It was a smorgasbord of basketball for me the past weekend with two girls games sandwiched around the boys championship game of the Little Ten conference. To cap it off, a trip was made to Steward on Monday to watch grade school girls.
My only regret was missing Oregon’s first regional title since 2008 in wrestling. We’ll catch up with them at the sectional this weekend at the Blackhawk Center.
It was a glorious finish to the Big Northern girls basketball season with Byron, Dixon and Stillman Valley all sharing the league title with identical 8-1 records. All finished the year state ranked and worthy of the honor of being at the top of the BNC.
Bottom line – Byron and Stillman Valley are as good in 2A as what can possibly be found a few scant miles apart. That proximity helped contribute to a jam-packed gym in Byron for last Thursday’s game between the two. It was more crowded for that game than the Byron-Pec boys game the week before.
I remember in 2017 watching the highly-regarded Lombard Montini girls come to Byron for what turned out to be a very close game in which the underdog Tigers almost pulled off the upset. That game had a similar vibe and crowd size. FYI – the Tigers went on to win a state title, destroying every team in its wake.
It was a good crowd at Stillman Valley for the Dixon game, but nowhere near the intensity found between Byron and Stillman. What was similar at both places were low scoring, four-point differentials and tenacity on defense. It didn’t matter if you were Taylor Davidson or Macy Groharing. Everyone had to grind for points.
Walking to the parking lot after the Dixon game, I struck up a conversation with one of the Stillman fans and learned he was there to watch his granddaughter play. To me, that is special.
First, not everyone has grandchildren. Secondly, though we still love them, sometimes the grandkids don’t turn out the way we hoped. Finally, it’s a rare occurrence that your grandchildren happen to be on a team with a real shot to make it downstate.
A few years ago, I never would have given this much thought. But, as someone with granddaughters playing sports now, my perspective has suddenly changed.
To all the moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents and siblings of Byron and Stillman players, enjoy this ride to the post season and be thankful for the journey more than the final destination, because unfortunately, one team won’t be going any further than the sectional.
On to Somonauk, site of the oldest-running basketball tournament in the state of Illinois at 106 years – the Little 10 conference tourney. That’s 106 straight years.
As someone who appreciates small town Americana, that seemed the place for me to be on Friday night, though I didn’t have any rooting interest in title game contestants Shabbona-Waterman and Hinckley-Big Rock.
Like the Byron-SV girls game, it was a packed gym. A sign on the wall indicated capacity of 1,226. It wasn’t just fans from Shabbona/Waterman and HBR, but fans from all over the conference in attendance.
These little towns like Leland, Newark, Serena and Earlville know and support each other. There were three games played at Somonauk that night and I learned that each head coach from those schools all played in the championship game of the Little Ten tournament.
It’s family down there in the farmland between south of DeKalb. With conferences all over Illinois in a state of flux, it neat to see the Little Ten still holding their own over a 100 years later.
I’m glad I made the 60-mile trip because once I arrived, I felt like I had over 1,000 mutual friends. Besides, it wasn’t too far from Hinckley, where the Harlem Globetrotters played their very first game in 1927, seven years after the Little Ten was formed.
Another tidbit from Hinckley-Big Rock is that former boys coach, Bob Barnett of Oregon fame, has taken on coaching the girls this year. Barnett led the Hawks to the super-sectional in 1979, the furthest Oregon ever went in the post season.
My final jaunt was this past Monday to watch Kings and Steward girls play basketball. These grade schools feed into Rochelle Township High School and a part of a long-standing conference (Meridian) with other feeder schools like Creston, Eswood and St. Paul Lutheran School.
Having never seen a game played in the Meridian conference, I had to do it at least once before I died to satisfy my curiosity of what these rural grade school games are like.
Another reason for going was for my mom and I see family friend Don Romes coach his great granddaughter, something rarely ever done. Don was coaching football and basketball at Rochelle when I was there in the 1970s and is still going at it at age 86.
In fact, his first coaching gig out of college was in 1960 at Belle Plaine, Iowa and has been at many other schools in Iowa and Illinois since then. Tell me one other person with that kind of longevity.
It was another familiar face leading the Kings Comets in Jason Hickman, a former basketball player at Oregon. Romes had Steward clicking like on all cylinders and overwhelmed the visitors.
None-the-less, it was a joyful experience for both winning and losing teams and isn’t that how it should be?
Andy Colbert is a longtime Ogle County resident with years of experience covering sports and more for multiple area publications.
