September 2010 Archives

Mention the name "Thornridge" and some pleasant memories immediately come to mind.

1972.

Thornridge's boys basketball team.

Coach Ron Ferguson.

Quinn Buckner, Boyd Batts, Mike Bonczyk, Greg Rose, Ernie Dunn.

The best team in the history of Illinois high school basketball.

In his 16 years as head basketball coach at De La Salle, Tom White never has experienced anything like this. Ten to 15 college coaches visit every day. He recently had 400 messages on his cell phone. His tiny office is filled with mail from every college he ever heard of and some he hasn't.

"A lot of people want to be friends of our program," White said. "It's a busy time. I can't keep up with it. Nobody cared when we practiced before. Now coaches come every day."

That's what the presence of four Division I recruits can do for a program. Seniors Mike Shaw and Dre Henley and sophomores Alex Foster and Jaylon Tate are being recruited by colleges from coast to coast, from Boise State to West Virginia, from the Big 10 to the Big East.

Mention Barrington's football program and you don't automatically make comparisons to traditional state powers such as Mount Carmel, Wheaton Warrenville South, Joliet Catholic, East St. Louis, St. Rita, Providence, Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin or Metamora.

But coach Joe Sanchez has sent more players to Division I colleges in the last eight years than anyone else in the country.

"That statistic caught me by surprise," Sanchez admitted. "In going through the last eight years, we have been pretty fortunate, sending 28 kids to Division I schools. Part of it is luck, having great kids. One thing we do as a coaching staff is take great pride in helping our kids, to help them to be seen, giving them exposure."

(Note: My fourth book, "Dusty, Deek, and Mr. Do-Right: High School Football In Illinois," published by University of Illinois Press, is currently available online through University of Illinois Press, Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon and at your local bookstore. To my knowledge, it is the first book ever written on the subject. So I wanted to cover everything> I wrote 150,000 words. The publisher wanted closer to 100,000. So, regrettably, I had to delete several stories from the final manuscript. Beginning a few weeks ago and continuing for the next several weeks, I will print those stories here. I hope you enjoy them--and the book, too.)

Bob Frisk, the retired assistant managing editor/sports at the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, has been covering high school sports in the northwest suburbs for 50 years. He loves being around high school kids. He has no interest in professional sports.

Bob Gibbons and Van Coleman are the most experienced and, in my view, the most authoritative and objective of the nation's basketball recruiting analysts. And God knows there are dozens of them from coast to coast. But only Gibbons and Coleman have been evaluating players since the 1970s, since before gyms became air-conditioned.

So it is interesting to note that, as we are deluged with post-summer evaluations, Gibbons and Coleman have agreed to disagree on who is the No. 1 player in the class of 2011. Gibbons' choice is guard Austin Rivers of Winter Park, Fla., the son of former Proviso East, Marquette and NBA player and Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers, while Coleman has elevated 6-10 Anthony Davis of Chicago Perspectives to the top spot.

Davis is the first Illinois product to earn the No. 1 ranking since Farragut's Kevin Garnett in 1994. But nobody has ever risen to the top spot as fast as Davis, who was a virtual unknown last April.

David Ribbens has been an educator at the high school and college levels for 32 years, including 23 years at Trinity Christian College and the last eight years as athletic director at University of Chicago High School. So even though his school doesn't field a football team, he is qualified to discuss the controversial subject of the multiplier.

After months of research, Ribbens is convinced the Illinois High School Association's decision in 2005 to apply a 1.65 enrollment multiplier to all non-boundaried member schools simply doesn't add up. He believes it is fundamentally unfair and he is proposing a change in the IHSA by-laws to eliminate the mutiplier "because the concept of placing a higher value of one student over another student is fundamentally wrong."

Ribbens has gotten the IHSA's attention.

(Note: My fourth book, "Dusty, Deek, and Mr. Do-Right: High School Football In Illinois," published by University of Illinois Press, is currently available online through University of Illinois Press, Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon and at your local bookstore. To my knowledge, it is the first book ever written on the subject. So I wanted to cover everything. I wrote 150,000 words. The publisher wanted closer to 100,000. So, regrettably, I had to delete several stories from the final product. Beginning two weeks ago and continuing in the next several weeks, I will print those stories. I hope you enjoy them---and the book, too.)

Kelvin Hayden was playing in a junior college championship game in Georgia and someone asked him where he was from. Chicago, he said. "Chicago?" Do they play football in Chicago?" the inquisitive person responded. Hayden wasn't surprised. After all, Chicago is supposed to be a basketball town. Elton Harris wants to change that image.

I've changed my mind. I used to think that national television and high school sports weren't compatible, that 17-year-olds aren't mature enough to handle the pressure of the bright lights. But it has become increasingly clear that the exposure is a positive learning experience, win or lose.

For Wheaton Warrenville South, it's mostly about winning.

Coach Ron Muhitch's Tigers did Illinois proud last Friday, giving a clinic on how to play all three phases of the game--offensive, defense, special teams--while overwhelming Maine South 44-7 in front of ESPNU's cameras in Wheaton.

And quarterback Reilly O'Toole emerged as a Hollywood star.

For old-time football fans and historians who take the game and its traditions more seriously than many others, here are lists of the most successful coaches, players and teams in Illinois history:

I wonder how many trivia fans are aware that East St. Louis' Wirt Downing is the winningest coach in state history. He was the pioneer of a program that has won more games than any other in the state and has become one of the winningest in the country under the leadership of Downing, Fred Cameron, Bob Shannon and Darren Sunkett.

The winningest team of the decades? I'll bet many fans would have bet on Mount Carmel in the 1990s or Wheaton Warrenville South in the 1990s or Maine South in the 2000s. But they aren't even close to the top of the list. The leader is Ottawa in the 1960s.