In January, H-F hired former Sandburg football coach Troy McAllister. 

This comes after a 19-19 record during the former coach Terrell Alexander’s four-year tenure. There was no substantial playoff success in this tenure.

This is a different level of success than H-F is accustomed to, so the school and the community have been looking for answers.

McAllister comes to H-F with an outstanding career coaching record of 113-48, including two state championships with Wendell Phillips Academy in 2015 and 2017. In 2014, Phillips was the state runner-up under his leadership.

Individually, he won the Gatorade Coaching Excellence Award in 2018 and the Max Preps Illinois Top High School Football Coach in 2020.

More recently, his coaching schemes led to Sandburg breaking passing yard records in 2023 and 2024. Despite this unparalleled success, he believes that establishing the run game will be mandatory at H-F. 

“And I think just from a standpoint of like overall philosophy of the program of what it’s going to be, we’re gonna try to run the ball, and we’re gonna try to stop the run,” McAllister said.

McAllister emphasized a key in his coaching plan at H-F to have a balanced gameplan to get a competitive edge on the opposing team.

“My rationale for [my philosophy] is it’s high school football. If you have to drop back and throw the ball 50 times if you’re an offense, it’s really hard. Same thing if you’re on the other team, right? If they’re gonna drop back and throw it 50 times, I think [that’s] an advantage for the defense. So if we can run the ball and stop the run, that’s gonna give us a chance for success,” McAllister explained.

He also plans to use his philosophy to prepare his team for the cold months, and he wants to be dominant while properly executing his strategy.

“Also, when you get into November football, the weather here is very unpredictable. So, if you’re a team that relies on the pass, you’re gonna run into a game or two where, hey, at some point, you just gotta line up and run the ball. They’re gonna know what’s coming, and you still gotta run it, and you still have to be successful,” McAllister affirmed. 

This game plan is meaningless without a winning culture, and McAllister is already implementing a promising tradition. 

“We did a team draft, just put the players into teams a couple weeks ago, that I started at Sandburg, and it’s something that I’ve been able to utilize now at H-F to start to build a culture within the program so that the team bonds together and grows together,” he stated.

In addition to this tradition, he is also bringing his defensive coordinator, Jimmy Flynn, to H-F.

To ensure that this tradition does not lack a competitive nature, McAllister has implemented a competitive routine.

“We’re starting our ‘Red Dawn’ events [on] Friday mornings, every other week at 6 a.m.. [This is] where each of the teams that were drafted will get to compete against each other,” McAllister said.

He continued to explain why this tradition will be helpful for the players on and off the field.

“I think from the perspective of growing the culture of the team, one, they’re gonna learn how to compete, and two, because of the nature of how the draft is set up with juniors, sophomores and freshmen having to get drafted to each team, it’s not gonna be clique-ish from the standpoint of it’s just their friends they’re drafting. [Each player has] to go outside their comfort zone, which allows for the team to grow and bond more. If you just stick with the people you know, it doesn’t help you grow as an individual,” McAllister elaborated.

Beyond tradition, McAllister is planning to utilize special teams, a unit that attempted zero field goals last season.

He plans to run practices with an “allotted time frame of close to 30 minutes for special teams each day.”

He then discussed the logic behind the practice time that will be given to the athletes and plans for the fundamental work to lead to a successful special teams unit.

“Hopefully, [the special teams’ practice] translates during the games, right? There’ll be an improvement in special teams, and hopefully, the kicking game becomes a weapon where it’s gonna help us put points on the board,” McAllister said.

He also believes that solidifying the kicking game will allow the team to be more aggressive.

“I think every coach has a chart on their play call sheet that tells you, ‘When you’re up this much or down this much, here is when you go for two.’ But if your kicking game is not successful, you’re going to have a better chance going for two than the [extra point] if you don’t have a kicker that can do that. So hopefully we’re able to create a situation where we can get that [extra point to become] automatic and then from there, you can just go right off your chart [and] what it tells you to do.”

Despite this great foundation, he stays down to earth. He knows the potential talent on the team, but knows that talent is not the only key to success on the state level.

McAllister analogized that three Division I players in basketball can lead to state-wide success. However, football requires 11 men on offense and 11 on defense, with special teams as well. He also emphasized that injuries are more frequent in football, and it’s more challenging to maintain depth on a football team.

Thus, he empathized with H-F football from last year.

“I think if you look at last year in particular, the 4-5 record, H-F was a really good team. They had some super close games in particular, the last three, I believe, of the season were close [and] could have gone either way and just kind of the way the brakes went, they didn’t. So, that’s the difference between 4-5 and, what, 6-3? Sometimes, it’s just the talent part can be misleading,” he stated.