Volume 2 – Issue No. 11

You could have an interesting debate trying to decide if the start of the Aurora Christian game was worse that the beginning of the Carthage-Illini West game a year ago. In Carthage, on the first play from scrimmage, their QB connected on a 71-yard scoring pass, just 13 seconds into the game. Friday night, on the first play from scrimmage, their QB took off on foot and scored from 85 yards away, with just 21 seconds off the clock.

In Carthage, we ran six plays before punting, and on the second offensive play for Carthage, they threw an 85-yard TD pass just 4:13 into the game. Friday, we fumbled the kickoff giving them a short field. In four plays they upped their point total to 12 with still more than ten minutes left in the quarter.

Our defense kicked in and after those 12 points in the first two minutes of the game, our guys allowed only one more score in the 46 minutes that followed, and that was early in the final quarter. According to my clipboard, the Eagles collected a total of 306 yards for the game, and 40% of those (123 yards) happened in the first 113 seconds of the game.

Once we got settled in, the Wildcat offense got its first possession on their own 30, and punted the ball to the Eagles. Four plays later, we got the ball back on downs after our D limited the QB to just 1 yard rushing on third and fourth downs. We took over at the Aurora 46, so in one exchange of possessions, we improved our field position by 24 yards. Three plays later, Ty Anderson found Garrett Saulters in the end zone from 36 yards away to close the gap to 7-12.

The Eagles sputtered with the next possession with the help of pass breakups by Ty Anderson and Zach Skoryi and then a sack-fumble on third down. We started at midfield, and 8 plays later Trae Berndt picked up his 4th field goal of 2010, from 30 yards out. Score: 10-12. The Eagles next drive was halted with a sack by Ty Kane and Jayson Conlin, and a fourth-down pass break-up by Will Jansen.

Just before the half, we moved the ball 77 yards on 9 plays including a 34-yard run by Brennan Bryan on a double-handoff, four Steve Liaromatis carries for 39 yards, and a one-yard punch-in by Ty Anderson. Halftime score: Good guys 16, Aurora Christian 12.

Each team had ten possessions Friday night, and the similarity in how they ended for the teams was striking. Each team punted three times, each team gave the ball over on downs twice, each team lost 1 fumble, each team had 1 interception, Aurora Christian had three TD’s while Wilmington had two TD’s and a field goal.

Anthony Maddie is a talented athlete, and he’s only a junior. We had been led to fear their passing attack, but it was Maddie’s legs, not his arm, that did us in. He picked up 163 yards, including two scores on the ground. The rest of his team collected just 9 yards on 8 carries.
Mr. Maddie didn’t have a bad night passing, but he certainly wasn’t spectacular. The quarterbacks for Manteno, Lisle and Coal City each had better passing yardage and stats against us than did Mr. Maddie.

Wildcat fans couldn’t help feel a taste of bile in their throat when they considered that Mr. Maddie was the QB for Joliet Catholic Academy in their loss to Montini in Champaign in the 5A Championship game a year ago. I don’t know if his family changed their residence since then or not. He and his family decided it would be better for him to play at Aurora Christian than to continue at JCA. I don’t have a problem with a family wanting what is best for their kids.

However, it worked about the same as a professional athlete asking to be traded or being placed on waivers. He’s just a junior now, so maybe next season, he’ll be under center for Montini. One of his favorite receiving targets Friday was a pass-catcher for Providence just a year ago.

I’m certain that some of my critics think I should take my pity-party elsewhere, but it truly isn’t fair. The 1.65 multiplier isn’t the answer. With the apparent mobility of athletes among the schools without boundaries, the only way to make it a fair playing field is for the public schools to have one tournament and the non-boundaried schools to have their own separate playoffs. The IHSA thinks the current system is fine, and so long as the current tournament structure generates tons of money for them, they won’t make changes.

Wilmington and the other public schools are going to have to bear down and get good enough to overcome the competitive disadvantages which the IHSA places in front of them. We almost beat Aurora Christian Friday. Stillman Valley may put an end to their tournament run Saturday.

The Eagles had the most impressive high school playing field I’ve seen, and their sound system was second to none. I’d like to nominate the press box announcer for Aurora Christian as the most irritating cheerleader in Illinois. They didn’t need real cheerleaders or a noisy crowd. He had electronic sounds at his fingertips for everything from a pep band, to applause to group cheers, none of which were really occurring. The Joliet paper made reference to “their raucous crowd”. He couldn’t tell canned noise and cheering from the real thing.

He kept making announcements about a silent auction which was a benefit for some worthy cause. [Those were not irritating.] If one of the auction items had been to silence him and his cheerleading (except for describing the game action) for just fifteen minutes, I bet we could have raised a ton of money for that charity!

Another senior class has played their final game for WHS, and they should be proud of being 10-1 this season. Think back to the group of seniors who played their final game in Carthage. They were also a great group – [in jersey number order] Cort Scheel (now playing at Dubuque), Robert Michelkamp, Ben Storbeck, Colin Webb (now playing at Washington U), Justin Gruca (now playing at Augustana), Ervin Myles, Zach McWilliams, Richard Heintz, Matt Saulters, Kyle Adermann(now red-shirting at SFU), Jake Hazelton (playing for Millikin), Brandon Norris, Bob O’Brien and Andy Crutchfield (playing BB at Illinois Benedictine). We all worried that we’d never replace a group like that – yet we did.

We had a core of carryovers from last year around which to mold the 2010 team – Jeremy Bailey, Ty Anderson, Steve Liaromatis, Garrett Saulters, Blake Olson, Ty Farmer, Mike Popovich, Ian Issert, Bobby Warren and more. We have a similar carryover to next year including people like Trae Berndt, Trent Howard, Zach Skoryi, Jayson Conlin, Nick Anderson, Brennan Bryan, Will Jansen, Al Peterson, Kyle Bardel, Max Lyday, Michael Soda, Sean Liaromatis and an undefeated fresh-soph squad.

That’s the way the program works around here. We experience huge graduation losses every year, but the team our coaches send out onto the field in August doesn’t seem to vary much. Over the past nine seasons, our record is 89 wins and 17 losses. The average is 9.9 wins and 1.9 losses. There are very few schools anywhere that wouldn’t love to trade us numbers.

Before you know it, we’ll be sitting in the stands watching the Wildcats warm up against Manteno
on Becker Field. It’s just 41 weeks from this coming Friday! See you there!
Bill Francis

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