Mike Noll, former head coach of Glenbrook South’s football team and social studies teacher, will be retiring after this school year. Throughout 14 years of working at South, Noll has been able to work as a teacher, coach and assistant athletic director.

Before Noll began his career at South, he worked at McHenry Community High School in Illinois for 18 years and taught one year in Iowa before he moved to Illinois. According to Noll, he was looking for a new position and took interest in South.

“At that point in my career, I was looking for a new challenge, and a football position was open [at Glenbrook South],” Noll said. “There’s a lot of things that brought me here. I was actively looking at a number of positions and Glenbrook South had such a great reputation academically, athletically and activity-wise, [so] it was [overall] a great opportunity for me.”

As the head coach of the football team, Noll felt it was important to build up the relationships between the coaches and the athletes. Looking back on the team, he is proud of what they have accomplished.

“I am proud of the football program that we created,” Noll said. “When I started here, I felt like the key was first of all [to] talk a lot about relationships and build [those] good relationships… Once [we] got that piece right, [it was to] get our program established, but it didn’t take that long here.”

Fellow social studies teacher and current head coach of football, David Schoenwetter, has worked with Noll for the past 14 years. According to Schoenwetter, Noll transitioned from being a full-time social studies teacher to only teaching classes in the morning, due to his position as the assistant athletic director.

“It can be a change in your work day which can be nice,” Schoenwetter said. “There was part of him who struggled to give up those classes [because] I think he always enjoyed being a classroom teacher, so that was where he had to make a tough decision.”

According to Schoenwetter, Noll came into the job with a very clear plan of how he wanted to run the football program and had great ideas on selling that to the students.

“I learned a ton of football from him right away: [how] it meshes, [and how] it works,” Schoenwetter said.

One of Noll’s current students in U.S. History, junior Josh Boas says Noll is very passionate about the material he teaches.

“He is so knowledgeable in class and always demonstrates his passion through different stories and presentations,” Boas said. “He has impacted GBS by teaching students new material in an engaging way and always has a positive attitude in class.”