Steve Cofoid brought Hononegah into the NIC-10 in grand style. And then returned and helped Hononegah become the dominant athletic program in the conference for almost two decades.
Cofoid died last week at age 60 after a prolonged illness. The former all-conference football and baseball player was an assistant principal and athletic director at his former high school for 19 years before stepping down last year for health reasons. In his last 13 years at Hononegah, the school won the NIC-10 All-Sports trophy for all-around excellence every year.
Hononegah left the SHARK Conference, where it played with such small schools as South Beloit, Aquin, and Kirkland Hiawatha, to join the NIC-10 in the fall of 1982, during the height of the league's power.
"At that time the NIC-10 was unbelievable and we had been playing Stockton and South Beloit and North Boone," former Hononegah football coach Donn VanSchelven said. "People told me, 'You've got to be nuts!'"
The Indians' very first football game that year was against a powerhouse Guilford team that would go on to become an undefeated state champion.
Cofoid intercepted all-conference quarterback Jeff "Whitey" Anderson three times. Hononegah had the lead and the ball on its own 36 with 97 seconds to play when Guilford's Dave Crouch intercepted a lateral intended for the quarterback on a trick play and returned it 30 yards for a TD for a stunning 15-12 win.
Still, Cofoid had shown Hononegah could hang with anybody in the NIC-10. Cofoid later lifted Hononegah to wins in two other huge games. The all-conference defensive back recovered a fumble and returned an interception 52 yards in a 22-13 win over East. In that game, he also caught six passes for 127 yards, including a 29-yard TD pass on fourth-and-6.
In a 21-19 win over West, Cofoid was the holder on the extra point in a tie game in the final minute. When the ball was hiked over the kicker's head, Cofoid alertly ran it down, grabbed it, and threw a winning 2-point conversion pass in a game where Hononegah ran for only 42 yards on 40 carries.
"He was Mr. Clutch. He always came through with the big ones," VanSchelven said.
VanSchelven learned that before he coached Cofoid's first game. A Hononegah super fan told him if he put Cofoid on the right side of his defense, opponents would probably complete their first pass against him. But, VanSchelven remembers the fan saying, 'The second, forget it, the ball will be in his hands, and he will take it the other way. I guarantee you, they will never complete another.'
"That's exactly what happened against Guilford. The other three times they threw at him, they were all intercepted."
Those three interceptions in one game are still a Hononegah record. So is his 11 interceptions for the season.
And Cofoid's best sport might have been baseball. He hit .426 as a senior, second in the conference
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