It’s a safe bet East St. Louis High’s Detchauz Wray cannot wait to step on the field Friday night.
And why not? As one of the top quarterback prospects in the country, as well as being part of the Flyers' defending state champion football team, it would be crazy to think otherwise. But he’s just one of a small city of football players with the same building excitement as the start of the season finally is within sniffing distance.
From tiny Northeastern Atlantic Conference member Alden-Hebron, which boasts a football enrollment of 123, to Berwyn-Cicero’s Morton, which carries an enrollment of 8,417 and plays in the West Suburban Gold League, there are thousands who cannot wait to don game jerseys and muck them up a little.
Practicing is nearly over and the 14-week harvesting of the fruits of all the labor (hopefully) begins with Wray‘s Flyers as the early pick as the best in the state.
East St. Louis High quarterback Detchauz Wray (2) and running back Courtney Molton (5), shown Nov. 15, 2008, will both be seniors for the Flyers this year.
Photo by Jimmy Simmons
Wray, who in two years as a starter has completed 226 of 408 passes for 4,546 yards, 61 touchdowns and just 13 interceptions, is arguably the best quarterback downstate (though Cahokia QB Patrick Ivy may have something to say about that) and has a beast of a backfield mate in Courtney Molton returning with him.
East St. Louis is getting national attention as well, rounding out the Top 10 in the country in USA Today’s preseason poll. The list, headed by Fort Lauderdale’s St. Thomas Aquinas (15-0 last year), also includes Park Ridge’s Maine South.
All that, of course, means little until the helmets are polished, the fresh jerseys are pulled on and the first bruise is administered. It’s so close, you can almost feel it.
Weird bounce at Tuscola
Jud Wienke has lived most of his falls on the sidelines of Tuscola High, first as a ballboy for his dad, Stan, then for one year as a freshman understudy to his brother, John, in the Warriors’ 2007 Class 1A runner-up season. This year, he’ll live another one there.
After a year as the starting quarterback at a Waterloo high school when Stan moved the family to be closer to John (now a redshirt freshman quarterback at the University of Iowa), Jud, now a junior, was poised to be the starter for a Tuscola team many think will vie for an Okaw Valley Blue title. It appears that will no longer be the case.
Jud, working in a non-contact practice drill, tripped and fell on his shoulder, breaking a collarbone. Initially thought to be a 6- to 8-week recovery, Wienke found out Friday he’s done for the season.
“I went in there and they told me they could do surgery to fix it, but that probably wouldn't be a good idea,” Wienke told the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette’s Marcus Jackson. “They don't want to risk other stuff happening because it's so close to the heart. There could be a whole mess of things (to) go wrong.”
Sophomore Phillip Meyer is expected to start at quarterback now.
Big injury bug bites again
O’Fallon High senior running back Erin Lewis, the team’s leading rusher last year, will likely miss the entire season with a broken jaw.
O’Fallon coach Brandon Joggerst told Belleville News-Democrat sports writer Norm Sanders the injury occurred during an off-field incident Saturday in Belleville. He wouldn’t elaborate further, but added Lewis, who was a second-team All-Southwestern Conference pick last year, would undergo surgery and could miss at least six to eight weeks.
“As far as we know, it’s for the year,” Joggerst told the BND. “Once they go in (for surgery), we’ll know a little bit more. I think it’s going to be wired, so we’re probably looking at six to eight weeks.”
Sangamo Conference ready to kick off
Time will eventually tell if the inaugural season of football in the Sangamo Conference begins an eight-school match made in heaven. But it sure feels like one when it’s laid out on paper.
Riverton, Niantic Sangamon Valley, Williamsville, Auburn, Athens, Pleasant Plains, Petersburg PORTA and New Berlin joined forces in an effort to kindle some seemingly natural rivalries, as well as to cut down on some travel concerns the schools fretted over in the past few years.
The move has taken Sangamon Valley away from the over-hill-and-dale travel of the Little Okaw Valley Conference. The same goes for PORTA, Athens and Pleasant Plains, but in the West Prairie Trail Conference. It solves a tricky dual-conference membership for Riverton, Williamsville and Auburn and creates the opportunity for some neighborly rivalries.
The most natural of those rivalries would have to be Riverton and Sangamon Valley. Just 23 miles separate the two, but they are even closer considering the two programs are coached by brothers, Josh Lee and Michael Lee. Storm coach Michael loves the move.
“I would have been happy if we’d stayed in the Little Okaw, but I was all for this move,” said Michael Lee, whose team was separated by nearly three counties from some of their LOVC foes. “In the 12-13 years that we were in the LOVC -- my brother played here when we first joined -- I don’t really think there was ever a big rivalry for us. We’re close enough to a lot of these schools (in the Sangamo) that a rivalry could begin this year. Time will tell, I guess.”
Troy Hayes covers central and southern Illinois for MaxPreps. He may be reached at sportsgopher@yahoo.com.
