It means autumn sports are done. It means we now have a basketball tab to put out. A four-month stretch of cold, dark highways, brightly lit gymnasiums, irritating scoreboard buzzers and hospitality-room dinners now awaits me. I hope some surprising stories, thrilling games and some honest excitement are also coming my way. But I won’t know until we all turn the page.

Before we do, let me put a cap on our 2007 fall sports season with this hastily conceived, off-the-cuff summation of what we learned from August to November.

JACKSONVILLE HIGH FOOTBALL

In the end, this year’s football Crimsons did pretty much what I expected them to do. I thought back in August they could go 6-3 at best, and they were an overtime touchdown away from doing it.

I consider it head coach Mark Grounds’ most resourceful coaching performance. He installed a new spread offense which, I believe, wrung two more victories out of a young team consisting of 3-6 talent. The defense was atrocious. The running game, inconsistent. But Grounds shifted the weight onto two known playmakers (QB Blake Schnitker and LB/FB Jacob Mills) and along the way, found a couple more in WR/RB Kendall Phelps and WR Bryce Heaton. All of these guys, and a good number of others, will return next year. If the defense performs better, the Crimsons will easily be at least a 7-2 team in 2008.

ILLINOIS COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Considering the dizzyingly high expectations engendered by the most talented, most experienced group of returning players the hilltop has had in many years, the Blueboys’ 4-6 finish can only be considered a huge bust. Right?

Well, not so fast.

IC lost fourth-year starting quarterback Pete Jennings for good at midseason, lost HIS backup Mitch Niekamp two weeks later, and spent most of the fall trying to find a go-to running back to complement a stout offensive line and the Midwest Conference’s best corps of wide receivers. Injuries on defense, especially to firebrand linebacker Ricky Padilla, didn’t help, either, and the Blueboys went into a swoon in the middle portion of their schedule.

But give head coach Aaron Keen credit. Recent IC squads have absolutely tanked at the end of the season against MWC heavyweights Monmouth and St. Norbert. Not this team. The Blueboys lost both games, but despite all their injuries, took the Fighting Scots into overtime at Monmouth in a 26-23 loss; and nearly whipped playoff-bound St. Norbert 31-24 in their season finale at England Field.

It suggests that Keen has finally instilled some good old-fashioned grit into a program that has tried to overwhelm foes with its talented passing attack the past few years. There’s a lot of talent and experience graduating off this team, but IC can build next year upon the character of toughness it ended this season with.

THE WEAKENING WIVC

Face it, fans. The Western Illinois Valley Conference just isn’t what it used to be. This year’s Class 1A playoffs proved it. The league’s two undefeated teams, Routt (the North champion) and Greenfield-Northwestern (South champs) struggled in opening-round wins against middling squads from the Prairie State Conference, and both got taken out by an Arcola team that finished its regular season at 7-2, and had not even played a team with a better record than 7-2. Triopia lost only to Routt (22-20) in the regular season, but got flattened by Tuscola, 62-8, in this year’s second round. As recently as five years ago, the WIVC was still being referred to as one of the state’s toughest small-school football leagues. Right now, it looks like one of the weakest.

THE RISING WIVC

But then there’s volleyball, and this is where the WIVC is beginning to establish itself, as Routt, Greenfield and A-C Central/Virginia are now routinely putting strong teams on the floor. In the newfangled four-class system, both Routt and Greenfield reached the Class 1A Elite Eight this year, and both pushed traditional powerhouses through three games before bowing out.

Mount Pulaski, which needed three games to get past Routt on Monday, won the Class 1A state title, defeating both Deer Creek-Mackinaw and Rockford Keith School in two-game matches. Albion Edwards County needed a late push in game three to overcome Greenfield on Monday, but finished third in 1A.

THE REST

A final congratulations goes out to Jacksonville High cross country runners Sam Lee and Tyson Kinsley for reaching the state meet in Peoria. In a year when JHS volleyball bottomed out, when soccer merely whelmed instead of overwhelming us, and the golf team, despite a strong regular season, came up way short at its annual Central State Eight meet, Jacksonville’s boys’ cross country team picked up the slack and came very close to qualifying its entire squad for state.

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“Please have mercy on our young Crimsons this week.” — a JHS fan.

This is sad, folks. I don’t know which is more odious: The SHG fans who deem Jacksonville High football their whipping boy, to take out the Cyclones’ frustrations after having a long winning streak snapped … or the JHS fan, meekly simpering up to the SHG crowd on the SHG Web site.

Oh, Crimson fans. Are ye not men too?

Yeah, yeah. SHG lost a game. Somebody has to pay for that. Whatever. I’ve no doubt that head coach Ken Leonard will have his boys prepared, hungry and focused this week. Not because SHG lost, but because he ALWAYS has them prepared, hungry and focused. That’s the stuff back-to-back state titles are made of.

Do you know what state titles AREN’T made of? “Oh, please have mercy on us …”

There’s a too-easy perception in high school sports that the fans speak for the players and coaches. It’s not true. Fans — and, OK, the media too — have the luxury of saying whatever they want, because they don’t have to get in the arena and fight for it. Nobody on the SHG football team is going to take Jacksonville lightly until victory is at hand. Nobody on the JHS squad or coaching staff is going to ask the Cyclones to “go easy” on them. In fact, they’d probably be mad as hell if anyone else did, on their behalf.

Three weeks ago, I ate lunch with a few of the Crimsons’ team leaders and we talked about the possibility that SHG could be 0-1 when the two teams play in Week Two. Do you know what the JHS players said? They hoped the Cyclones would beat Lombard Montini, not because they were worried about incurring SHG’s wrath, but because the Crimsons wanted the opportunity themselves to break the Cyclones’ long winning streaks, which stopped at 28 overall and 46 in the regular season.

As for that other comment, “I wouldn’t want to be Jacksonville right now,” that’s just fan talk, missing the whole point. I cannot speak for all the Crimson football players, but I know that head coach Mark Grounds LOVES to play SHG. Win or lose, Grounds counts on the SHG game to sharpen and toughen up his players. The earlier, the better.

He says it every year, “Whether we win or lose, we feel like we are a better football team after playing SHG than we were before playing them.”

One more thing: Jacksonville football doesn’t plan on losing to SHG, unless the Cyclones themselves impose that on the Crimsons. It’s called competition. SHG might be the class of the CS8, but JHS would like to be considered one of the programs in the league that makes sure the Cyclones keep earning that distinction.

It doesn’t come with the uniform.

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The quiet before the storm, that is.

As I said, it is Tuesday. This is the last uneventful Tuesday I’ll get to enjoy for a while. On Friday, the Crimsons will kick off their 2007 football campaign against Jerseyville. Earlier that day, the JHS soccer squad will travel to Charleston for its annual season-opening tournament. Then next week, local sports will be at full gallop: volleyball, cross country and girls’ swimming will get going. Soccer and football will not only keep going, they’ll speed up.

Illinois College will kick off its gridiron season a week from Saturday at Millikin. That’s an afternoon game in Decatur. That same evening, Jacksonville High will battle Sacred Heart-Griffin in Springfield. Yeah, I plan to see and write about both games. I drink Red Bull. I am hardcore.

You didn’t ask, but my summer’s been great. I got my butt in shape (more on that some other time), took many days of vacation and, for the most part, steered well clear of deadlines. Meanwhile, we all got pretty ambitous around here about the sports seasons to come.

If you haven’t heard yet, something truly eventful is going to happen this Friday. Sure, the release of the annual football tab is big, but there’s more: We’ll be launching a new Web site totally dedicated to local sports: MyJournalCourierVarsity. I’ll leave it to our sports editor to tell you all more about it, when he’s ready, but I can tell you this: It is intended to bring readers and fans even closer to the sports, athletes and coaches we follow. We hope that’s a good thing.

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Apparently, it’s going fine.

Just fine — if you’re talking about the important stuff, like participation in the weight room and in seven-on-seven scrimmages. What I hoped to hear — but didn’t hear — was head coach Mark Grounds, or any of his assistants, really talking up a kid or two. Every year at this time, there’s at least one potential difference-maker that the staff is excited about. But this year, all I got was …

“Our kids have the best kind of ability, which is dependability,” said Grounds.

That’s great. Can we depend on them to win six or seven games this year? To beat Springfield High? To hold onto the ball?

Of course, Grounds hopes so, as much as we all do.

I want to emphasize that I don’t think the Crimsons lack confidence. I do think that they’re keeping it to themselves, though. It reminds me of the summer of 2003, when Grounds and his staff hardly made a peep in the offseason. Two years before, they’d started off 3-1 but finished 4-5, narrowly missing the playoffs, then spent all of the next offseason practically guaranteeing they’d complete their “unfinished business” in 2002. But by the middle of that campaign, the Crimsons were 0-4, dealing with a spate of injuries, and had replaced their senior quarterback with a promising sophomore. They missed the playoffs, but won three of their last four games.

Kind of sounds like more recent history, doesn’t it?

Like 2003, this year’s Crimsons will come into the season expecting more from themselves than anyone expects of them. Like 2003, this team will be junior-dominated. And, I have a hunch that coach Grounds is getting back to the style of football that launched JHS to success that year — that bruising, physical personality that so characterized the 2003 squad, embodied best by the running and tackling of then-senior Brent McAdams.

I don’t think we’re going to see much of the wing-T this year. I really don’t. Running backs Jacob Mills (a junior) and Martez Turner (a senior) are back this year, which means you can stop dreaming about 60-yard touchdown runs right now. Grounds wants to get back to making opposing defenses feel every yard of his team’s march down the field.

“We’ve always been more powerful than fast,” says Grounds, though he insists that Tez Turner, for all his girth and bulk, can run a 4.8-second 40-yard dash.

Other strengths the Crimsons already know they have, as camp gets under way, are at quarterback, where junior Blake Schnitker is the undisputed starter after a strong second half in 2006.

“He’s going to be a very dependable quarterback for us,” said Grounds, referring to Schnitker’s relative cool under pressure, good decision-making and accurate passing, assuming he’ll have somebody to throw to this season.

JHS is also strong defensively, particularly at linebacker, where Mills and senior Todd Linear will line up. There’s also just enough experience coming back in the secondary, in Quinton Leetham, Braxton Stewart, J.T. Rowe and Zach Meyer. Unfortunately, the Crimsons are currently unsettled on the defensive line.

With the exception of returning senior Darren Hoots, Jacksonville’s got a lot of holes to fill on the offensive line, too, though there’s no shortage of large young men to try out in the trenches. Grounds would like to be more sure of his linemen, but the IHSA changed some of its rules regarding summer football participation, so the Crimsons didn’t get to test their line play against actual foes at their annual team camp at McKendree College.

In other words, the offensive linemen (whoever they’ll be) won’t see their first real action together until week one, against Jerseyville.

So, anyway, this is how much I know about JHS football right now. In the coming weeks, I’m going to find out a lot more. That’s my job. Whenever I know something, or have a new opinion about the team, you’ll either see it in our sports section, or here at my blog.

Post from: World Wide Webster

If your team is the Jacksonville Crimsons, a whole lot of NOTHING is what happens. Things have been too quiet around the JHS football program this offseason. Where once there was buzz, there’s now silence.

But if you listen closely — very closely — you can hear the indignation and old pride beginning to stir itself up, just in time for helmets and pads.

“We’re an afterthought,” said JHS head coach Mark Grounds last week, when I called him to ask what’s up. “Everybody has put us down as an afterthought, and that’s fine with us.”

I hardly believe it’s FINE with the Crimsons to log on at various Web sites and see that nobody is talking about them. But I know that Grounds will use this to his team’s advantage. The silent treatment Jacksonville’s been getting at sites like Illinois High School Sports (.com), KHQA and even the de-facto Central State Eight football site, SHGfootball.com, suggests that JHS’ regular and potential opponents aren’t worried about this year’s Crimsons.

Of course, it’s still only mid-July. There’s a lot of football fans who haven’t yet stirred themselves up. So all of this indignation might be a bit premature.

Still, to folks outside of Jacksonville, last year’s 4-5 record might have signaled a reassuring “return to form” for the once-uppity program. In a CS8 where Sacred Heart-Griffin, Chatham Glenwood and Taylorville are generally accepted as the entrenched powers, there’s just no room for anyone else, except for maybe one more “city” school — we’re talking Lanphier, Southeast and Springfield High.

Gosh, nothing would put mist in the eyes of Capital City gridiron fans like seeing Springfield High back in the playoffs. Wouldn’t it be great, come early November, if Crimson fans could stand up and say, “Sorry, Springfield. You’re all gonna have to settle for Jacksonville again.”

But that wouldn’t be the last laugh. No … come late November, after Sacred Heart-Griffin wins its third consecutive state title, all of Springfield can stand up and say, “Sorry, Illinois. Sorry, Chicago. Guess you’re all gonna have to settle for the Cyclones again.”

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