CSNbbs

I spoke to Lawrence Hennings coach tonight, Frank Lenti. Lenti has been the coach at Mt. Carmel for 24 years. He has won a bunch of state championships, and his team is always ranked in the top 10 of Illinois football.

Lenti was also Rob Krutilla's and Jeff Welch's coach, as well a Simion Rice's and Donavan McNabbs. The guy is a legend in Illinois, and I was honored to speak to him. Very personable and completely honest in his answers. I could have pumped him for a lot of good stories, but I didn't want to intrude on his time too much. Perhaps in the future.

Anyhow, the coach likes Western, and we're talking a program that puts out D-1 prospects in the double digit range. That's a nice pipeline to keep flowing if we can do it. I'll have the Henning article up as soon as his assistant gets some pics over to me.

Mt. Carmel has a great program. I think they still run the 'bone or some variation.

Their arch rivals are Joliet Catholic and between the two have 50+ kids over the years man offensive and defensives lines for a plethora of BCS schools not to mention the NFL.

The southside and suburbs of Chicago is exploding population wise. Lincoln Way HS ran out of cardinal directions to distinguish schools(all in the last 15 years) and started naming them after prominent individuals. The pop explosion has also fed a number of private schools, Providence (not St. Mels) that is often in the mix with Lenti and the gent that runs JC. Throw in Homewood Flossmoor (Supi Sanni), and a number of other sout side Chi. Catholic League squads like St. Rita and Brother Rice and you are awash in talent. What's funny, to me, is the talent is overwhelmingly all "bigs". FB, backers and lineman. Only a handful of "skilled" kids. In fact, the last really distinquished skill kid goes way back to Purdues Otis Armstrong in the mid to late 70's. I can't think of a single kid who really set himself apart. Why Purdue, but Darryl Stingley (WR) and Scott Dierking (RB) were fine but not HOF material.

WMU has done a decent job in pulling in kids from this area even back to Bill Doolittle.

Lenti runs the Veer (not Wishbone). I have heard him at a couple clinics and got one of his tapes a while back.

WMU recruited well out of Chicago area during Doolittle's days because assistant Dick Raklovits was a former Illinois star out of Chicago Fenger.

Veer = variation? Si?

No. Veer has two backs directly behind the guards. Wishbone is a three-back offense featuring a true fullback. Both are option-oriented offenses.