Illinois Valley Central has found its new football head coach.
Cameron Bailliez was approved Thursday, April 30 to take over the Chillicothe-based football program. The 2016 Pekin grad, who was also hired as an IVC science teacher, comes to IVC after three seasons as the defensive coordinator at Middle Creek HS in North Carolina.
Bailliez will be tasked to fill the hole left by Tim Heinz. He retired in November as IVC’s all-time winningest coach with 99 victories, 10 appearances in the Class 4A playoffs and three conference championships. His 2005 team was the first in school history to make the Illinois High School Association playoffs.
“As soon as I saw in the Journal Star that he (retired),” Bailliez told the Journal Star, “I was like, ‘Alright, I’m going to apply for this (job).’ … I applied in December for the coaching part, but they hadn’t gotten their teacher allotments until about March.
“About that time, they reached back out. I talked to them right before spring break, then we formally interviewed afterwards. It’s always been on my radar, just a timely process.”
This is Bailliez’s first head coaching job following a one-year volunteer stint with Mahomet-Seymour in 2019, then three seasons with Erwin Triton HS in North Carolina as defensive coordinator. His final stop before returning to Illinois came at Middle Creek, which played for the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Class 6A state championship last December.
When Bailliez got his feet wet coaching, he worked under current Mahomet-Seymour coach Jon Adkins and longtime assistant Henry Turek in their first season there. The coaching pair provided plenty of mentorship to Bailliez, who decided to change career paths from being a molecular biologist to a teacher and coach.
“They really had a big impact on me that first year,” Bailliez said. “That was a really good situation to step in. … I kind of got to see, ‘Hey, what’s it like to be a (veteran coach)? What’s it like to be a person in a new place?’
“You can’t make all these changes right away. It’s kind of a process of how you want it to be done.”
Grey Ghost fans will get to see Bailliez use a multiplicity approach on defense — utilizing the same personnel across multiple formations, while establishing the run on offense.
“You see so many styles of offense in high school football,” he said. “… The big thing is we have 11 tacklers on the field at all times.”
IVC went 2-7 overall and 1-7 in the Illini Prairie Conference, ending its 2025 campaign with a 30-27 win over Rantoul in Week 9. The Illini Prairie boasted four playoff teams last season with Tolono Unity playing for a state title and St. Joseph-Odgen making the state semifinals.
And that fact isn’t lost on Bailliez.
“The top of that conference is tough,” he said. “I hope to compete with them early. … We can’t make excuses for it. We just got to tough it out.
“I’m excited for it though. It’s not like I can just come in, recruit a bunch of kids out of the hallways and win games right away. It’s going to be a battle.”
Now, the calendar has turned to May, so Bailliez has just under three months to get things rolling. IVC opens its 2026 season at Monticello on Friday, Aug. 21. That comes 16 days after practice opens on Aug. 5.
“It does feel late,” he said, “but at the same time, I’ve been prepping for this for a long time. … I knew there was a good chance early on I could get this IVC job, so I had been envisioning this for a long time and I kind of have a lot of things laid out.”
Adam Duvall is a Journal Star sports reporter. Email him at aduvall@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @AdamDuvall.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: IVC football turns to Pekin grad to take over as head coach
Reporting by Adam Duvall, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
