Here are the new head football coaches to watch for in the Rockford area

With a new football season comes new football coaches, and while there wasn't a ton of turnover in the Rockford area from last season to this year when it comes to head coaches, there are still a few new faces running the show.

Three to be exact.

More: Prep football Lena-Winslow, Forreston, Dakota lead off NUIC questions to be answered on football field

Here are the new head football coaches in the area for this season:

Eric Didesch, Dakota (interim head coach)

Didesch comes into a tough situation after the former Dakota head football coach, Dan Sheets, was arrested multiple times for child pornography and other charges just before the preseason started.

Didesch, an East Dubuque native who attended Wahlert Catholic in Dubuque, Iowa, and then played defensive line at NIU, takes over a Dakota program that was 7-5 under Sheets last season and had snapped a two-year span of missing the playoffs. Didesch was the defensive coordinator for Dakota last season, and then on Aug. 4 he was thrust into the head coaching spot and had to quickly assemble a new staff to start practicing three days later.

Now he's hoping they can all move past this adversity quickly, and get back on the upswing.

"We want to take a negative situation and turn it into a positive by coming together as a team, and really getting tight as a group," said Didesch, the interim head coach. "They're all familiar with me from last year, but it's been tough, changing everything right before the season. These guys are ready to show they can handle it, though."

Dakota's football program has been up and down since it won its third of three state championships under head coach Jerry Lano in 2011. They also won the Class 1A state title in 2005 and 2007. Starting last year, Dakota appeared to be back on the way up, however. It's Didesch's job to keep that going.

"It's turned into a mental toughness thing," Didesch said. "How tough can we be right now."

Dakota opens at home against Fisher at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Sean Downey, Stockton

Downey was the offensive coordinator at Eastland/Pearl City from 2011-2017 and was then Stockton's offensive coordinator in 2019. For the last two years, he was on the Stockton staff as a volunteer and in the offseason he earned the right to take over for Matt Leitzen.

Leitzen failed to win more than three games in any of his three seasons. Now Downey hopes to start Stockton's climb back to prominence. They had made the playoffs in nine straight years before Leitzen arrived, and they have two state titles and four state runners-up finishes in program history.

"It's time to get it going again," Downey said. "And this is a fun group, and they want to be the ones to do it."

Downey hopes to use a balanced offensive attack, one that bounces from the Power-I and wishbone sets to a spread, quickly and often. He will use a lot of 3-back sets, and tailbacks Karl Hubb and Tanner Gile will be centerpieces of the backfield.

"We'll see who can get hot, but we have a lot of talent," Downey said. "They taking a lot of pride in getting back to playing Stockton football, and they want to get back to the playoffs."

Cody Casazza, Jefferson

Cody Casazza is new, both to the NIC-10 and as a head coach, but he is not new to Jefferson. And neither are his assistants, which could be key.

Casazza, a 2011 Jefferson grad who played both ways on the line, was an assistant coach in the Nashville, Tennessee, area under his former defensive coordinator at Rockford University before moving back to Rockford as RU’s defensive coordinator last year. Now he takes over at Jefferson with five other Jefferson grads as assistants and a total of eight coaches who work in the building.

“That is a huge thing for us at Jefferson,” Casazza said. “Our kids are great, but they need the support during the day. We are coming with a different culture with a lot of accountability. We have few rules, but we are really strict on those rules.”

Jefferson hasn’t had a winning record in 30 years. And whenever the J-Hawks seemed to have momentum on their side, they lost their coach. Rick Schmitz went 7-11 with a team that had gone 4-41 the previous five years but left in 2012 when RPS said it couldn’t find a position in the building for the middle school PE teacher. Ken DuBose went 4-5 in 2016 with a team that had been 0-27 the previous three years but was let go for undisclosed infractions. Jefferson was only 2-7 under Jake Arnold last year but set 13 offensive records. Arnold left to be an assistant at Harlem, where DuBose is also now an assistant.

But Jefferson returns several key starters, led by quarterback Sebastian Brocius, receiver Randy Johnson and running back/linebacker LaShawn Gathright. And Rick Schmitz, who went 7-11 at Jefferson in 2010-11 after the J-Hawks had gone 4-41 the previous five years, came out of retirement to help one of his former players as a linebackers coach.

“He’s a great sounding block for me being a first-time head coach,” Casazza said. “He has 45 or 50 years of coaching experience in the Rockford area. He knows Rockford kids.”

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Here is a little on the new head football coaches in Rockford area