Colt Nero returns ‘home’ as McHenry’s new football coach

Home from college and working at the local Home Depot, Colt Nero, who last week was named McHenry head football coach, was about to find a new home in the summer of 2017.

Wings and Rings sports bar in Crystal Lake also was a part-time home for the recent Minnesota State University Mankato graduate.

“I was just serving [at Wings and Rings], trying to make extra money,” Nero said.

Then one day, then-McHenry athletic director Barry Burmeister and his recently named assistant AD Rob Niemic popped in for a bite at Wings and Rings. Niemic, a Crystal Lake South graduate, recognized Nero, who had starred as a defensive end for South’s Gators only a few years earlier (Class of 2012), before playing five seasons at Minnesota State and helping the Mavericks reach the 2014 NCAA Division II national championship game.

“I was like, ‘Barry, I know this kid. He was a pretty good player at South’ ” Niemic said. “I remembered him because you know kids from South if you went to South.”

Small talk among the three men included football and Niemic asking Nero about his post-college professional plans. When Nero mentioned he graduated with a degree in special education and wanted to be a special education teacher, which are always in demand, Niemic said he and Burmeister chuckled. They contacted McHenry principal Marsha Potthoff, who was Nero’s principal at South. Then, almost faster than Nero could sack a quarterback, Nero was on staff at McHenry.

Goodbye, Home Depot. Goodbye, Wings and Rings.

“It was just a whirlwind after a chance encounter,” Niemic said.

Nero was brought in as a special ed teacher and an assistant football coach under head coach Nat Zunkel, serving as frosh/soph coach, then was promoted to defensive coordinator the following season. Nero said he left McHenry on good terms after three years to take the head coaching job at Stagg High School in Palos Hills in summer 2020.

Now he’s back home.

He returned to McHenry last fall, coaching on the frosh/soph level under varsity head coach Jeff Schroeder. Nero emerged as an obvious candidate to replace Schroeder when McHenry decided to make a change after the season.

“I’m motivated, I’m fired up and ready to roll, man,” the 6-foot-3, 230-pound Nero, 30, said last week after meeting with McHenry’s football players in the Upper Campus cafeteria. “I’m excited to be back in this area. I had like 280 text messages last night, so the support’s been awesome. I’m not a big attention guy, but I’m ready to start doing the stuff that I enjoy doing.”

McHenry’s football program could use some positive attention. Nero is the fifth head coach since 2017 for the Warriors, who have not had a winning season since 2016. They count only 18 wins in the past eight seasons.

While Nero went only 5-28 in four seasons at Stagg, which plays in the rugged SouthWest Suburban Conference, the experience was positive for him. Nero’s Chargers snapped a 23-game losing streak when they opened the 2022 season with a win over Reavis, and he was named a Chicago Bears coach of the week in 2023.

He was only 24 when he was hired at Stagg.

“It was a make-or-break [opportunity] for me, where it was like if this doesn’t work out I’m probably not going to get another opportunity [to be a head coach],” Nero said. “I bet on myself. ... That experience was the best thing I ever could have done for myself. It was really hard to leave [McHenry].”

When the opportunity to come back to the area presented itself last year, he couldn’t resist.

“I left [Stagg] because I did what I needed to do there,” Nero said. “My family’s in the area, my friends are in the area, my girlfriend’s in the area, and it was just a good time for me to transition back this way.”

Schroeder took Woodstock North to the playoffs five times in 13 seasons but lasted only two seasons at McHenry, which went 2-7 in 2024. He ran a triple-option offense at both schools. At Stagg, Nero ran a variety of offenses, including a spread for two years. The Chargers ran the ball more his last two seasons.

“I truly believe you don’t win games with scheme,” Nero said. “Your scheme has to be OK, but you have to be able to run a good scheme, and you have to make sure that the players who are running the scheme fit the scheme.

“We’re definitely going to change things up. We’re not going to run a triple option. But the priority and the focus before the scheme part is, ‘How do we develop these guys as much as possible in the offseason, so that when the fall comes around, we can take the next step?’ ”

Nero, who’s in the process of hiring a staff, has called plays on both sides of the ball. He’s not just a defensive guy because he played D-end.

“Defensively, we have a senior-heavy team, so we’re not going to just scrap everything we’ve done in the past,” he said. “It’s offensively, too. The hardest part about this is that these seniors (Class of 2026) are on their third head coach in four years. So it’s not fair to them to say, ‘Hey, here’s your third different scheme in four years. Try to figure this out.‘ ”

Not all paths, Nero knows, are simple.