One hundred twenty-five pounds, Kevin Jarvis reports, was his weight in first grade.
It’s hard to imagine what his baby steps looked like, and his memory did not oblige. The step before the baby step was where Jarvis found himself in October.
“Stand there,” Jarvis said. “Take up space.”
By that point, Jarvis was a senior at Maine South checking in at 6-foot-5, 340 pounds, and his mere presence on the Hawks’ defensive line occupied two blockers.
That was the eighth week of the season, but it was also the beginning.
“At first they just told me to take up a double team,” Jarvis said. “After a while I figured out what I could do.”
The more Jarvis was on the field, the bigger footprint he left.
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Palatine saw it when the then-No. 2 Pirates’ first three first-down plays of a Class 8A semifinal accounted for a total of three inches — all runs stuffed by Jarvis.
Loyola, the state’s No. 1 team for 14 weeks, felt it when Jarvis stood up to the best power-running game in Illinois in the 8A championship game.
Maine South won decisively that night, snapping the Ramblers’ 30-game winning streak and completing its unlikely turnaround from 4-3 team to 8A champion with a 27-17 victory.
Jarvis made three of the game’s biggest plays, stopping 235-pound bull Jake Marwede in short yardage on consecutive downs and chasing down a fourth-quarter sack that forced a field goal when a touchdown would have given the Ramblers the lead.
He’s also a four-star, All-State offensive lineman who paved the way for two 1,000-yard rushers, recorded 46 pancake blocks, did not allow a single sack and chose Michigan State over numerous Big Ten and SEC schools?
“He’s got the storyline,” Palatine coach Rick Splitt said.
Indeed, Jarvis is the Tribune’s All-State Player of the Year.
“What we do is based around what he can do,” said David Inserra, the head coach for four of Maine South’s six state titles. “Not only is he the best offensive lineman I’ve coached, but he makes those on our team around him that much better.
“When you’ve got a big body that can move like that — he moves like he is 240 pounds — you can do a lot with that.”
A giant unleashed
Being big wasn’t always this much fun.
“A lot of kids didn’t understand that I wasn’t a bully,” Jarvis said.
The kids he could see eye-to-eye with were two or three years older.
These were his teammates and opponents when he started playing organized football, and it was against these older kids that he measured himself.
“I always thought to myself that I was a little better than average for my age,” Jarvis said. “But I had no idea how much stronger I actually was.”
There was no hint of future Player of the Year in his attitude when he came to Maine South as a freshman, and the same could be said of his play.
“He was a gentle giant at first,” said Maine South quarterback Nick Leongas, who has played with Jarvis since eighth grade. “He didn’t need to do much to knock people over at first, but freshman year everyone caught up a little bit.”
That didn’t stop Inserra from making Jarvis his starting left guard a few games into his sophomore season, and the potential was starting to show.
Jarvis just didn’t see it yet.
“He always had nasty in him, but sophomore year kids had to light a fire under him,” Inserra said. “He could do almost anything he wants but it would take a kid in practice to test and push a little too much, and you’d see this attitude and it was, ‘Holy cow.’ Last year from Game 1 his confidence was much higher.”
The highlight tape Maine South put together of Jarvis’ junior year was a sight to behold — one legally vicious takedown after another.
Calls started coming from Florida, USC and all parts in between.
“When I saw that tape I started thinking maybe I could be a national player,” Jarvis said.
Two-way threat
The conversations, as Leongas recalls, began some time in late winter or early spring, when every high school football team is good enough to win a state championship.
These revolved around Jarvis and the team’s second strongest player, offensive lineman/kicker/punter Sean McNulty, playing defense as seniors.
Leongas took the idea to Inserra, who utilizes two-way players more than most big-school coaches but was leery because of the size and value of the players involved.
Inserra agreed to use them “here and there,” which meant sparingly, until crisis struck. For the Hawks, a crisis is a conference loss, which had never happened in Inserra’s 16 seasons as head coach until Oct. 7.
New Trier’s 27-21 victory ended Maine South’s remarkable Central Suburban South winning streak at 77, but it also provided the Hawks with a new space-eater — and eventual game-changer — at defensive tackle.
“Every game, I felt like I was learning more, getting better,” Jarvis said.
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“It got to the point that he was waving us off, ‘Don’t put anyone in for me,'” Inserra said. “Then you know you’ve got a player.”
That was the Palatine game, the first of two dominant defensive performances in the season’s two biggest games. Next up was Loyola for the second time this season, and the two outcomes say it all.
Loyola scored 44 points on Maine’s South’s Jarvis-less defense and 17 in the championship game.
“He made a huge impact in our game,” Splitt said. “We didn’t run the ball well against Maine South and he was probably the reason why. His presence, his body, his physicality, gave us problems.”
“He 100 percent deserves this (honor),” Leongas said. “He just destroyed everyone who came in front of him.”
Mike Helfgot is a freelance reporter for the baiduhai.
Players of the Year
2015: Sam Brodner, Glenbard West RB
2014: Justin Hunniford, Providence QB
2013: Justin Jackson, Glenbard North RB
2012: Laquon Treadwell, Crete-Monee WR
2011: Jordan Westerkamp, Montini WR
2010: Reilly O’Toole, Wheaton South QB
2009: Matt Perez, Maine South RB/LB