Starting his 22nd season as Carmi-White County High School head football coach, Kurt Simon made his annual trip to the Carmi Kiwanis Club on Thursday, Aug. 16 to preview the Bulldogs’ upcoming campaign for the service club.
Simon has 47 kids out for football this fall, including 11 seniors, five juniors (three of whom are moveins, noted Simon), 12 sophomores and 19 freshmen.
“To say we’re going to be inexperienced this year is an understatement,” said Simon, who returns only one varsity starter on defense and two on offense. “Even though there’s not a lot of experience, I tip my cap to these kids this year. I can’t say enough about their effort so far this year.”
One of those returning starters is 5-foot-10 senior quarterback William Pugsley, who was 41-for-69 for 809 yards, 11 touchdowns and only two interceptions last season.
“We probably will be primarily a running team, but our quarterback can throw pretty well,” said Simon. “And we have two tall kids (6-3 seniors Adam Phelps and Cooper Craig) who can catch. It may evolve to something else, but it’s so hard for me to predict right now because of our inexperience.”
As far as the Black Diamond Conference goes, Simon predicts his team will be “somewhere in the middle of the pack” this season and tabs Fairfield as the early favorite for the league crown.
“Fairfield has been reloading for about 10 years now,” he said. “They’ve just had the best athletes in the conference and they will again this year.” Simon also expects his team’s Week 1 opponent, Sesser-Valier (last year’s conference runner-up), to be among the elite teams this season in the BDC.
Simon’s assistant coaches are Clinton Wolff, Kevin Wolff, Matt Sneed, Marc Stendeback and Jason Craig. All but Craig are former players for Simon, and K. Wolff, Sneed and Stendeback were all starters on Simon’s 2003 squad that went 11-1 and made it to the quarterfinal round of the Class 3A playoffs.
Through 21 years, Simon has an impressive record of 132-79 and 15 playoff appearances (the school had just one playoff berth prior to his tenure). Kiwanian Brad Lee, the Superintendent of the Carmi school system and a former coach himself, spoke about Simon’s longevity and coaching style.
“To be in one place for 22 years is quite a testament,” said Lee. “I think we’re blessed to have Coach Simon. I think it’s safe to say there’s no longer-tenured coach in one school in southern Illinois and probably not too many more state-wide.
“What I’ve admired the most about Coach Simon over the years is his ability to adapt his coaching to the kids that he has. A lot of coaches say, ‘I’m going to coach this certain way. I’m going to put those kids in this position and they’re going to play the way I want them to play.’
“Well, if you’ve noticed, there have been years where we ran it 90 percent of the time and there have been years where we passed it 70 percent of the time. You have to utilize the athletes that you have and put them in the best position to be successful, and I think he’s done an excellent job of that.”
