One football state championship is plenty special
There are those who would argue eight was more than enough state football champions to be crowned last weekend in Champaign. It would take someone with a pretty amazing memory to remember all eight a few months - or maybe even a few weeks - from now.
Still, even with more and arguably too many classes in most IHSA sports, winning a title is not an easy accomplishment. So, it was interesting the last few weeks to read various stories about teams that have won "only" one state title.
Only one state title? Really? The Providences, Montinis, and Rochesters in football hoarding one to two handfuls of title trophies are the exception when it comes to the programs that rule high school football.
There are a lot of schools in a lot of sports that would love to have one shot at winning a state title. So many things have to go right because there will almost always be one game along the way where a champion doesn't play its best and has to escape.
Look at Stevenson's first football championship road. It had four close postseason calls with the ultimate scare coming in the final minutes of the 8A title game with Homewood-Flossmoor. In no way does it diminish what the Patriots accomplished, but a play here or there that doesn't go right and they may not even reach Champaign.
There are also great teams that are victims of bad timing. Consider the fantastic Thornton boys basketball teams of the mid-1990s that always found four-peater Peoria Manual in the way at the state tournament.
Some programs simply dominate the landscape in certain sports such as York in cross country with 28 state titles since 1962. That doesn't leave many opportunities for everyone else.
Covering a few state championship teams and individuals makes you appreciate just how difficult it really is to win one. No program should feel any shame in winning "only" one.
May day:
Congratulations to Wheeling assistant principal for student activities Steve May, who is one of 10 recipients of the 2014 Distinguished Service Awards given by the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA). May will be honored Dec. 16 during a banquet at the 45th annual National Athletic Directors Conference conducted jointly by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) and the NIAAA.
May has been in his current position at Wheeling since 2001 and created and maintained the school's hall of fame and the student spirit group "The Cat Pack." He was also instrumental in the development of the school's Hispanic Athletic Council.
May has also been involved with the IHSA, NFHS, NIAAA and Illinois Athletic Directors Association.
Before coming to Wheeling, May was a dean and basketball coach at Prospect, a teacher and coach at Winston Park Junior High in Palatine and an English teacher and coach for a year at Crystal Lake Central.
It's early, but ...:
Early season basketball games can get sloppy and are more likely to be mistake-filled than mistake-free. But if you didn't see these with your own eyes it is almost difficult to believe they happened in the same gym in Johnsburg in a span of only four days.
The first came when a player rebounded a missed free throw and immediately went in uncontested and scored. Nothing unusual about that, right?
Except for the fact the putback was put in the opposing team's basket in a game his team wound up losing by 3 points.
A few days later a team called a timeout in the fourth quarter. Part of the comeback defensive strategy was probably not to play 4-on-5 or go to a 2-2 zone.
Nor was it a hockey power play or a coach Norman Dale moment from the movie Hoosiers where he intentionally used four players to make a point and said "my team is on the floor."
After 17 seconds, there was finally a stoppage of play and the team with four was able to get back to even strength.
Marty Maciaszek is a freelance columnist for the Daily Herald who can be reached at marty.maciaszek@gmail.com.