By Troy Hayes
MaxPreps.com
ALEXIS, Ill. – If ever a word didn’t fit a man, it’s "retired" for John Elder.
What with traveling with Judy, his wife of 52 years, to watch their kids and friends coach, their grandkids play or just what he and his buddies think is going to be a great football game, the former football coach, principal and superintendent at Alexis High School is nearly as busy now at 71 as he was when he left his hometown school 13 years ago.
Throw in his activities with the Illinois Coaches Association, of which he’s been the State Football Chairman since 1976 and the Executive Director since 1980, and his work on the Illinois Shrine All-Star Football Game (Chairman since 1980) and Elder is as far from "retired" as the moon is from cheese.
“(The busy schedule) keeps me around people I like to be around,” Elder said. “The coaching family has been very good to my family so (the work) is the least I can do, and I’ll do it until I can’t do it.”
The full itinerary is nothing new to Elder, who, beginning as a child, has always left little idle time.
“In my day, there weren’t that many activities but there was always something to do,” he said. “(His parents) were always very active so I guess I picked up on it.”
Small-town communities revolve around activities at the high school and Alexis High School revolved around John Elder for nearly 30 years. He was the football coach for 28 seasons, leading Alexis to the first Class 2A state football title game. He was the principal for 27 years and the superintendent for 11.
Two Parts Coach
Elder’s personality is every bit the big sheriff in town even if his physical stature isn’t.
“He’s 5-7, 5-8 maybe,” said Alexis United athletic director Tony Kozelichki, who Elder hired 15-or-so years ago.
“He’s not a big imposing guy but he this gruff voice and close-cropped haircut. He carries himself like he’s huge.”
It’s interesting that Kozelichki worked with Elder for just a year or two before his retirement but still took much of his philosophy from him.
“John is a guy you instantly respect,” Kozelichki said. “And when you respect someone, you want to be like that person. I hope I am.”
Years after Elder retired, current Alexis United football coach Tim Engebretson faced a bit of a dilemma and he immediately turned to Elder for advice. Consolidating two proud communities into one school is a monumental task. Combining two just-as-proud football teams is equally daunting. And when Alexis and Warren united in 2004, Engebretson, already Warren’s coach for 11 years, was tabbed with the job.
“The big concern was making sure the kids knew they were still part of a team,” Engebretson said. “John came in and spoke at our first practice and broke a few single popsicle sticks to show how fragile one player is. He put together a bunch of them and challenged the strongest kids to break them and they couldn’t. It was a pretty simple analogy but you could see it affected them. We ended up as the state champ that year.”
Engebretson is a veteran coach with a state title on his resume but he shows no apprehension in professing his admiration for Elder.
“I’m still in awe of him,” he said. “Whether it’s the Football Coaches Association or the Shrine Football Game – the work that goes into that is just mind-boggling – everything that he does is incredibly impressive.”
His work with the Illinois Coaches Association is equally inspiring, according to those he works with.
“Whew, they talk about a coaches’ coach, buddy, John Elder is a coaches’ coach,” said longtime friend Phil Salzer, who works with Elder giving coaching clinics around the state. “He’s done more for coaches in Illinois than anyone. He’d fight for them until he can’t fight anymore.”
Elder helped bring together the state’s fragmenting coaches associations to work closely with the Illinois Coaches Association, making the whole stronger because of its parts.
“There’s no doubt the Illinois Coaches Association is what it is because of him,” Salzer said. “And because of that, he’s had an influence on nearly every coach in the state.”
The influence still rubs off on son Pat, who now is preparing his Richmond-Burton football team for a Class 4A second-round playoff battle with Genoa-Kingston this weekend. John was Pat’s defensive coordinator from 1999-2005 at Sherrard High School. The two helped turn around a stumbling program to four playoff trips in the six seasons.
“He taught me so much in the way you approach kids and the phrasing you use with parents, the preventative stuff that you lay out with expectations that helps avoid problems later,” Pat said. “And he’s the best defensive coordinator I’ve ever been around. I still bounce ideas off of him about things. He‘s a great resource not only for me but for anyone.”
Elder’s greatest impact on the state however may lie in he and Judy’s kids.
All Parts Father
Seven Elders tagged along with dad on the sidelines or in the stands of Alexis High. Four (John, Pat, Jennifer and Kathy) are or have been coaches. One (Mary) is married to a coach and one (Joe) is a highly-respected football official. Only Teresa hasn’t been involved with sports.
“I won’t call her the black sheep of the family,” Jennifer said with a laugh.
Six are somehow involved in education.
“I’m very proud that most of them decided to go into education,” said John, who was inducted into the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2001 and the National High School Athletic Coaches Association’s shrine three years later. “And that they are all involved in the community in some way. It shows that we did something right I guess.”
Growing up, like most kids, the Elder brood soon learned the sounds of school: class bells, lunch bells, ruler snaps gaining a student’s attention. But the one sound all of the Elder’s remember and associate with Alexis High School was emitted from John; a distinct whistle beckoning the kids to gather.
“Even now, I turn to see if he wants everyone to come to go home,” Jennifer said. “We spent a lot of time at the school and we‘d be scattered everywhere. He was always so heavily involved in school, it was just expected we would be too. My brothers were managers for the football team as soon as they were old enough to not be in the way, and we were scorekeepers or helping out somehow, and then we all played sports.
"I think that is the most important thing I took from growing up there. It’s so important to be involved, to be part of the community. If you want things to go the way you want, you can’t just sit back and complain. You have to be involved. That’s something my brothers and sisters and I all believe in and it’s because of my mom and dad.”
Joe agrees.
"It was just expected that we would all contribute something then and that carried over outside of high school, I think,” Joe said. “That’s just what our family has always done.”
Still a Huge Part
John continues to be a huge part of the coaches association today, as well as traveling hundreds of miles each week to see Pat coach a football game, see his granddaughter coach a volleyball match or see a grandson’s basketball game. He still puts on a number of football coaching clinics each year and heads up the Shriner’s game. It’s a routine that has helped keep him spry and likely won’t slow down anytime soon.
“I would hope (the kids’) experiences were positive and they took the good parts of competition from them,” John said. “The association that I’ve had with the kids throughout the years is just special. It’s why you do things like coach and teach. They keep you young, too.”
It’s a life that’s been equally rewarding for both coach and students.
“He’s instilled a great deal of pride in a lot of people,” son Joe said. “He’s a leader, whether it’s in a church, the classroom or on the football field and I had the privilege of growing up with him.”
John eventually sees his workload at least easing at some point, though he admits he has no idea when that might be.
“If you’re going to perpetuate activities, you have to get young people involved and turn it over to them,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that when the time comes.”
And only then will the label “retired” have any business in the same sentence as John Elder.
Troy Hayes covers central and southern Illinois for MaxPreps. He can be reached at sportsgopher@yahoo.com
