house they have for 50 years, “one block off the 50-yard line” at Woodstock High, Terry likes to say, on the corner of Stewart Avenue and Muriel Street. Terry’s back aches after years of football and construction, and his vision is declining, but he still enjoys life and getting out, whether it’s watching Dirk’s teams play, having lunch with his old Marian pals or spending time with family.

He goes in for cataract surgery in February.

“So I can see again,” Terry said with a laugh. “I have a tough time now driving at night.”

It’s been quite a ride.