Interesting story about former Bears WR who is coaching high school football in the Chicago area in an effort to pay back those coaches who helped him when he was a teenager.


Copyright 2009 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune


March 20, 2009 Friday
Chicagoland Final Edition


SECTION: CHICAGOLAND EXTRA ; ZONE N; Pg. 2

HEADLINE: As coach, ex-Bears receiver gives back by changing lives and winning games;
Kozlowski says football turned around his troubled teen years and he wants to pay it forward

BYLINE: By Mike Helfgot, SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE




He has been a public figure in the Chicago area for more than two decades, first as a Bears wide receiver in the late 1980s and early '90s and for the last 16 years as a sports radio host.

Glen Kozlowski is an engaging on-air personality. He's open, honest, passionate, funny. But there's something about Koz that even the most loyal of WGN-AM 720 listeners probably don't know.

"I was a thug," he said. "I was a complete troublemaker. You name it, I've done it. There was a time where it could have gone the other way, and I would have been in a completely different world.

"I had people smack me in the back of the head and say, 'Wake up, kid, you have an opportunity.' I got tremendous advice and leadership at the time I needed it. My old [high school] coaches saved my life in a lot of ways."

For the last seven years, he has been trying to return the favor. In addition to the radio gig and running insurance and employment-verification businesses, he became head football coach at Wauconda High School in 2002, turning the perennial doormat of the North Suburban Prairie into a respectable program.

That challenge fulfilled, he stepped down to rebuild a North Chicago program that had slipped from 7-4 in 2006 to 2-7 last fall.

"The reason I wanted to coach at the high school level was to impact kids the way I was impacted," said Kozlowski, who attended high school in California. "A lot of the circumstances my players are going through, I went through. I think I have some insights that will help some of my players."

Make no mistake, though; as sincere as he is about impacting lives -- once a month, he calls his former players who are in college to check up on them -- the 46-year-old Kozlowski runs a football team, not a ministry.

He followed high school sports even during his Bears career, and when his youngest son graduated from Warren in 2002, he went against everyone's advice and chose Wauconda for his first foray into coaching.

"Everybody said, 'You can't turn that place around,'" he recalled. "Everybody said it was a horrible job. I wanted to prove them wrong."

Wauconda lost its next 22 games and 26 of 27 in his first three seasons, but the seeds of success were planted. Wauconda went 18-19 over the last four seasons, and a youth program that had 120 players seven years ago is 375 strong, according to Kozlowski.

"The kids had such low self-esteem in terms of how they viewed themselves as athletes," he said. "They were like, 'We're Wauconda -- we're supposed to lose.' That had to change."

Change it did, to the point that Kozlowski has no lingering guilt leaving Wauconda for a conference rival. He is convinced the program is in capable hands under Dave Mills, who played with Kozlowski at Brigham Young University and moved to Illinois to join him on the Wauconda staff in '02.

Kozlowski took the North Chicago job six weeks ago, and is a fixture at the school. He runs a weight-training program every afternoon, and participation has quadrupled. He is receiving crucial support from the coach of the school's successful basketball program, Gerald Coleman, who has persuaded several of his juniors to play football next fall.

"I've always wanted to coach at North Chicago," Kozlowski said. "Up until about three years ago, they were the most dominating team in the conference. The difficulty they've had the last three years has more to do with how they approach things."

Kozlowski has instituted some non-football changes that he thinks will improve his players on and off the field. He is spending time on the area's youth program -- including educating 7th- and 8th-graders and their parents on college preparation. And he's requiring every member of the team to volunteer for 20 hours of community service.

"I believe that more kids can go to college on academic scholarships than athletic scholarships," he said. "It is a matter of them understanding that those opportunities are there."

He's also taking time to get to know them the way Mel Gali and Scott Wright, his high school football and basketball coaches, knew him.

"I treat each kid individually," he said. "Each kid is so uniquely different. There are certain rules you can't break, but with each kid, you have to find his hot button."

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The world according to Koz

Former Bears receiver Glen Kozlowski hasn't lasted 16 years on WGN-AM 720 radio by being shy. Here's the North Chicago coach and quote machine's take on:

Football tactics: "You identify the kids who can do exceptional things, get the ball in their hands and turn them loose. It's a simple game. Anybody who makes it sound difficult is a coach trying to make himself sound better."

Football as metaphor: "Success breeds success. When kids have confidence in themselves, it carries over into everything they do. Every part of life becomes better."

His new team: "In my mind, just looking at the players we have on the roster now, we will compete with everybody. It is going to be the little things that separate us from winning and losing."

Going to BYU: "Everybody was still kind of cheating back then, and they were the only school that didn't offer me a deal. That impressed me, and my mom really wanted me to go there."

Being a Mormon: "I believe what I believe. I don't cram it down everybody's throat. You have to find your own way to believe in yourself."