1966 Ottawa Football Team
Year Inducted: 2023
Accomplishments: Led by Illinois Valley Sports Hall of Fame coach Bill Novak, the 1966 Ottawa HS football team went 9-0. They outscored opponents 380-19 (42.2 ppg scored vs. 2.1 ppg allowed) and had six shutouts. The team won the NCIC Northeast title. Several players from the 1966 team played collegiately at Illinois, Iowa, Southern Illinois, Montana and Valparaiso.
By Andy Tavegia
Between 1960 and 1971, Ottawa football was the mecca of Illinois high school football. With 98 wins in 108 games played, you would think it would be hard to pinpoint the very best of that Bill Novak-led era. But when you dive deep into the numbers of the 1966 Pirates team that is being inducted into Shaw Media’s Illinois Valley Sports Hall of Fame, you realize it’s not that hard at all.
Those Pirates typified the “root, hog, or die” spirit, something that Kerry Novak, left tackle on that team and son of coach Bill Novak, would attest. “We put in a lot of hard work,” he said. “There was a lot of speed and size in the backfield, and we had a pretty darn good coach and coaching staff. My dad had an amazing knack of getting everyone fired up and getting the best out of everybody. There were a lot of factors that came together and made for a nice, successful season.”
Things came together fairly quickly for Ottawa that season and never fell apart with the Pirates winning by an average of 41.1 points per game. Only Marquette – coached by another IV Sports Hall of Fame inductee this year in John Pocivasek – came within 20 points of Ottawa in 1966 – a 21-6 Pirates’ victory in the season finale. Marquette’s one touchdown was the only touchdown given up by the first-string defense that season. That was one of two victories that stand out, the other being a lopsided 48-0 win over rival La Salle-Peru in the third game of the season. That win meant a great deal to the Pirates, not only because it was a long-time rival but also because the Cavaliers gave Ottawa its only blemish the previous season – a tie. That tie was the only thing separating Ottawa from a win streak of 1965 through the middle of 1968.
“We had one Saturday practice in all the years I was at Ottawa High School, and it was the Saturday before the La Salle game,” said starting quarterback Bob Burns. “It was a game the coaches were looking forward to, and we certainly were looking forward to. … And that victory kind of set us up for the rest of the year.”
Burns gave a lot of credit to a tremendous coaching staff led not only by the great Novak, but also outstanding assistants. “The team believed in the coaches,” Burns said. “And that goes back to the expectations. We expected No. 1 that we would be prepared, both offensively and defensively, for the opponent. And we had confidence and, as you know, half of athletic performance is confidence.”
The coaches certainly were aided by some incredible weapons on both sides of the ball. The team had a bit of everything from the All-American quarterback who went on to play at the University of Illinois in Burns (1,567 yards passing, 19 TDs) to the sensational all-around athlete in Steve Sipula and the guy Burns called the best football player on the team in Jeff Hale (873 yards rushing and 14 touchdowns). It all added up to quite a compliment given by coach Novak to the Ottawa Daily Republican Times in 1966. “I have said this before and I will say it again,” Bill Novak said at the time, “This is the finest football team I have ever coached at Ottawa High School.”