Minutes after the Maine South football team earned a 34-31 overtime win over Glenbrook South, Jimmy Frankos took to Twitter to express his thoughts.
A former player for the Hawks and 2012 graduate, Frankos said on Twitter, “Never a doubt in my mind.”
In that game on Friday, Oct. 2, Maine South overcame a 14-point deficit with 9 minutes, 54 seconds to go in the fourth quarter to beat the Titans. The following week, the Hawks trailed then-undefeated New Trier by 11 points before pulling out a 24-21 victory to extend their Central Suburban South winning streak to 73 games. If Maine South beats Evanston on Friday, Oct. 23, in Park Ridge, the Hawks will have gone 5-0 in conference 15 years in a row.
“It all starts with the coaching staff, from varsity to freshman,” Frankos said. “Going into a game, we believed we were the better team, and we should win the game. And even if we were losing, as long as there was time on the clock, we believed we could win the game.”
Frankos speaks from experience.
A junior on the 2010 team that won the Class 8A state championship, Frankos was part of a comeback for the ages in the semifinals. Down 22-13 to Loyola on the road in the fourth quarter, the Hawks scored two touchdowns in nine seconds and Frankos kicked a 43-yard field goal for a 29-22 win.
“Maine South’s tradition is to fight until that whistle blows,” Frankos said. “That’s how we practiced, and that’s how we played.”
Brian Collis is in his third year as the Maine South starting quarterback and led the Hawks on the memorable fourth-quarter, game-tying drive against Glenbrook South. He said players trust that their teammates will do their own jobs.
“If that happens, we will be OK,” Collis said.
But it goes deeper than that, according to Collis. He said the Hawks are acutely aware of the program’s tradition.
“We play for the guys who came before us, the guys on our team and we are setting the standard for the guys who will come after us,” he said.
Now in his 15 season as head coach at Maine South, Dave Inserra has won three Class 8A state titles (2008, 2009, 2010) and finished second three times in Class 8A (2003, 2004, 2005). But one of the most important years, according to him, was in 2007.
That season, Maine South lost to Glenbrook North 13-10 in Week 3.
“Before the half, we had the ball with about 30 seconds left,” Inserra said. “But the mentality of the kids was we didn’t have enough time to score. When we watched film, we showed them how they could have scored. If you make this catch, if you make that play.”
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Inserra said those Hawks learned from that loss and went on to play in the Class 8A state quarterfinals. The next year, Maine South won the school’s first state title since 2000 and third overall.
“That’s the story we’ve told this year,” Inserra said of the 2007 loss to Glenbrook North. “It’s drawing on a negative, but the kids have taken to it. They have bought in to never being out of a game. We have convinced them that if there is time on the clock, we can win.”
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