By Steve Sears

For Wayne Valley High School Indians head football coach, Roger Kotlarz, there was no Gatorade shower after his milestone 100th win as a head football coach.

He didn’t mind, however. A bucket of water sufficed.

“Luckily, I got a water shower, which is much more pleasant than the Gatorade,” Kotlarz says with a chuckle. “Gatorade, it’s nice for that moment, but a few minutes after that moment, you say to yourself, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sticky.’ So I greatly appreciated the fact – and I don’t know if it was on purpose – that it was just water, which was better.”

As of this mid October writing, the Indians were undefeated at 8 – 0, and not only had Kotlarz secured his 100th head coaching win with a 34 – 0 triumph over West Milford on Friday, September 30, but he and his Indians visited the Nutley, New Jersey Oval two weeks later and defeated the always competitive and tough Maroon Raiders, 35 – 0, that win the 400th in the history of the Wayne Valley football program. Also, in the process, the team won the SFC Patriot White Division title, the team’s first conference championship since 2008.

Five of the Indians wins have this year been by rout, two were a shutout, and the Indians had outscored their opponents, 32 – 9. Obvious nice things were happening in the Wayne Valley varsity football ball yard, and next up were the Mount Olive Marauders, the only obstacle to a perfect 9 – 0 regular season.

Kotlarz is no stranger to winnings seasons and success. His first head coaching stint was with Rutherford’s Henry P. Becton Regional High School, where the Wildcats were 36 – 15 during his five seasons, which included four trips to the state playoffs. He followed that with two seasons at the helm of the Dover High School Tigers, whom he led to 12 wins and a playoff berth in two seasons.

With the Indians, there have in his eight seasons been a few nine-win campaigns, and an 11 -2 record and a NJSIAA North, Group 4 Regional championship win, 21 – 17, over Northern Highlands. “The kids have played really well,” Kotlarz says of his 2022 team. “We kind of felt going into the season that we had a lot to prove after a tough go last year, but we had a ton of experience coming back. We felt that we could be a very strong team, that we had a good competitive team, and that we could be very successful.”

When asked if he sees a similar makeup in his 2019 team and his current one, Kotlarz says the two are related in certain aspects. “Without question. I don’t know if we necessarily are built exactly the same from a physical skill and physical traits type of way, but certainly the intangibles – I’m starting to certainly see some of those things, and have throughout the season, and then even some of the physical components. Some of the things that make us successful are similar to the things that made us successful in 2019, so there’s definitely a decent amount of parallels. Time will still tell just how similar our road will be. It’s still a work in progress, so to speak.”

As Kotlarz and the Indians were heading into the homestretch of their season, they tried not to peek too far ahead. Yes, they eyed the standings, but it was still business as usual in terms of preparation. “We put our focus on just going 1 and 0 for the week,” Kotlarz says. “That’s been a recipe that we’ve used for a long time, and the biggest challenge is sometimes keeping the kids focused on that. It’s ‘Don’t worry about next week, let’s just worry about this week, and even more than that, just worry about today. Today is practice, and what we can do to improve and get more prepared.’ We’ve done a good job with that, our kids have bought into that, and this season, probably even more than other seasons, we really have talked to our kids about ‘us.’ Let’s focus on ‘us’ and the things that we can do better.”