Commitment to rebuilding WIU football program from within gives ‘Necks solid foundation

MACOMB, Ill. — The five returning players that sat to each side of Western Illinois University football coach Myers Hendrickson at media day felt like they had a stake in the rebuilding of the Leathernecks.

In a time when the NCAA’s transfer portal makes it easy to find a way out, those players wanted to stay.

That decision, they said, was easy.

“I tend not to quit on things,” linebacker Juan De La Cruz said. “This is the only school that gave me an opportunity to play football, so why would I quit?”

“That’s the reason I came here last year, the tradition and legacy of this program,” said defensive lineman Cam Washington, who transferred from Old Dominion before last season. “It was the one thing that attracted me when I was in the transfer portal last year. When Coach said this is the tradition, this is the Leatherneck standard, that’s something that stuck with me. I value it right now and will the rest of my life. It’s why I came here.”

The Leathernecks went 2-9 last season, 2-6 in the Missouri Valley Football Conference. The program has just four wins over the last three seasons, including the abbreviated 2021 spring season.

Hendrickson, who went 30-4 in his head coaching career at Kansas Wesleyan, knows the history of WIU’s program. He played with the Leathernecks, and his father, Mark, was first an assistant coach and then a head coach of the team.

Hendrickson knows you can win at Western Illinois — the Leathernecks last went to the FCS playoffs in 2017 — but he also knows the challenges of playing in the Valley, a league top-heavy with nationally ranked teams and one that is considered one of the best conferences in FCS.

“We look at challenges as opportunities,” he said.

Hendrickson put in the terminology of the offense and the defense in the spring, but there were only 56 players returning from last season. A summer of adding players and bringing in the recruits from the 2022 class has pushed the roster number over 100.

“That’s what college football is now,” Hendrickson said. “There is going to be a lot of new every single fall.”

The work, Hendrickson said, has been continuous.

“I think it started in the winter,” he said. “It started in December when I got here. This is a motivated group. It’s all just been one moving, rolling, snowballing piece that’s been coming together.”

The returning players understand their role.

“We were here to kind of change the culture, get things going the way we need to,” said offensive lineman Ty O’Janovac.

One of the things Hendrickson did to connect to the past was do a project called “Hanson Heroes,” a team-building exercise in which players were organized into separate groups named after Leathernecks who made it into the NFL. It allowed them to get to know each other, but also to get to know the players their team was named after, like Rich Seubert, Frisman Jackson or J.R. Niklos, players who worked their way onto NFL rosters.

“We wanted to get the locker room to get to know each other better, but tie it into the tradition of great Leatherneck football,” Hendrickson said.

It’s been about attention to detail, Hendrickson said, even emphasizing keeping the locker room clean.

“The players take so much pride in the locker room,” he said. “We probably have the cleanest locker room of any team in the country in fall camp. You’ve got to choose some things that you want to win on. We chose to have a good, organized, clean locker room.”

It’s all about the approach.

“Those are things we can control right now,” Hendrickson said.

What the lineup will look like, though, probably won’t be known until game week before the Leathernecks open at Tennessee-Martin on September 2.

Hendrickson is keeping the quarterback position open — he has seven in camp. That decision, he said, will come in the final days before the opener.

The Leathernecks’ best position groups appear to be the offensive and defensive lines.

“Defensively, I think we can really put pressure on the quarterback and in our scrimmage it showed up with defensive backs making huge plays,” Hendrickson said. “I think we feed off of each other. Our philosophy is we want to stop the run on defense, make an offense one-dimensional because I think we have some of the best defensive backs out there, they make plays, then up front we want to be balanced.

“Up front on offense, I think that is a big strength for us as well, if we can stop the run on defense and run the ball on offense that’s going to give us a chance.”

The Leathernecks were picked last in the Valley’s preseason poll, and the players understand that not much is expected out of them.

“We have expectations for ourselves,” tight end Jack Whyte said. “A lot of other people don’t. We were picked last in the Missouri Valley, which is hopefully not true. We have that chip on our shoulder, we have our certain expectations and our certain standards. We have been unsuccessful the past few years, but this year really does feel different.”

“It doesn’t matter what the outside chatter is,” defensive back J.J. Ross said. “It’s this family that matters.”

The returning players want to make sure that the rebuild is going to work.

“This is going to be my fourth year here,” O’Janovac said. “I’ve always felt like I belong here. They’ve always pushed that when you’re a Leatherneck, it’s something different, you’re separated from every other college in the country just by coming here and I bought into it right away. Just the chance to make this family the best it can be and knowing we can get to the top, it’s why I stayed.”