Stevenson junior wide receiver Luke Clark is shining brightly as the Illinois High School Association’s football playoffs begin.
That’s in stark contrast to August and September, when Clark’s impact on the Patriots was more like the low range of a lightbulb on a dimmer switch.
“It’s had a lot to do with getting experience and getting comfortable with the environment,” he said. “I have trust in myself, and I know I can depend on my teammates and coaches. You just adapt.”
Clark makes it sound like his 180-degree turnaround was easy. But his struggles earlier in the season, when he had only 11 catches through six games, affected him mentally and became a talking point at home.
“I mentioned it to my parents, and they told me to keep my head up,” Clark said. “They told me to remember my love for the game and success would eventually come.”
Indeed, success has come for the 6-foot-4, 190-pound Clark, who made 16 catches for 269 and three touchdowns as Stevenson won its last three regular-season games to qualify for the playoffs. The 37th-seeded Patriots (4-5) will play 28th-seeded Lockport (5-4) on the road in the opening round of the Class 8A playoffs at 7 p.m. Friday.
Clark’s emergence certainly makes him feel different too. That was expressed during a conversation with junior offensive lineman Alexander Murillo in their Spanish class one day this week. Murillo brought up Clark’s recent production.
“I told him I literally feel like a completely different player,” Clark said. “I have so much more confidence in myself, and I started to believe in myself. There’s been a big switch in my mindset.”
Stevenson’s coaches have noticed too.
“One of my position coaches showed me a clip of me running a route in Week 1 and compared it to one of the touchdowns I had versus Waukegan (in the season finale),” Clark said. “There was a night-and-day difference on my release. I almost looked like I was jogging off the line in the first clip.”
Like Clark, the Patriots had a rough start to the season. They lost their first four games and were 1-5 following a 28-0 loss to Libertyville on Sept. 25.
Before the next game against perennial North Suburban Conference power Warren, coach Brent Becker addressed the team. He emphasized the need for everyone to play together as a unit and said they owed that to the seniors, whose time in a Stevenson uniform would end prematurely if several wins didn’t follow.
“All of us took into account what he said, and we believed in what he was saying,” Clark said. “We may not have all the size in the world, but we found it in ourselves to play with heart, and we’ve executed really well the last three weeks.”
Sure enough, the Patriots beat Warren 31-27, and Clark was instrumental.
“We always knew how high of a ceiling he had, but he just hadn’t put everything together,” Becker said. “Now that he has, it’s really helped our offense hit its stride.”
According to Clark, his fast start against Warren paved the way for the player he has become.
“I think I had four catches on our opening drive,” he said. “The first two were easy little 5-yard hitch routes, and I also had a longer first-down catch.
“I was feeling myself a little bit at the start of that game, and my confidence skyrocketed from there.”
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Clark then made a touchdown catch in the Patriots’ win over Lake Forest in Week 8 and made two more against Waukegan. For the season, he has 27 catches for 435 yards and five touchdowns.
Murillo has played with Clark for years and has long known he had the potential to be successful.
“He’s become reliable but in a totally different way, where he makes something out of nothing,” Murillo said. “What sets him apart from other receivers is his athleticism. He’s one of the best athletes I’ve ever seen.
“We had a touchdown celebration planned last week. I forgot to jump on the first one, and on the second, he basically jumped completely over me.”
Clark, who has also made some early season drops a thing of the past, is playing with the kind of conviction that dominant receivers possess.
“The short routes will always be there, and I really like a good comeback route — and obviously there’s the fade,” he said. “Being a big wide receiver who can jump pretty high, that’s almost unguardable if I run it right.
“You have to feel that no one can mess with you, and there aren’t many defensive backs who can match my size.”
Clark has aspired to play college football for as long as he can remember, and the fact that he was putting next to nothing on film early in the season was another factor in his slow start.
“I was feeling a lot of different emotions, and I was in my head a little bit,” he said. “But I was able to work through it, and we as a team were able to stick together and find something in us to find a spark. We’re all proud of ourselves.”
Steve Reaven is a freelance reporter.