Mount Carmel’s Frank Lenti sets state wins record

Updated: September 17, 2011 6:59PM

Since Frank Lenti took over as Mount Carmel’s football coach in 1984, the Caravan has won games all over the state in all kinds of weather.

The latest victory came Saturday on a gorgeous fall-like afternoon in Westchester and was easier than most: 62-8 over an outmanned St. Joseph team. The Caravan starters got some reps in ahead of next weekend’s Catholic League Blue opener against Brother Rice and had their helmets off, done for the day moments into the second quarter.

It’s a drill we’ve seen so many times before, Mount Carmel putting away an opponent with machine-like efficiency. But this was no ordinary win for Lenti; that much was apparent from a quick glance along the sideline and up in the stands, which were fuller than you’d expect for what didn’t figure to be much of a game. There near the north end zone was Chargers basketball coach Gene Pingatore, who knows a thing or two about milestone wins; he has 862 victories in 42 seasons and could pass Steve Goers’ state record of 881 this winter.

What Pingatore and everyone else came to see was Lenti becoming the winningest football coach in Illinois history. Saturday’s victory was his 307th, passing Richards’ Gary Korhonen for No. 1 all-time.

Everybody in the stadium knew Lenti would get the record Saturday – even the St. Joseph administration, which had a crystal trophy engraved and ready to present to him after the game. That was the only time, when the presentations and tributes were coming from current and former players (Father Tony Mazurkiewicz, a captain of Lenti’s 1991 state championship team, is now his boss as the school’s president) that Lenti did not seem entirely in his element.

“I’ve really tried not to think about [the record],” he said afterward. “You know eventually it’s going to happen. I didn’t talk to the kids about it because I didn’t want it to be the focus. I wanted the focus to be on the ‘we’ thing, not the ‘me’ thing.”

But there’s really no getting around it: Lenti is the glue that holds everything together for a football program that has demonstrated remarkable staying power. His teams have averaged 11 wins and two losses a season, winning nine state championships, reaching 14 title games and qualifying for the IHSA playoffs for each of the past 25 seasons.

As exceptional as those numbers, are the ties that bind Lenti and his assistants. Two of them, his brother Dave and Pete Kammholz, have been with him for all 307 of those wins. Others like Bill Nolan and Mark Antonietti have been around almost as long.

“It’s emotional,” Dave Lenti said. “It’s been a long ride, 28 years of ups and downs along the way. Fortunately a lot more ups than downs. It’s hard to put in perspective because you’re in the middle of it. Nine state championships – what does that mean? I don’t know, it’s kind of a blur.”

While the numbers and trophies speak to Lenti’s mastery of the X’s and O’s of football, it’s the stability of his coaching staff and his own interest in staying put that make up his most enduring legacy. People forget that Mount Carmel wasn’t always what it is today: a football powerhouse and an anchor of Chicago’s Woodlawn community.

Mount Carmel football went 37-55-1 in the 1970s, winning two or fewer games four times in the decade. Things started to pick up under the direction of Bill Barz, who won the school’s first state title in 1980 and brought Lenti in as an assistant two years later. But even into the ‘80s, rumors persisted that the school would abandon its aging campus by the Metra Electric tracks and move to the suburbs.

But Mount Carmel is still there, with an updated physical plant, and so is Lenti. He turns 60 on Tuesday, but could pass for 10 years younger. “Knock on wood,” he said. “I think it must be because of good genes from my mom and dad. People say, ‘You don’t look 60 years old.’ I say, ‘That’s because I don’t have much gray hair. The ones that would have been gray are the ones that fall out.’”

How much longer he’ll coach is a question Lenti hears often, but doesn’t have a firm answer for. Easier to pin down is why he keeps coming back, something Pingatore understands from his own experience.

“I’ll bet he’ll tell you the wins aren’t as important as the successes of the kids in his program,” Pingatore said.

And indeed, two of the guys Lenti talked about after Saturday’s win were Mazurkiewicz and Mike Clifford, who was a co-captain at Mount Carmel with Donovan McNabb, was a captain at Princeton and went on to become a presidential bodyguard.

Playing a part in their lives rank as high on Lenti’s victory list as anything that happened on the field. Even getting win No. 307.

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