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Homewood-Floosmoor head coach Craig Buzea shocked much of the Illinois prep football world last season when he took the Vikings from a 1-8 program in 2009 to an impressive 10-3 overall record in just his first year at the Floosmoor located school.

Buzea, who came over to H-F last year from Michigan City, Indiana led Portage (Ind) to the 1994 Class 5A state championship game posted a 107-45 in 13 seasons at Portage.

EDGYTIM sits down and gets Buzzed with Craig Buzea.

EDGYTIM: Coming into last season as your first year at the helm at H-F, did your team meet your expectations? Exceed your expectations? What did you really expect from them in your first year?

Craig Buzea: I was really focused on changing the overall climate. We had to fix a lot of things that might not of been football related first, and I felt if we could get some of those fixes in place we'd have a chance to be pretty good. I really didn't know at first just how good we could be because until you get them out on the field you just don't know sometimes. Just by eyeballing the kids I had a feeling we had some talent and that we could be a playoff team if we did things the right way. You also just didn't know how they would perform especially early in the year. We had two months to put in a very complicated system, and a lot of pieces had to fit together and a lot of things had to go right for us for it to all work and it all did. At that point for us to be a playoff team was possible and once you get into the playoffs anything can happen.

EDGYTIM: Coming over to Illinois and dealing with our state playoff system had to be a change compared to Indiana's football playoffs. Here everyone has to earn their way into the state playoffs. That had to be a bit of an adjustment for you I would imagine?

Craig Buzea: No question and those differences in the playoffs are some of the reasons why I wanted to give Illinois football a try. I've been saying over in Indiana for years that I just didn't like the state playoff system. At times you would see a 9-0 team go against an 0-9 team that obviously just didn't want to be there. I still don't know if Illinois has it exactly right, but they have it a lot better right now than Indiana has it especially in football. I can't tell you how many times we went against a team that had a bad regular season and who just didn't want to be in the playoffs but the Indiana system made them keep playing when they just didn't belong. Also the Illinois system now makes every Friday night even more important and it just feels like a playoff game every week now because each regular season games really matters. In Indiana you could just throw away any regular season game because you could always say "we will get them back in the playoffs". In Illinois you can't do that and every game means something and I really like that aspect.

EDGYTIM: You then have to throw in the fact that you play in a very good conference (Southwest Suburban Blue) and it makes every week that much harder I'd imagine.

Craig Buzea: Some people said to me what in the world would I want the H-F job when you look at how tough that conference is every week. I might not be the smartest guy out there but I'm also not a dummy and I knew what I was getting into when I took the job. I just felt that with the support I received from the administration and the athletes we already had and they allowed me to bring some coaches with me that it would work out for me. That first game was huge for us last year (33-14 H-F win over rival Marian Catholic) because they had dominated H-F the year before and that loss the year before just left a really bad taste in the kids mouths and well as in the community. After that loss the fans stopped coming to the games and the community started to not care about football. It was going bad really fast here. We did a lot of things to corral the community early on and to get them to take that blind leap of faith in us. That first game was really huge because we played well and beat a pretty good team. Even though we stubbed our toe the following week the momentum we had from that opening game was just so important for us to get our program off on the right foot.

EDGYTIM: What have you learned about Homewood-Floosmoor since you've been there?

Craig Buzea: Player-wise H-F is really no different from any other school I've coached. A few years ago I made a big jump from Portage to Michigan City, which was bottom of the barrel and was one of the worst football programs in the state. I made that move primarily because I had a chance to be an administrator and to still coach and I also felt I needed a chance to not get stale and to see if I could still turn a program around. I felt that I was able to do that and that the experience I had from Michigan City really helped me at H-F because I had to deal with a lot of the same issues like negative attitudes, no real commitment and not a lot of expectations. Basically what I learned was kids want direction and they want to be told and shown what to do. I have a great support system from the administration to my athletic director. Everyone has been pretty outstanding in giving me everything I needed so far to turn things around. I made a really dumb statement to a newspaper report last year when I said that if we don't win here I don't deserve to be here because everything was in place. Now that I look back on it that was just a really dumb statement but that's how I felt and I still feel that way. We have everything in place here to be successful.

EDGYTIM: What has always been interesting to me with H-F for such a large school gets a lot of two and three sport athletes. It seems to be a rarity for a larger schools these days yet you guys still seem to make it work.

Craig Buzea: It's funny you say that because some of my coaches talked about that and my point of view is that we still don't have enough of those kids and athletes playing football. We have some kids on our wrestling team who need to be playing football. We have some kids on our basketball team who need to be playing football. Whether your in a school of 500 or 5,000 your athletes are your athletes. I tell my one sport athletes all the time that if anyone is telling you that you need to specialize in just one sport that they are not your friend and that they don't have your best interest. That is coming from a guy who was able to play three sports in high school who played in college so I know what that multi-sport dimention is and I push everyone of my kids to do another sport. Do I want them to get stronger? Yeah. I also teach a performance and fitness class and I know all of our athletes are lifting since I see them in school everyday. I push my kids into other sports but we can always do more. Tim Williams I maybe saw at 10 practices in the summer since he was playing AAU basketball, but I believe in that. I'll always share athletes but I still think we can get even more of those multi-sport kids also playing football here.

EDGYTIM: What's the toughest part of the coaching job these days?

Craig Buzea: I would say just dealing with the expectations of parents and recruiting. I don't think parents have enough information and I'm one of those guys where I have no grey area when it comes to that. I sit down with our parents and I'm very straight-forward and they know exactly what's going to happen here with their son. We talk about how we are going to help their kid, we talk about the recruiting process. More so than anything I'm lucky enough to have brought over a few guys on my staff who help with a lot of the things most head coaches have to do. The toughest part of the job can be administratively. A lot of the times your more of an administrator than a head coach and because the school allowed me to bring a few of my coaches with me I delegate some of those responsibilities which allows me to coach football which isn't the case at a lot of other places.

EDGYTIM: Looking ahead and I know it's still very early, but what does it look like on the surface for the Vikings for the season in 2011?

Craig Buzea: Offensively we think we can be pretty good. We have to replace a lot of linemen but the one thing I know this coming year is that we will be more mentally tougher. We will also be much stronger physically and last year the weight room was almost non-existent and now our kids have gotten tremendously stronger with the weight program we've put in place. Does that mean more wins or better players this coming season? I guess we'll find out. I feel that last year compared to now it was amazing to me how we competed despite the lack of strength from our kids. Now at least we are starting to get on par with some of these other schools and we are starting to close that gap as far as strength goes. We obviously have some weapons back including (quarterback) Tim Williams and our TE Willie Ross has made great progress from his sophomore year. Gerald Butler is a kid who's under the radar and he might be the best receiver I've coaches in 20 some years. He was out 7 or 8 games last year with an injury and we got him back at like 75 percent in the playoffs and he still made an impact for us. Sean Jones is another wide receiver

to watch and we have like 4-5 different running backs out who look capable of doing the things we want them to do for us. Offensive line for us will be the key and I feel like we have some kids who can step up but they just don't have a lot of experience. Defensively is where we really will need to get better. I think we had times last year where we were outstanding and other times not so much. We are making a big push on defense with speed this off season. I felt like with the situation I took over obviously they played positions where I wouldn't of had them playing but we really didn't have much choice. We did overhaul our defense after Game 2 last year (52-49 loss to Evanston) and I basically fired 8 guys after that Evanston game on defense. Those guys had earned the right to play early on but after that I just took over and overhauled the defense and we definitely made some serious changes. A lot of those kids became special team players and we got better. A lot of those kids who played on defense are back from last year and hopefully they can just pick things up where we left off that year and become pretty good defensively.

EDGYTIM: What amazed me last year was the huge amount of kids you had last year on the roster (97 players listed on the varsity roster in 2010). Was that just a concerted effort to recruit the hallways for kids? How were you able to get so many kids to come out football?

Craig Buzea: It was good and it was bad because until you have to go through that logistically it's a nightmare. You have kids sharing lockers and you have say 100 kids and 60 or more of those kids just aren't playing. We had 52 seniors and 18 of those seniors only saw the field. You have to find a way to keep those kids involved. I think because we had a new coach and we had several people speaking positively about how we planned on doing things kids just came out in droves. Believe me I tried to get those numbers down. We had early practices at 6AM and that was something H-F never did before but we did that to see who was really committed. The assistant coaches kept telling me that I was going to have 120 plus kids out for varsity football. I told them no way and sure enough we had started off with 135 kids and I thought we would run off kids but because of how hard they worked most of them stayed and we kept them on the roster all season. Not all of them dressed but that is another whole different issue. Numbers are good but if I didn't have the experience from working at another bigger program I would of been in trouble. Thankfully it all worked out last year.

EDGYTIM: Did those overall varsity numbers translate to the lower levels as well?

Craig Buzea: Yeah they did. Our sophomores ended up between 65-70 kids and the freshmen had around the same amount of kids. So overall we had like 265 kids freshmen on up. We graduated a big senior class and we have another big junior class coming up. We are also starting to see kids showing an interest in playing football now who didn't before and that's a good thing. I think some of those kids in other sports saw what happened last year and they want in. I want them all to come out for football but they also know we have just a certain amount of spots so the competition will be even greater now with more of those kids who are athletes who might of never played football before now.

EDGYTIM: Everyone has a mentor and who would you consider you mentors?

Craig Buzea: Two of the guys who I really depended upon early in my career are no longer with us unfortunately. Les Thornton was my head coach at Griffith. Les passed away a few years back and he was a guy that really showed me the passion for the game and he was obviously a mentor for me. My Dad was also a big mentor and influence for me as well. He was a big part of my life especially growing up so those are two guys who really impacted me life. I have one guy with me in who was the head coach at Portage who made an an assistant coach and who at 24 years old made me his offensive coordinator and who said "hey it's your offense" and that's Bob Mattix. Bob was the head coach at Portage for five years before he went to the college game. When I went over to Michigan City I took Bob with me and now Bob is back with me at H-F. He's a guy who I really bounce things off of and he's someone who in his 60's who has a wealth of experience . We have a pretty good relationship and he's a guy who will let me know when I'm in line and when I get out of line. He's a guy with a ton of experience and is someone I think every coach needs to have on his side.

EDGYTIM: What the next trend? We always see changes on offense with the latest being the shotgun spread offense with more read option. What's going to be the next trend we'll see?

Craig Buzea: You know that's a great question. I think things will continue to evolve. A few members of my staff and I went out to Oregon this winter and we spent a week out there. I don't know if the spread offense is a trend because I think some parts of it are here to stay. I don't know if we will ever evolve back to the two backs, tight end and two wide outs on offense. I think we will continue to see wide open football where you use of all 53 yards from sideline to sideline. I just think people are having too much success with the spread. Now with that being said I think we'll see the defenses start to come up with better answers like they always do for everything. At least for now I don't see a big major trend except I see more and more teams going to the shotgun spread. Even the old option guys are starting to run their same stuff except now they run it out of the shotgun spread. It's the old single wing mindset except we call it being in a shotgun now. Same with running the Wildcat now it's all related back to the shotgun spread offense. It's making your quarterback a runner and is now more of a threat and I think your going to see more and more of that offense from here on out. I've watched Oregon now up-close and Northwestern and to honest at least talent-wise I didn't see a heck of a lot of difference. Oregon has a few kids who are special but I believe that Oregon has played so well because of it's system. Auburn was the same way and the quarterback was such a big factor for them. So to answer your question I think we are going to see more of the shotgun spread offense from here on out. The new trend might just be how well the defenses can adjust.