Two former area stars take run at coaching

Jacqui Aubert (right) competes for Crystal Lake South in the 2004 IHSA Girls Track and Field State Meet. Aubert will be the coach of Woodstock North's girls track and field team. Northwest Herald file photo (Ryan Rayburn ())

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Two notable former local athletes will take over as girls track and field coaches next year.

Matt Dunker (Marengo, Class of 1998) will be the new girls coach at Crystal Lake South, and Jacqui Aubert (Crystal Lake South, 2004) will start the girls program at Woodstock North, District 200’s new high school that will compete on the varsity level next school year.

Dunker was the runner-up for the Northwest Herald Male Athlete of the Year his senior year at Marengo. He starred for the Indians in football, basketball and track. His high school career culminated with a sixth-place finish in the Class A triple jump at the IHSA Boys Track and Field State Meet in 1998.

Dunker went on to play football at Northern Illinois University as a tight end and was part of a rebuilding process under former coach Joe Novak, who helped the Huskies rise to national prominence.

Dunker takes over for Christy Tenopir, who resigned for family reasons after a successful run with the Gators, who won back-to-back Fox Valley Conference titles in 2007 and 2008. Tenopir and her husband, Kurt, had their second son, Dylan, this weekend. Kurt is an assistant principal at Deerfield.

“I knew I wanted to get into coaching right away,” said Dunker, who teaches math at South. “In track, you’re talking about athletes who really want to be there. You have to want to run in track. I’m very happy to be here. Christy did a great job getting the program where it is, and I want to keep it at that level.”

Dunker’s football teams at Marengo made the Class 3A playoff semifinals his junior and senior seasons, and his basketball team advanced to the Class A supersectional as a senior.

Aubert is one of the area’s most decorated girls distance runners, with five state medals on her résumé. She finished 11th and 13th in the Class AA Cross Country State Meet during her career, and also had three medals in track. Her best year came as a sophomore in 2002, when Aubert was fifth in the 3,200-meter run and eighth in the 1,600.

Aubert ran at Mississippi State for one year, then for two years at Illinois, from which she graduated last year. She teaches seventh-grade math, language arts and social studies at Creekside Middle School in Woodstock.

“Ever since I was young I’ve wanted to be a track coach,” Aubert said. “When this position opened I figured the worst thing that could happen was I [would] get turned down.”

Aubert said she looked forward to working with boys coach John Fredericks, who was boys head coach at Woodstock High School this season, and the other assistants. With smaller teams in their first year of competition, the coaches plan on working together with boys and girls, and each coach concentrating on their area of expertise.

“It’s going to be a small team compared to what we hope for later,” Aubert said.

Aubert is still active, and has been competing in triathlons instead of just road races.

Another honor for Winkelman: Alden-Hebron senior Mark Winkelman was selected to the Illinois High School Baseball Coaches Association Class 1A-2A All-State team, which was released over the weekend.

Winkelman, a 6-foot-2 left-hander, was a standout for the Giants at the plate and on the mound. He helped A-H to its best season ever, as the Giants advanced to the IHSA Class 1A Lena-Winslow Sectional championship game, where they lost to Lanark Eastland, 4-3, in eight innings.

Winkelman, who will attend Creighton on a baseball scholarship, was 10-2 as a pitcher, with an ERA of 0.61, 131 strikeouts and 11 walks in 68 1/3 innings. At the plate, Winkelman hit .588 with six home runs, 30 RBIs and 43 runs scored.

Winkelman’s name appears in the top 50 of several IHSA career records lists for hitting and pitching numbers.

• Joe Stevenson covers high school sports for the Northwest Herald. He can be reached at 815-526-4513. He also can be reached by fax at 815-459-5640 or by e-mail at jstevenson@nwherald.com.