Barrington's Rudnicki leading despite injury

By Gary Larsen

Once in a great while a coach will tag an accolade onto a player like the one Barrington coach Scott Steib recently labeled onto Tim Rudnicki:

“Maybe it’s a cliché but it’s true,” Steib said. “I’ll be a happy man if my sons grow up and have a fraction of the integrity and character that Tim has.”

Barrington junior Tommy Arns seconds the opinion. “He’s just an outstanding person,” Arns said. “And he’s still a big part of the team.”

Unfortunately for the Barrington faithful, Rudnicki is suffering a senior’s biggest nightmare, sitting out his final high school season with a torn ACL. Turning that lemon into lemonade will be a chore as Rudnicki is forced to test the old adage about adversity building character.

Talk to Rudnicki for five minutes and you get the impression that the adversity he’s facing won’t build character as much as it will reveal the character he already has.

Intelligent, hard-working, selfless – where leadership is concerned this 17-year-old seems to have every tool in the box. “I don’t know if I’ve ever coached a player that commanded more respect from his teammates than Tim does,” Steib said.

The test of that respect lies ahead. Can Rudnicki lead from the sideline in street clothes? Can he do it while handling the frustration inherent in watching his teammates take the field without him all season?

He’ll give it his best shot.

“Our first home game, Senior Night, our first playoff game – those will be hard for me,” Rudnicki said. “But I can’t see myself doing anything else. I can’t take the easy way out and just go home after school. That’s just not an option.”

The injury
May 16, 2009. The specific date stands out in Rudnicki’s memory. After all, how many days in your life will you tear up your knee in the afternoon and go to prom that night? Rudnicki was playing for his Sockers Academy team when he landed awkwardly and first damaged his knee.

An MRI was inconclusive and Rudnicki chose to rehab the knee rather than go under the knife. Surgery in May would have guaranteed that he’d miss his senior season at Barrington.

Rudnicki instead embarked on a grueling and tedious three hours per day, five days per week of intensively building up the muscles supporting his knee. He spent additional time working on his conditioning.

“I told our trainer that he’d never have a kid work as hard at rehabbing as Tim,” Steib said. “About a month later, he told me I was right.”

Two months of rehab had Rudnicki’s knee feeling better before disaster struck a second time. “I was able to kick the ball around and I was moving well,” he said. “And then it went out on me again. I heard a crackle and I knew something really bad had happened.”

He had to skip a college showcase tournament with his club team and another visit to the doctor confirmed the worst. Rudnicki will undergo surgery in August and miss his senior season on the pitch.

No one would have begrudged Rudnicki a long spell of despondence or even deep depression. His entire family has been wrapped up heavily in both football and soccer at Barrington for years, and his high school career was effectively over.

“I’ve played soccer my whole life and high school soccer has given me my greatest soccer experiences,” Rudnicki said. “It’s the time of year I look forward to most. I can’t describe how devastated I was.”

That devastation didn’t spiral into self-pity, as Rudnicki quickly reverted back into leadership mode. “Within ten minutes, Tim said ‘I’m still going to help this team, coach’,” Steib said.

Leadership
Some people have a knack for rallying people to coalesce behind a common goal. It’s an art well-tested by the widely diverse personalities on a soccer team but Rudnicki has always been able to pull it off.

“It’s not about him,” Arns said. “It’s about the team around him, and he’ll do whatever he can to make the team better.”

Rudnicki was on Barrington’s state title team as a sophomore. Heading into his junior season he saw an opening. “Going into last season I wanted to make sure that the younger guys and the older guys meshed,” he said.

“I’ve always been able to bring guys together on the field. You start to understand all the different personalities on the team, build up a good rapport, and they see that you’re not just another guy out there for himself.”

Does it boil down to refereeing personalities? “That’s a great way to put it,” Rudnicki said. “Teenaged boys aren’t always the most level-headed people, so you have to try to get people to calm down so they’re not at each other’s throats. It’s just making sure everyone stays on the same page.”

“If guys are off on their own, playing for themselves, disconnected from the team, it’s never going to be a good year.”

Andrew Komnick graduated from last year’s team and is still in touch with Rudnicki.

“You felt like Tim had things under control out there,” Komnick said. “He was a coach on the field. He never stopped talking and he was one of the hardest workers on the team.”

Steib knew right away that he had a rare leader in his program. “At times when other players might become impatient, or short-sighted, or frustrated, Tim’s character still comes out,” he said. “He stays composed and he leads.”

If Rudnicki possesses insight and maturity beyond his 17 years, he knows where it comes from: His parents, Mike and Tish, and his brother Chris.

Twenty year-old Chris Rudnicki played football and baseball at Barrington, and now plays football at Williams College in Massachusetts.

“We’ve always had a respectful rivalry and he’s always been a role model for me,” Rudnicki said. “He was a great leader all through high school. I always try to emulate him.”

Neither Rudnicki brother needs to look any farther than their father for a leadership example. Mike Rudnicki was president of the football booster club at Barrington while Chris was there, and is the current president of the soccer booster club.

“For my family, high school sports have been a huge part of our lives for the past seven years,” Rudnicki said.

Steib laughs at the recent memory of an email sent to him by Mike Rudnicki.

“Two days after it was clear that Tim couldn’t play this fall, his father emailed me and said that he hoped I’d still be able allow Tim to be a part of the team,” Steib said.

“I sat at my computer and laughed, because I’d like to give Tim an assistant coach’s position. “

The only player Steib has coached that compares to Rudnicki is former Bronco defender Pat Hopkins. Now a senior captain at DePaul, Hopkins walked on in his freshman year and became a starter five games into the season.

“Like Tim, Pat just quietly went about doing all the dirty work, all the unseen stuff,” Steib said. “As a coach you’re blessed to have those kids.”

What lies ahead
Tim Rudnicki will be just fine. He scored a 35 on his ACT and has a 4.44 GPA on a 4.0 scale at Barrington. His SAT scores came back 800, 800, and 780. The Ivy League may beckon and both Washington University in St. Louis and Williams College have told Rudnicki they have a place for him on their soccer teams.

There’s a double major in economics and biology in his future but it will be February of 2010 before he can play soccer again. He intends to make a run at a college soccer career.

And there’s always a place out there somewhere for a feisty defender that teammates will follow into a fire.

“He’s just a hard-nosed kid. He’s scrappy,” Komnick said. “He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met, a great leader and a great role model.”

There will be players with captain’s bands on their arms working the pitch all over Illinois this fall. Nary a one of them can possibly provide any better leadership than Rudnicki will offer from the bench, on the bus, in team meetings, and during team gatherings away from soccer.

“You can’t measure what’s in a kid’s heart,” Steib said.

“I wasn’t going to be able to walk away from this team,” Rudnicki said. “You only get to experience high school sports once in your life. I knew I had to be there, doing something.”

“I’ll help out in any way I can.”