This was, in many ways, a most predictable school year.
It was a year of streaks and dynasties, when teams expected to win usually did and stars often lived up to their hype.
It was a year in which Driscoll won a record sixth straight state football title, routing Breese Mater Dei 35-0 in Class 4A, and one in which York won its fifth boys state cross-country crown in a row and 26th overall.
More Top Picks Best Infrared Saunas
St. Francis won its fourth state girls volleyball crown in the last five years and first in Class AA, and Sandburg won its third straight Class AA team wrestling title. In the pool, Fenwick won the state boys water polo championship for the fourth straight year, and New Trier took the boys swimming crown for the third time in four years.
Simeon retained its Class AA basketball title behind superstar guard Derrick Rose, who, as expected, was voted Mr. Basketball of Illinois.
One of the joys of any sports year, though, is that it yields its share of pleasant surprises and quiet, unlikely heroes who are winners regardless of any score.
Jong Lee was one of them. The senior guard has perhaps one-fourth Rose’s ability but combined skill with fearlessness to lead a Stevenson team of modest athletic gifts to the Class AA basketball Final Four.
St. Francis de Sales’ football team didn’t win a game in the 4A playoffs. Its triumph was posting its second winning season in 31 years and battling its way into the playoffs for the first time ever with just 29 players.
Two distance runners resided on opposite ends of the won-loss spectrum. On one end was Waubonsie Valley senior Mustafa Alavi, who through sheer effort transformed himself from a painfully slow runner into an average one no longer stuck in the back of the pack in cross-country meets.
On the other was Loyola senior Tom Robbins, who won the Class AA 1,600-meter title, proving that a Zen-like philosophy that stressed running for enjoyment and living in the moment didn’t mean you couldn’t be a champion.
Jesse Trace wasn’t a state champion, but the Deerfield senior showed the heart of one by excelling in track after his twin, Ross, was killed in a car crash last October. Jesse reached the state meet two weeks ago and missed qualifying for the finals — and securing a medal — in the 110-meter high hurdles by just .14 seconds.
Ross, a fine pole vaulter, was among at least seven Chicago-area high school athletes killed in car crashes since last summer. Alcohol played a role in some of those deaths, underscoring that underage drinking, not steroid use, is still the biggest substance threat to young athletes.
Steroid testing continues to be a hot new trend in high school sports. New Jersey just completed its first year of testing, and Florida and Texas are poised to start.
The Illinois High School Association almost certainly will institute random drug testing itself, and soon, with the only questions being who is tested, when, for what, who pays the bill and what are the penalties?
Unfortunately, the IHSA is going ahead with its plan to expand to three classes in some sports and four in some others, including basketball. So in hoops we’ll no longer know who the state’s best team is now that Class AA has become 3A, with the likes of Simeon, Washington, Hillcrest, St. Joseph, Marshall and Crane, and 4A, with such teams as Proviso East, Thornwood, Thornton, Farragut, Von Steuben, Oak Park, Young, West Aurora, Loyola and Warren.
The Chicago Public League made the most of the final two-class season. Outside of basketball, football and girls track, its teams have had little, if any, significant success in state tournaments in recent years.
Since giving up its automatic berth in various state quarterfinals before the 2002-03 school year, in fact, the Public League hadn’t had a non-basketball team reach an Elite Eight until this spring, when Young’s boys volleyball team did it.
Young’s baseball team almost followed suit, going toe-to-toe with powerhouse St. Rita last Monday before losing 4-2 in the supersectionals. In tennis, Payton sophomore Evan King won the boys singles title, the first state singles crown for a Public League player since 1994.
This was also a year in which the crazy world of recruiting at times totally lost its mind, thanks in part to the Internet.
When Indianapolis guard Eric Gordon switched his oral commitment from Illinois to Indiana, many Illini basketball fans reacted as though he had misplaced a cure for cancer, especially with ugly message board posts and online correspondence.
Gordon mishandled his change of heart, but the reaction at times approached the record for loss of athletic perspective.
And then there were the whispers questioning how Illinois coach Ron Zook could beat out recruiting heavyweights for some of the country’s top football recruits.
Must be cheating, the whisperers hinted.
If innuendo was plentiful, proof was lacking, but that seems increasingly unimportant as we forge ahead into the decade of the instant assumption.
More Top Picks Best Soldering Stations For Electronics
———-