Lemont's impact, success
stretch beyond graduation
By Gary Larsen
High school coaches never know how far into the future their influence might extend. Players come and go, the years pile up, former players move on and settle into adult life.
But take notice, coaches, because 29-year-old Denver resident Megan Campion might speak for a lot more of your former players than you know.
“My husband (Matt) makes fun of me when I talk about Lemont soccer because I still get very intense and very spirited,” Campion said. “He’s like ‘Babe, it was a high school team,’ and I’m like yes it was, and you just don’t understand. It still holds such a special place in my heart.”
Once upon a time, Megan Campion was Megan Krull, a 2009 graduate of Lemont and a four-year varsity soccer player for coach Rick Prangen and his staff. The team she played on as a senior was the first of Lemont’s six state finals teams in a 10-year span.
2018 Lemont graduate Jacqueline Aleman played on three of those state finals teams, and she looks back fondly too.
“I love talking about the program,” said Aleman, whose sister Mia will be a senior on the team next spring. “I want people to realize that we come from a great program at Lemont.”
South-suburban village holds roughly 15,000 residents and is circled by the likes of Orland Park, Romeoville, Bolingbrook, and Darien. With roughly 1,400 students, the high school competes in the middle tiers of IHSA athletic classes; the soccer teams compete in Class AA of Illinois’ three-class system.
With six state titles, Lemont’s competitive cheerleading program is a perennial state power. Among more traditional sports, Lemont won 3A state titles in baseball in 2014 and 2016, and a Class AA state title in wrestling this past season.
But outside of the cheerleaders, no program at Lemont has won more state trophies than its girls’ soccer team. Prangen has been named the Illinois Coach of the Year in both boys (2014) and girls (2011) soccer by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.
“Since the early 2000s we’ve had some pretty good runs,” Prangen said, “and the cool part of that was the building-up process, of getting closer and closer and closer.”
After placing second in Class AA in the first year Illinois implemented a three-class system in 2009, Lemont took third in 2011. A trio of fourth place state finishes followed in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Another third place trophy was added to the case in 2018.
That 10-year run has places Lemont among the best girls soccer programs in Illinois. And to think, when Prangen arrived at Lemont 25 years ago, the school didn’t even have a designated soccer field. The coach laughs when he talks about it.
“I was 23 years old, and I just got done playing soccer at Loyola University,” he said. “I get to Lemont, and I see that our game facility is a baseball diamond. It was like I just arrived in soccer purgatory.”
The soccer teams began playing on the school’s football field not long after Prangen arrived and while that was a step up, it was only a baby-sized. The old football field at the school doubled as the classically cramped and crowned soccer field. The pitch was choppy during the girls’ spring season and truly torn up in the fall, when it was shared by boys soccer and football.
Lemont’s girls finished below .500 for five consecutive seasons starting with the 1995-96 school year. The Indians played defensively on their small, shared, beat-up pitch. It wasn’t the style of play that Prangen, assistant coach Mark Tomczak and the rest of the staff wanted to impart.
“The dimensions were tiny and when you have tiny dimensions you can stay in games even if you’re an average to poor team, just because there’s less space to be exploited,” Prangen said.
What came next changed everything. For soccer fans who haven’t seen it, the field the Indians now play on is an expansive, well-manicured pitch that’s part of the 26-acre Lemont High School Sports Complex on the southwest corner of Bell Road and 131st Street. Built in 2003, the complex sits four miles from campus and features two soccer fields, a softball field, a baseball field and locker rooms.
With bleachers that seat upwards of 2,000 fans, Lemont’s home soccer stadium is bona fide unique.
When Aleman, who hopes to play her third season of college ball this fall, was asked about Lemont’s home soccer field it sparked a flashback.
“I remember growing up and driving past it, and being amazed at just the massiveness of it,” Aleman said. “And I remember thinking that I was going to play on it some day. Then when you finally get to play on that field, it’s almost like a celebrity moment. It was so amazing.”
For Prangen’s purposes, the new field was one small step towards coaching a more wide-open, attacking style of soccer, and one giant leap towards elevating the program.
“Getting that facility absolutely helped us, because it allowed us to create a culture,” Prangen said. “Our girls really value how special it is to play there. Last year we lost our first home game in four years (to Class 3A Neuqua Valley), so it became really a special place to play for us.”
With a college-like soccer environment in place, the talent started to emerge. Many of Lemont’s players grew up playing youth soccer with a local club, the Raiders. Though the organization disbanded a few years ago, it had a strong impact on the rise of the Lemont program.
“I got a lot of good experience having European coaches there,” Aleman said of the Raiders. “They valued a lot of technical skills, building individual skills, and getting better at all the little things before you get good at the bigger things.”
The 2018 seniors, who played on three state finals teams, all played for the Raiders.
“The nice thing about the Raiders was that it was a local team and all the girls that played there wanted to play for Lemont High School,” Prangen said. “Sadly, that’s kind of been lost. The big clubs kind of gobbled everything up, and started to preach not playing high school soccer.”
Lemont finished above .500 in 2001 with 12 wins and the program has not finished below .500 since. The program won the first of 17 regional titles under Prangen in 2002, and the first of eight sectional titles in 2008. In that last season Illinois used a two-class playoff system, the Indians won 22 games and came within one win of the state finals playing against much larger schools.
“That was a big accomplishment for us,” Prangen said. “We knocked off Hinsdale Central, Sandburg, and lost to Homewood-Flossmoor in PKs in the supersectional. That was really a special group, to go that far in a two-class system.”
Campion was a junior on that 2008 team. With a slew of varsity players returning in 2009 and Illinois adding a third class to the playoff mix, Lemont was primed for a watershed season.
“What was cool about that team is that we all grew up playing together,” Campion said. “(Prangen) sat us down and told us we had a chance to do something special and going into that season just felt different. All the seniors had the same goal, and we wanted to make it happen.”
And happen it did. Lemont won 21 games in 2009, won its first supersectional title, and finished second in state in Class AA. The Indians posted a 1-0 semifinal win over Glenwood before losing 3-0 in the title game to an exceptional, Leah Fortune-led Wheaton Academy team.
At game’s end, Campion and fellow seniors like Tammy Contorno, Shelly Hadlock, and Erin Stahurski were devastated but not only because of the loss.
“I remember Prangen hugging us afterwards and everyone crying,” Campion said. “Part of that was losing but mostly we just didn’t want it to be over.”
The 2009 team knew it had etched its name in the granite of Lemont soccer history -- the first girls team to win a state trophy. However, what the hardware represents most to Campion is what she appreciates to this day.
“Here I am, 29 years old, and I still think of the principles that Prangen taught me,” Campion said. “I’m still in contact with (Tomczak) and the two of them together really instilled a powerful work ethic in all of us. If you wanted to get better, and wanted to improve, that’s how it was done. So that soccer team made my high school experience and helped form personality traits that I have today.”
The approach hasn’t changed since Campion’s day if you listen to 2020 Lemont grad and four-year varsity player Erin Crispo.
“They definitely introduced me to a different perspective towards the game,” she said of the coaching staff. “They showed me that if you put in the effort beyond the field, with your team and attitude and fitness level and effort, you’ll succeed. They taught us the proper way to approach soccer, and they’re just very passionate about us as players.”
In 2011, Lemont won its second state trophy, placing third in Class AA on the strength of players like Kelly Fritz, Shannon Briggs, and Kelly Trojak. Fritz and Kim Jerantowski then became IHSSCA all-state players on the 2013 team that placed fourth downstate.
Lemont placed fourth again in 2015 and 2017, led by all-staters like Aleks Mihailovic, Mairead Ruane, and Carli Bermele, before winning a sixth state trophy in 2018 with a third place finish.
Ruane and Aleman were all-state players on that team in their senior seasons and became two more Indians seniors with three state finals appearances on their high school resumes.
Since Chicagoland Soccer began its girls All-State Team in 2016, Crispo (2019, 2020), Danielle Irwin (2020), Aleman (2018) Mairead Ruane (2017, 2018) and Carli Bermele (2017) have earned the honor.
In 2018, Lemont beat Normal West to take the third place game in a shootout after a scoreless tie. The last PK save by keeper Michelle Jerantowski left Aleman a snapshot memory of what she felt; and she knows how lucky she was to feel it.
“It was the last surge of adrenaline in my body. I was one of the first people to run towards Michelle, and I jumped up on her and then I had no legs anymore,” Aleman said. “It was such a free feeling of adrenaline and excitement and happiness — there’s just not one word to describe the emotion you feel.”
During its 10-year run, Lemont has also had to consistently jump over the private school postseason hurdle in Class AA, where state powers like Notre Dame (Peoria), Wheaton Academy and St. Francis lay in wait.
“Class AA girls’ soccer is basically the parochial class, let’s be honest,” Prangen said. “We’ve had to go down to Notre Dame (Peoria) two times to beat them in a sectional. We had to beat St. Francis one year to get to a state final. So the fact that (Lemont) is a town of 15,000 people is a source of pride for us.
“I respect Wheaton Academy and St. Francis a ton, because they’ve had such nice runs. I’m always so impressed with programs like New Trier, and Barrington and Naperville North that get there time and time and time again. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to do that.”
Repeating state finals appearances is, indeed, a high wall to climb. Lemont’s approach to that feat, beyond embracing the value of hard work and attacking soccer, has included fostering something that every great program understands. Togetherness.
Prangen and a coaching staff that includes Tomczak, Bill Baldauf, and Mike Beranek have fostered team unity at every turn.
“A close team is a dangerous team, I don’t care if it’s girls or boys,” Prangen said.
Every season at Lemont starts with players finding a word to stand as an acronym, like STRIVE or FIERCE, in which each letter stands for a different word, each representing a team goal or quality. That acronym is repeated and focused on all season.
A while back, the coaching staff came up with another idea to foster unity. It involved pairing up teammates who might not have known each other well — say, a freshman and a senior — to spend time with each other in an activity outside of school and practice.
“Then we had to show proof that we spent time with each other,” said 2020 grad Irwin. “The coaches believe that team bonding is a big key to success for the program. They just really know what they’re doing.”
Aleman remembers completely buying into what Prangen and his staff were selling.
“They always used the word family, and every time they did I found myself believing it more and more,” she said.
There are ancillary aspects to the program’s success, like rotating captains who pick the next week’s captains based on effort or performance in practice and games. Add a supportive school administration and ultra-supportive parents to the mix, and the recipe for success grows longer.
There’s also Tomczak’s fundraising wizardry for the program, on top of his scouting ability.
“Mark and I have been coaching together for 18 years, and I’ve never met a guy who can scout a team and break a team down as well as he does,” Prangen said. “It’s a huge advantage for us. He’s meticulous.”
Prangen would naturally like to see his girls win a state title, but he doesn’t pine over it. He and he and his staff will simply keep striving to produce state finals-quality teams.
While there’s no magic formula, there is a bit of mystery involved in consistently advancing downstate, and that success can sometimes disappear as quickly as it came. Especially for a team that doesn’t typically go 18 players deep.
“We’re fully aware that any one year, it can end,” Prangen said. “And that scares the hell out of us, by the way. It’s been a lot of fun, and we don’t want it to end. So it’s constant vigilance. We’ve got something special so how can we maintain that and keep it going?”
With the 2020 girls season lost to COVID-19, Prangen and Tomczak hope to be back at it for the boys season in the fall and with the girls in 2021. They’ll keep preaching hard work and team unity, and they’ll begin each season like most coaches do — acting like mad scientists, bouncing ideas off of each other about the the new season’s personnel, strategy adjustments, formation changes, et. al to come up with a winning formula.
Heck, it’s gotten them this far.
So how far does a coach’s reach ultimately extend? Does a 2020 grad like Adriana Patino feel the same about the soccer tradition at Lemont as 2009 grad Campion did?
“Most definitely,” Patino said. “It’s your school and you’re just so proud to represent the Lemont program. It’s a sense of pride for the school and the legacy that players from the past have left behind.”
stretch beyond graduation
By Gary Larsen
High school coaches never know how far into the future their influence might extend. Players come and go, the years pile up, former players move on and settle into adult life.
But take notice, coaches, because 29-year-old Denver resident Megan Campion might speak for a lot more of your former players than you know.
“My husband (Matt) makes fun of me when I talk about Lemont soccer because I still get very intense and very spirited,” Campion said. “He’s like ‘Babe, it was a high school team,’ and I’m like yes it was, and you just don’t understand. It still holds such a special place in my heart.”
Once upon a time, Megan Campion was Megan Krull, a 2009 graduate of Lemont and a four-year varsity soccer player for coach Rick Prangen and his staff. The team she played on as a senior was the first of Lemont’s six state finals teams in a 10-year span.
2018 Lemont graduate Jacqueline Aleman played on three of those state finals teams, and she looks back fondly too.
“I love talking about the program,” said Aleman, whose sister Mia will be a senior on the team next spring. “I want people to realize that we come from a great program at Lemont.”
South-suburban village holds roughly 15,000 residents and is circled by the likes of Orland Park, Romeoville, Bolingbrook, and Darien. With roughly 1,400 students, the high school competes in the middle tiers of IHSA athletic classes; the soccer teams compete in Class AA of Illinois’ three-class system.
With six state titles, Lemont’s competitive cheerleading program is a perennial state power. Among more traditional sports, Lemont won 3A state titles in baseball in 2014 and 2016, and a Class AA state title in wrestling this past season.
But outside of the cheerleaders, no program at Lemont has won more state trophies than its girls’ soccer team. Prangen has been named the Illinois Coach of the Year in both boys (2014) and girls (2011) soccer by the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.
“Since the early 2000s we’ve had some pretty good runs,” Prangen said, “and the cool part of that was the building-up process, of getting closer and closer and closer.”
After placing second in Class AA in the first year Illinois implemented a three-class system in 2009, Lemont took third in 2011. A trio of fourth place state finishes followed in 2013, 2015, and 2017. Another third place trophy was added to the case in 2018.
That 10-year run has places Lemont among the best girls soccer programs in Illinois. And to think, when Prangen arrived at Lemont 25 years ago, the school didn’t even have a designated soccer field. The coach laughs when he talks about it.
“I was 23 years old, and I just got done playing soccer at Loyola University,” he said. “I get to Lemont, and I see that our game facility is a baseball diamond. It was like I just arrived in soccer purgatory.”
The soccer teams began playing on the school’s football field not long after Prangen arrived and while that was a step up, it was only a baby-sized. The old football field at the school doubled as the classically cramped and crowned soccer field. The pitch was choppy during the girls’ spring season and truly torn up in the fall, when it was shared by boys soccer and football.
Lemont’s girls finished below .500 for five consecutive seasons starting with the 1995-96 school year. The Indians played defensively on their small, shared, beat-up pitch. It wasn’t the style of play that Prangen, assistant coach Mark Tomczak and the rest of the staff wanted to impart.
“The dimensions were tiny and when you have tiny dimensions you can stay in games even if you’re an average to poor team, just because there’s less space to be exploited,” Prangen said.
What came next changed everything. For soccer fans who haven’t seen it, the field the Indians now play on is an expansive, well-manicured pitch that’s part of the 26-acre Lemont High School Sports Complex on the southwest corner of Bell Road and 131st Street. Built in 2003, the complex sits four miles from campus and features two soccer fields, a softball field, a baseball field and locker rooms.
With bleachers that seat upwards of 2,000 fans, Lemont’s home soccer stadium is bona fide unique.
When Aleman, who hopes to play her third season of college ball this fall, was asked about Lemont’s home soccer field it sparked a flashback.
“I remember growing up and driving past it, and being amazed at just the massiveness of it,” Aleman said. “And I remember thinking that I was going to play on it some day. Then when you finally get to play on that field, it’s almost like a celebrity moment. It was so amazing.”
For Prangen’s purposes, the new field was one small step towards coaching a more wide-open, attacking style of soccer, and one giant leap towards elevating the program.
“Getting that facility absolutely helped us, because it allowed us to create a culture,” Prangen said. “Our girls really value how special it is to play there. Last year we lost our first home game in four years (to Class 3A Neuqua Valley), so it became really a special place to play for us.”
With a college-like soccer environment in place, the talent started to emerge. Many of Lemont’s players grew up playing youth soccer with a local club, the Raiders. Though the organization disbanded a few years ago, it had a strong impact on the rise of the Lemont program.
“I got a lot of good experience having European coaches there,” Aleman said of the Raiders. “They valued a lot of technical skills, building individual skills, and getting better at all the little things before you get good at the bigger things.”
The 2018 seniors, who played on three state finals teams, all played for the Raiders.
“The nice thing about the Raiders was that it was a local team and all the girls that played there wanted to play for Lemont High School,” Prangen said. “Sadly, that’s kind of been lost. The big clubs kind of gobbled everything up, and started to preach not playing high school soccer.”
Lemont finished above .500 in 2001 with 12 wins and the program has not finished below .500 since. The program won the first of 17 regional titles under Prangen in 2002, and the first of eight sectional titles in 2008. In that last season Illinois used a two-class playoff system, the Indians won 22 games and came within one win of the state finals playing against much larger schools.
“That was a big accomplishment for us,” Prangen said. “We knocked off Hinsdale Central, Sandburg, and lost to Homewood-Flossmoor in PKs in the supersectional. That was really a special group, to go that far in a two-class system.”
Campion was a junior on that 2008 team. With a slew of varsity players returning in 2009 and Illinois adding a third class to the playoff mix, Lemont was primed for a watershed season.
“What was cool about that team is that we all grew up playing together,” Campion said. “(Prangen) sat us down and told us we had a chance to do something special and going into that season just felt different. All the seniors had the same goal, and we wanted to make it happen.”
And happen it did. Lemont won 21 games in 2009, won its first supersectional title, and finished second in state in Class AA. The Indians posted a 1-0 semifinal win over Glenwood before losing 3-0 in the title game to an exceptional, Leah Fortune-led Wheaton Academy team.
At game’s end, Campion and fellow seniors like Tammy Contorno, Shelly Hadlock, and Erin Stahurski were devastated but not only because of the loss.
“I remember Prangen hugging us afterwards and everyone crying,” Campion said. “Part of that was losing but mostly we just didn’t want it to be over.”
The 2009 team knew it had etched its name in the granite of Lemont soccer history -- the first girls team to win a state trophy. However, what the hardware represents most to Campion is what she appreciates to this day.
“Here I am, 29 years old, and I still think of the principles that Prangen taught me,” Campion said. “I’m still in contact with (Tomczak) and the two of them together really instilled a powerful work ethic in all of us. If you wanted to get better, and wanted to improve, that’s how it was done. So that soccer team made my high school experience and helped form personality traits that I have today.”
The approach hasn’t changed since Campion’s day if you listen to 2020 Lemont grad and four-year varsity player Erin Crispo.
“They definitely introduced me to a different perspective towards the game,” she said of the coaching staff. “They showed me that if you put in the effort beyond the field, with your team and attitude and fitness level and effort, you’ll succeed. They taught us the proper way to approach soccer, and they’re just very passionate about us as players.”
In 2011, Lemont won its second state trophy, placing third in Class AA on the strength of players like Kelly Fritz, Shannon Briggs, and Kelly Trojak. Fritz and Kim Jerantowski then became IHSSCA all-state players on the 2013 team that placed fourth downstate.
Lemont placed fourth again in 2015 and 2017, led by all-staters like Aleks Mihailovic, Mairead Ruane, and Carli Bermele, before winning a sixth state trophy in 2018 with a third place finish.
Ruane and Aleman were all-state players on that team in their senior seasons and became two more Indians seniors with three state finals appearances on their high school resumes.
Since Chicagoland Soccer began its girls All-State Team in 2016, Crispo (2019, 2020), Danielle Irwin (2020), Aleman (2018) Mairead Ruane (2017, 2018) and Carli Bermele (2017) have earned the honor.
In 2018, Lemont beat Normal West to take the third place game in a shootout after a scoreless tie. The last PK save by keeper Michelle Jerantowski left Aleman a snapshot memory of what she felt; and she knows how lucky she was to feel it.
“It was the last surge of adrenaline in my body. I was one of the first people to run towards Michelle, and I jumped up on her and then I had no legs anymore,” Aleman said. “It was such a free feeling of adrenaline and excitement and happiness — there’s just not one word to describe the emotion you feel.”
During its 10-year run, Lemont has also had to consistently jump over the private school postseason hurdle in Class AA, where state powers like Notre Dame (Peoria), Wheaton Academy and St. Francis lay in wait.
“Class AA girls’ soccer is basically the parochial class, let’s be honest,” Prangen said. “We’ve had to go down to Notre Dame (Peoria) two times to beat them in a sectional. We had to beat St. Francis one year to get to a state final. So the fact that (Lemont) is a town of 15,000 people is a source of pride for us.
“I respect Wheaton Academy and St. Francis a ton, because they’ve had such nice runs. I’m always so impressed with programs like New Trier, and Barrington and Naperville North that get there time and time and time again. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to do that.”
Repeating state finals appearances is, indeed, a high wall to climb. Lemont’s approach to that feat, beyond embracing the value of hard work and attacking soccer, has included fostering something that every great program understands. Togetherness.
Prangen and a coaching staff that includes Tomczak, Bill Baldauf, and Mike Beranek have fostered team unity at every turn.
“A close team is a dangerous team, I don’t care if it’s girls or boys,” Prangen said.
Every season at Lemont starts with players finding a word to stand as an acronym, like STRIVE or FIERCE, in which each letter stands for a different word, each representing a team goal or quality. That acronym is repeated and focused on all season.
A while back, the coaching staff came up with another idea to foster unity. It involved pairing up teammates who might not have known each other well — say, a freshman and a senior — to spend time with each other in an activity outside of school and practice.
“Then we had to show proof that we spent time with each other,” said 2020 grad Irwin. “The coaches believe that team bonding is a big key to success for the program. They just really know what they’re doing.”
Aleman remembers completely buying into what Prangen and his staff were selling.
“They always used the word family, and every time they did I found myself believing it more and more,” she said.
There are ancillary aspects to the program’s success, like rotating captains who pick the next week’s captains based on effort or performance in practice and games. Add a supportive school administration and ultra-supportive parents to the mix, and the recipe for success grows longer.
There’s also Tomczak’s fundraising wizardry for the program, on top of his scouting ability.
“Mark and I have been coaching together for 18 years, and I’ve never met a guy who can scout a team and break a team down as well as he does,” Prangen said. “It’s a huge advantage for us. He’s meticulous.”
Prangen would naturally like to see his girls win a state title, but he doesn’t pine over it. He and he and his staff will simply keep striving to produce state finals-quality teams.
While there’s no magic formula, there is a bit of mystery involved in consistently advancing downstate, and that success can sometimes disappear as quickly as it came. Especially for a team that doesn’t typically go 18 players deep.
“We’re fully aware that any one year, it can end,” Prangen said. “And that scares the hell out of us, by the way. It’s been a lot of fun, and we don’t want it to end. So it’s constant vigilance. We’ve got something special so how can we maintain that and keep it going?”
With the 2020 girls season lost to COVID-19, Prangen and Tomczak hope to be back at it for the boys season in the fall and with the girls in 2021. They’ll keep preaching hard work and team unity, and they’ll begin each season like most coaches do — acting like mad scientists, bouncing ideas off of each other about the the new season’s personnel, strategy adjustments, formation changes, et. al to come up with a winning formula.
Heck, it’s gotten them this far.
So how far does a coach’s reach ultimately extend? Does a 2020 grad like Adriana Patino feel the same about the soccer tradition at Lemont as 2009 grad Campion did?
“Most definitely,” Patino said. “It’s your school and you’re just so proud to represent the Lemont program. It’s a sense of pride for the school and the legacy that players from the past have left behind.”