OUT OF BOUNDS COLUMN: Compliment keeps Crick on board for another season
By Nate Bloomquist
After all of his accomplishments in his first two years as coach of the IVCC women’s basketball and tennis teams, it was a compliment of which Steve Crick is most proud of.
He had resigned as coach of both teams this season until a meeting with college president Dr. Jean Goodnow.
A simple compliment from her made Crick change his mind: “She just told me ‘if you’ve made up your mind that’s fine. If there’s any chance you’d reconsider we’d love to have you stay.’“I was so flattered that a college president would think so much of me to do that. I never had expected that anyone had cared that much. I was floored,” says Crick.
Crick works as a financial aid director at St. Anthony College of Nursing, a small private school in Rockford.During the tennis and basketball seasons he would make the 75-mile trek down Interstate 39 to lead the teams in practices and games.The drive took its toll on Crick. He had decided he would resign at the end of this year’s basketball season so athletic director Mike Riley, whom he has known for 20 years, would have plenty of time to find a replacement. That was of course, until the meeting with Goodnow.
“I think he’s a fantastic coach,” says Goodnow. “We’ve had tremendous success and tremendous retention of our players. I’m very, very pleased with how he has conducted himself. It would be a tremendous loss if we were to lose him.”
Crick was hired at IVCC in 1999 to coach the two sports. He had worked with Riley before, in 1981 at Spoon River College in Canton. Riley was the men’s basketball coach and Crick was the women’s coach. Riley told Crick about the position that was open at IVCC.Before coming to IVCC, Crick was the boys basketball coach at Kirkland High School.
At IVCC, he rebuilt both sports programs, which had been defunct the year before. Last year, he had only nine players on the women’s basketball roster and at some points in the season, there were fewer.
Behind the leadership of Crick the Lady Apaches managed to win 20 games. The year before they went 0-14 under Joe Conroy.
The women’s tennis program was canceled in 1998, but Crick brought it back into a resurgence in his first year with a strong recruiting class of freshmen. This May the squad will compete at the national tournament in Arizona.
“It was a long drive and I wasn’t too thrilled with that,” recalls Crick. “But I knew that there wasn’t a program the year before. That’s a challenge to start from scratch and I’ve always liked a challenge.”
Now the Rockford resident is hoping he’ll be hired at IVCC in a full-time capacity so he can continue to work and coach without the long commute. Crick says he’s applied for a position at the college.
Hopefully, the college will hire Crick, who has a 43-21 record in his two-year tenure.In this age of coaches charged with everything from alcoholism to assault, it’s great to have a passionate, caring coach like Crick in our area.
And it’s even better to have administrators, players and fans who are appreciative of it.