You’d have to think that one of the toughest local jobs to have right now is head coach and manager of Stevenson High School’s varsity baseball team. Talk about pressure to join a highly selective club where the athletic bar of success keeps rising – parallel to the school’s established and consistently growing academic achievements.
Last Saturday, one very determined basketball team backed by roaring sections of Stevenson students spanning the upper deck of Peoria’s Carver Arena in a sea of black t-shirts, duplicated the recent feat of the school’s football team and won its first state championship. If you’re scoring at home, that’s state titles for both the Stevenson basketball and football teams in the same school year. One state high school championship in any sport is an outstanding accomplishment, but consecutive IHSA titles in two highly popular sports within a few months?
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how many U.S. high schools achieved football and basketball championships in the same year. After a few Google searches, I realized this particular stat wasn’t going to be easy to find.
Stevenson, the first high school from Lake County to win a state basketball championship, is one of three Illinois high schools that have put together basketball and football titles in the same school year, but the largest among that group. Records from other states I found show one to three schools achieving this unique accomplishment. So, let’s figure that only around 100 high schools throughout the country have brought home first place basketball and football trophies in the same year. Wow.
What’s even more remarkable is that the state championship hardware can be placed alongside all the academic accolades Stevenson also has achieved, being consistently ranked in national top public high school polls along with tremendous individual achievements by students (athletes and non-athletes) driven to succeed in class. Altogether, academic and athletic achievements support a solid culture of success among peers that words on paper can’t really describe.
So, a baseball championship to complete the fall-winter-spring high school title trifecta? For lack of a better term, that would be “crazy good,” but falling short of such an auspicious goal would certainly not detract from the SHS sum total of overall greatness. But if any school can pull it off…
Eric Scott is a Pioneer Press community contributor, former TV newscast producer now working in corporate communications and serves on the Board of Directors for the Stevenson High School Foundation.
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