It only seems like junior Carter Webb is everywhere in Antioch athletics.
A soccer player for the Sequoits until this year, Webb is the kicker for the football team and one of the top two runners for the boys cross country team this season.
“I’m happy both coaches were open-minded and able to work with me so I could play both sports,” he said. “When the school day ends, I say to myself, ‘Let’s go.’ It’s time to work your hardest to hopefully get better each day.”
Webb’s calendar includes plenty of those days. He has cross country on Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays, and he has football on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
This is Webb’s first foray into football, but not cross country. He ran in each of the previous two fall seasons while playing soccer.
But in the spring, he asked Antioch football coach Brian Glashagel about joining the team.
“He’s got some serious power in his leg, and he really works at getting better,” Glashagel said. “When the ball comes off his foot, there’s a different sound than with others.”
Webb didn’t know what to expect on the football team, but he said he found a very welcoming environment.
“They are two totally different atmospheres,” Webb said of football and cross country. “Football is rowdy and physical, and there’s a band of brothers around you. Cross country is more calm. It’s nice to have both side by side to enjoy.”
Webb just so happens to be good at both too.
In cross country, he was named all-conference in the Northern Lake County Conference last season and was elected as a team captain this season. If Antioch doesn’t qualify for the Class 2A state meet as a team, Webb has a legitimate chance at qualifying individually.
“Sometimes I worry about him because of how much he has going on,” Antioch cross country coach Chris Bailey said. “But he has that internal drive that pushes him. He’s really embracing both sports right now.”
In football, Webb has converted 24 of 27 extra-point attempts this season. But as solid as he has been in that role, his first pressure-packed kick didn’t go as planned. He missed a 28-yard field-goal attempt in the final seconds of the Sequoits’ 16-14 conference loss to Wauconda on Friday. A win would have given the Sequoits (3-3, 3-1) the inside track for the conference title.
Webb responded to the high-profile setback by drilling 50 straight field goals at the same distance at a local park two days later.
“I had never been in a situation like that before, and I need to figure out how to deal with it,” he said. “I can’t change the past, but coach said afterward to just be ready next time the team needs me.”
Once both of Webb’s fall sports are done, he will transition to basketball as a returning varsity player, and then he will compete in distance events for the track team in the spring.
Webb has a special incentive to keep it up, fueled by an intense sibling rivalry. His older sister, Hailey, a sophomore softball player at Appalachian State, holds Antioch’s record with 13 varsity letters. His younger sister, Addison, is off and running with her first varsity letter in field hockey this season.
Webb will have 10 varsity letters after the fall season and envisions his older sister’s mark not lasting long.
“I absolutely have to beat her record,” he said. “There’s no resting in my house.”
Steve Reaven is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.