2013: The Cardinals roll through the regular season and for the first time in school history, reach the Division III semifinals and square off against Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio. Played in a blizzard, with snow piling up on the field, the lead changes hands seven times.
2002: John Thorne replaces Joe DeGeorge as North Central’s head coach. Thorne had a wildly successful run as head coach at Wheaton Central and Wheaton Warrenville South from 1980-2021, winning four state championships.
He was part of the “retire at 55” movement among teachers in Illinois but decided a few years earlier he would step down and pursue a college job.
“It could have been a huge long shot that didn’t work out. Then I would have been in trouble. I would have had to go to work as a Walmart greeter or something like that. But it did, and it was a lot of fun.”
Nick Kukuc scores the team’s lone touchdown in a 20-10 home quarterfinal loss to Whitewater Dec. 4, 2010. A blizzard the morning of the game delayed the start time and necessitated the effort of dozens of staff members and volunteers to clear the field. Kukuc is the East Aurora football coach.
Photo courtesy of Steve Woltmann/North Central College Athletics
Dierking: “I was a freshman and wasn’t supposed to play a lot, but one of our starting safeties went down. So our starting corner went to safety and I went in at corner and played most of that game. I just thought it was a blast, facing a heavy run team.
Dierking: “Not as much spite, but pure motivation. I hate losing more than I love winning and that sticks with me a long time. I found a way that I could use that competitiveness and do it for the good of helping young men achieve their goals of being champions on and off the field.”
Dierking: “Yeah, it was kind of like, ‘Now I’ve got to think about the real world.’ I had already thought about coaching, now I’ve got to see if I can make a living doing it.”
(First of two parts)
Did the loss to Mount Union influence the decision to go into coaching? Did he have any thoughts of, “This fight isn’t over yet?”
“I just remember Whitewater’s championship culture kicked in and they won the game in the fourth quarter. It was a great learning point that, ‘Hey, we can play at that level,’ but those teams have the championship DNA and they know how to finish.”
2005: North Central plays in its first playoff game, losing 21-19 to Capital (Ohio).
It’s not like there was an opening at the top. Mount Union and Wisconsin-Whitewater used to completely dominate Division III. Those two schools played each other for the title nine times in 10 years between 2005-14.
2012: North Central travels to the West Coast two weeks in a row for the playoffs, beating Cal Lutheran before falling to Linfield (Oregon).
Thorne: “Jeff (Thorne) was a really great recruiter and Brad was great, especially at getting kids out of (the immediate area). As a Naperville Central grad, he had a great story to tell them: ‘It’s OK to stay close to home.’”
Spencer: “Fanthorpe was probably my biggest recruit at that point of my career. We threw a post route to Hlavac, who was probably my second-biggest recruit at that time.”
Spencer: “What changed? Everything. Coach Thorne brought a winning mentality. He brought a certain way to think, a certain way to practice, a certain way to lift, to study film. We still use the phrase to this day, ‘Refuse to lose.’ It’s more of a life motto than it is a football motto. Coach Thorne would talk a lot in those early days about overcoming adversity and making a decision to be a winner.”
Spencer: “(Thorne) didn’t come in and say, ‘We’re going to win a national title.’ He came in and said, ‘We need to beat Wheaton, we need to beat Augie, we need to Wesleyan, we need to beat Millikin. We need to have a 3.0 GPA. We need to have 20-plus seniors.
The correct answer is it took a few thousand little steps over the course of roughly 20 years to turn the small college in downtown Naperville into a football power. The Cardinals (14-0) are in Houston, waiting to make their fifth straight appearance in the Stagg Bowl on Sunday night against Mount Union (Ohio).
“I think that’s one of the places where coaches can get things wrong is if they just go, ‘We’re going to win a national title, we’re going to win a conference title.’ Well, there’s 100 steps before you can do that. Coach Thorne really taught us in those early years to have micro-goals along the way to those big goals.”
But North Central has taken over. The Cardinals won their first championship in 2019 and will be looking for their third national title on Sunday. This fall North Central has been ranked No. 1 all season, with an average margin of victory of 43 points, and won the semifinal game against Susquehanna (Pennsylvania) 66-0.
2011: Wabash (Indiana) rallies from a 28-7 deficit to beat North Central 29-28 in the playoffs, getting a TD and 2-point conversion with 52 seconds left.
2006: The Cardinals record their first playoff win, beating Concordia (Wisconsin) 35-6, before losing in the second round.
Thorne: “I got tired of smelling the organic chemicals in chemistry lab and grading the same kinds of papers. I loved teaching, don’t get me wrong, but I just really wanted a new challenge. (Son) Jeff and I always wondered how we could do at the college level. I started looking at colleges that were close to where we lived (interviewing for assistant roles at Elmhurst and Lake Forest).
There are 240 schools playing Division III college football and North Central head coach Brad Spencer has heard the same question from many of them.
North Central College quarterback Aaron Fanthorpe passes during 2nd quarter action against Wheaton College in Naperville.
Marcelle Bright | Staff Photographer
In Sunday’s Part 2: The family business changes hands and the climb continues.
Let’s take a detailed look at the timeline and chronicle how North Central made the improbable rise, through the eyes of Spencer, former head coach John Thorne and current defensive coordinator Shane Dierking.
Spencer: “That was the start of this campus changing quite a bit. President Hal Wilde at the time really did a nice job of setting a vision and fundraising and I think the building of the stadium was a big domino to fall. Then all of the sudden you had this sleeping giant that had a great stadium, great campus, was in the middle of one of the best towns in America, and had Chicago on its doorstep.”
2004: North Central goes 6-4 and 7-3 in Thorne’s first two seasons, with Spencer serving as a cocaptain.
2010: North Central goes 12-0 until losing at home to Whitewater 20-10 in the third round of the playoffs. An overnight snowstorm forced kickoff to be delayed a few hours, then the Cardinals couldn’t hold a 10-7 lead after three quarters.
How did you do it? How did North Central make the move from modest program to national powerhouse?
Sept. 11, 1999: North Central opens a new 5,500-seat facility (now called Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium) after a flood destroyed the old football field. Besides Cardinals football and soccer, the stadium was also home to the Chicago Fire of MLS for two seasons while Soldier Field was being renovated.
“They always say that as a head coach, everybody has your phone number,” Spencer said, “which you don’t really understand until people do get your phone number.”
Spencer caught a game-winning touchdown pass in 2003 to beat Illinois Wesleyan for the first time in more than a decade.
Finally, Mount Union scores with 1:07 on the clock and hangs on to win 41-40. It was Dierking’s last game as a player, so he had plenty to think about during the bus ride back to Naperville, which took about nine hours due to the snowy weather.
2007: In one of the craziest finishes in school history, North Central wins its first road playoff game at Franklin (Indiana) 44-42 on a 19-yard pass from Aaron Fanthorpe to Steve Hlavac (both from Naperville North) as time expires.
North Central College players Joe Schneiderbauer, 11, Shane Dierking, 25, and Kane Thompson, 44, bring down a St. Norbert player at Saturday’s playoff football game. North Central College went on to win 57 to 7.
Suzanne Caraker/scaraker@dailyherald.com
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