Murney Lazier and Ken McGonagle share the distinction of elevating the status of Evanston athletics.
Together, they combined to win 852 games across three sports in four decades at Evanston. Last month, they died one day apart.
McGonagle died May 10 at age 88. Lazier died May 11 at age 93.
Both were longtime Evanston residents. McGonagle most recently lived with his wife, Cele McGonagle, in Lisle. Lazier also served as Lyons’ athletic director and had moved to Western Springs.
Lazier’s .864 winning percentage in his 18 seasons with the Wildkits football team put him first in school history, according to Evanston athletic director Chris Livatino. McGonagle’s 727 wins between baseball and boys soccer are a school record as well.
“Lazier coached more years than he had losses,” Livatino said of the football coach’s 125-17-4 mark from 1957 to 1974.
McGonagle coached from 1954 to 1988.
Football and baseball were established sports when Lazier and McGonagle began coaching, but they introduced soccer and lacrosse to the school. The Wildkits now field boys and girls teams in each sport.
“They led to the formation of a tradition of excellence and leadership, which is what it meant to be a successful Wildkit. They set the bar for excellence,” Livatino said. “We had success before Murney, but there was never success year-in and year-out as there was with Coach Lazier.”
Those who remember Lazier will have the opportunity to attend a life memorial celebration for both the former coach and his wife, Olga Lazier, who died in 2008. The celebration will take place Aug. 24 when the Wildkits open their football season against Wheaton North at Lazier Field in Evanston.
Shawn Lazier, the Laziers’ son and a 1972 Evanston graduate, said his mother was a co-coach. He said his father would not have achieved his coaching success without her help.
Emery Moorehead, another 1972 Evanston graduate and a tight end on the Chicago Bears’ 1985 Super Bowl-winning team, said he learned the importance of fundamentals from Lazier. He used those fundamentals at Colorado and in the NFL.
“He was all about fundamentals,” Moorehead said. “He showed us the proper footwork and other techniques that I carried with me for my entire career. It was always about (being) team-first.”
Moorehead said Lazier put such an emphasis on a team-first mindset that he held onto all recruiting letters from college coaches until the season was over — something that would be practically impossible in today’s age of social media-driven recruitment.
Shawn Lazier said his father also thought it was important for Wildkit football players to participate in a spring sport unless they needed to have a job. To make sure there was a spring sport suitable for football players, Murney Lazier took a trip to West Point, N.Y., to learn lacrosse at Army.
He introduced the game to Evanston as an intramural sport in 1959, and by 1968 it was a varsity spring sport. Livatino said Murney Lazier pioneered the game locally.
“He was the father of Illinois high school lacrosse,” Livatino said. “He may have required his football players to play. You can’t do that now.”
Just as Lazier brought lacrosse to Evanston, McGonagle was a soccer pioneer — almost by accident.
Berwyn-based neurologist Tim McGonagle said his father learned about soccer while growing up in the Seattle area. A British battleship was stationed nearby, and the sailors played soccer while their ship was being repaired.
Tim McGonagle said Evanston had a coach from England lined up to lead the program’s inaugural season in 1959, and Ken McGonagle expected to be an assistant coach.
“The guy didn’t come back, and my father got it by default,” said Tim McGonagle, a 1971 Evanston alumnus. “He took a course in soccer when he got his master’s at Illinois.”
And just as Lazier required his players to play lacrosse in the spring, Ken McGonagle recruited baseball players with no fall sport to play soccer.
“Then he went to the wrestling team and other teams,” Tim McGonagle said. “He wanted good athletes, and he taught them the game.”
Then Ken McGonagle took things a step further, his son said. Ken McGonagle went to the Evanston Park District to lobby for a middle-school soccer program. He even had some coaches in mind.
“He went to the middle schools and had his (varsity) players coach them,” Tim McGonagle said.
Tim McGonagle and Shawn Lazier were not well acquainted during their shared time as Evanston students, but both played for their fathers.
Shawn Lazier quarterbacked the Wildkits and eventually played at Michigan State. He said his father held him and his brothers to a higher standard.
“We had to be one-and-a-half times above the rest so he could show there were no favorites,” Shawn Lazier said. “At school it was Coach Lazier, and at home it was Dad.”
For Tim McGonagle, cracking the starting lineup was easier. His first year on the varsity baseball team was when his father took the season off to pursue a doctorate in secondary education and physical education at Indiana.
“I became a starter and the captain while he was gone,” Tim McGonagle said. “By the time he came back, it was all established.”
