A big weekend of high school sports coming up with the IHSA football championships and boys holiday basketball tournaments.
Like the girls last week, it will be chance to see how the boys roundballers match up. Sure, they play summer games, but that isn’t quite as structured as an actual high school schedule.
Since football is in its 14th week, there shouldn’t be too many surprises. It many cases, it is the same old suspects making title game appearances.
Other than national power East St. Louis likely winning 6A, it is possible the remaining seven classes could be won be private schools, including Belleville Althoff in 1A.
That is whom Lena-Winslow will face in its fourth straight championship game appearance. Going against a team that some are calling the best ever seen in 1A, this will be the Le-Win’s most difficult playoff game ever.
Althoff’s top running back Dierre Hill rushed for 319 yards in a 58-19 victory over a very good Camp Point Central, the same team that beat L-W last year.
How good is Hill? He received a scholarship from the top team in college football, No. 1-ranked Oregon. Two more players from Althoff have D-I offers, besides plenty of other talent.
If anyone can give 13-0 Althoff a game, it would be Le-Win, who have romped over everyone this year. If Le-Win can pull off the upset, this will catapult them to an even higher level of the stratosphere in small-school grid prominence.
It was back-to-back titles for Amboy in eight-man football, with a convincing win over Milledgeville. Almost as impressive was over 2,000 fans tuned into the video stream of the game.
A large crowd was also present at Monmouth College, with the NUIC proudly on display. Officials from the eight-man association continue to do the right thing by offering the championship Friday night.
It may be colder than a Saturday afternoon contest, but it draws a lot more attention statewide when nobody else in the IHSA is playing during that time frame.
Some naysayers continue to knock Amboy for not playing 11-man ball. I wholeheartedly disagree.
To keep eight-man competitive, more teams like Amboy are needed. What it not needed is 50-0 blowouts, so many of which are already occurring.
As long as Amboy and other prospective candidates meet the I8FA enrollment criteria, bring them on. Also, the more teams that get involved, the less travel.
On the volleyball front, kudos to the NUIC with Stockton placing second in the 1A state tournament. In 18 years of the four-class system, the conference has made the final four at state 14 times, including last year’s title by Galena. Record wise, this was another tremendous season with eight league teams with 24 or more wins.
Jaiden Schneiderman of Forreston also distinguished herself by finishing as No. 10 all-time in the state with 1,655 kills. That is not just 1A, but all four classes. In 2018, Katie Erdmann had 567 kills to stand at No. 16 all time.
Matt Trowbridge of the Rockford Register Star, the top sports writer in this area, had an interesting article about the competitive imbalance in the NIC-10 conference. In it, he mentions how the Rockford public schools (Guilford, Auburn, East, Jefferson) and lower enrollment Belvidere and Freeport are having problems fielding teams.
With an average enrollment of 1,500, there was a time when all the schools had freshmen, jayvee and varsity teams, with roster cuts not being uncommon. That has all changed, with kids choosing not to go out for sports as much.
There has become such a culture of losing that prospective athletes opt of out participating and the outlook remains bleak. Two sports that the RPS do well in are basketball and soccer, both of which do not require much in the way of equipment, mainly just a ball.
They are also a draw for minority students, unlike others that don’t have the same pull.
Bear in mind, the NIC-10 has been one of the most stable conferences in the state for decades and its members have a big plus of limited travel, with Belvidere to Freeport the longest distance at 42 miles.
None-the-less, Rockford has changed over the decades, with 75 percent of its public students low-income. That’s makes a difference in how competitive a school can be. Some states have even begun to consider basing their classifications for state tournaments on this criteria rather than actual enrollment.
Trowbridge cites a 104-1 record Boylan, Harlem and Hononegah had in football against the other school several years ago.
Since then, Belvidere North, which became a school in 2007, has made inroads. However, that came at the expense of Belvidere, who have been floundering with low participation numbers since then. The reason North was started was because of population growth that was occurring all over 20 years ago.
The NIC-10 has experimented with coops in some sports, but bussing low-income kids to practices/games and getting them home is more difficult than what it is experienced in area rural school districts.
Andy Colbert is a longtime Ogle County resident with years of experience covering sports and more for multiple area publications.
