Oct. 09--For a few golden moments last Friday, it looked like the Joliet Central Steelmen's losing streak of five years and counting was finally going to end.
They scored a touchdown the first time they had the ball, after a pass bounced off a defender's fingertips and into the hands of wide receiver Jomarre McNair, who bolted untouched into the end zone. Then they recovered a fumble and struck again with another touchdown pass.
Just like that, Central was up 13-0 against the formidable Eagles of Sandburg High School, its sideline electrified into pure bedlam.
"Here we go, baby!"
"Make it happen!"
"Keep it up! Keep it up!"
But then, like so many times before, the team's good fortune vanished. Sandburg scored on its next two possessions to take the lead and steadily pulled away, piling up touchdowns as the Central offense sputtered. Sandburg went on to win 55-19, handing Central its 51st consecutive loss since it resurrected its varsity program in 2010.
Yet after the game, the Steelmen were far from devastated. They'd been through enough to know that regardless of the score, they'd taken a small step forward.
"Last year, coming into games, we didn't have any hope," said Zach Wisneski, the team's 15-year-old sophomore quarterback. "It just feels better knowing we can compete this year. If we lose, I'm mad, but I try to only focus on the positives that come from that game. Obviously winning is important, but if we can't do that, we're going to have to try to do everything we can to put ourselves in that situation."
Victory is the prime directive of every sport, but none treats it with the same mystical solemnity as football. Gridiron legend Vince Lombardi summed it up with the granddaddy of locker room maxims: "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."
Losing, conversely, is seen as a curse, a sleep-destroying, ulcer-spawning blight, especially when it comes in bunches. A 1985 Sports Illustrated profile of a rural Minnesota school in the midst of a 68-game skid compared the football team's woes to the devastation of the farming bust: "It's like being slugged in the gut," a fan said.
There is no such drama at Joliet Central. The team is small but committed, the coaches demanding but realistic. Here, winning is far from the only thing.
"As a coach I want to win, but it's more about: 'Are our guys getting better, not just as athletes but as people and as students and in the community?'" said fourth-year head coach Brett Boyter, who has seen the team GPA rise significantly during his tenure. "Not that I didn't feel that way before, but I've just focused on that more. I believe if we can take care of those things, the results on the scoreboard are going to come. Slowly but surely, we're taking care of those things, and eventually we're going to start getting the results."
Origin of the streak
Much of Central's football travails can be traced to a decision made long before the winless streak began. In 1993, facing financial hardship, the school district elected to save money by merging the athletic teams of Joliet Central and Joliet West into a single program: Joliet Township.
Though the football team included students from both schools, its operations were based at West, meaning Central athletes had to endure long bus rides to and from practice, then back home. The hassle discouraged many Central students from joining the squad, said Central offensive coordinator Tony Juarez, who led the Township program for four years.
In 2008, after a successful bond referendum raised $24 million to build field houses at each high school, Central and West went back to separate programs. After starting with underclassman squads, the schools restored their varsity football teams in 2010.
But in those years of football dormancy, Joliet Central went through a demographic transformation. The proportion of Hispanic students soared from about a quarter to well over half, and while a few have joined the team, Juarez said many have little interest in football.
"Our Hispanic community puts soccer above all else," he said. "They'll get 70 to 80 kids coming out for soccer, and 40 or 50 will get cut. They'll just go play club soccer. They won't go out for another (school-based) sport, so we don't get those athletes."
Consequently, each season begins with a small squad that shrinks even more as kids get injured or quit. Last week, the team had only 35 players on its varsity roster, a minuscule number for a school with 3,000 students (Sandburg, by contrast, listed 68 on its roster sheet).
That's a particular drawback in the Southwest Suburban Conference, an athletic league packed with football juggernauts like Bolingbrook, Lincoln Way-East and the state's No. 1 team, Homewood-Flossmoor, which beat Central 60-0 last month.
Those schools also have formidable youth feeder programs, an attribute Central has traditionally lacked.
"A lot of those kids have never put pads on until they're in that program," said prep recruiting blogger "Edgy Tim" O'Halloran. "That's a big disadvantage competing against (powerhouse schools). There's a big learning gap they have to close to compete."
Love of the game
Yet for all the limitations and all the losing, athletes like Kamren Smith keep showing up. He's a senior wide receiver and defensive back who has played football all four years of high school, and who still gets a thrill at game time.
"It's just the emotions, the butterflies you get before kickoff, and then, after the first hit, it releases and you just feel amazing," Smith, 17, said after a recent practice. "It's an excitement. It's a power. It shows that you can do things other people aren't able to do."
He and his teammates have come achingly close to victory several times, including the first game of this season against Thornridge. The score was tied with less than two minutes to play and Central was driving for the potential winning score when a Steelmen pass was tipped, intercepted and returned for a touchdown.
It's the kind of thing that can burn a team's confidence to ashes, but Central went on to show bursts of competitiveness in almost every subsequent game. In the Steelmen's crosstown rivalry game against Joliet West last month, they again battled to the final minute before falling.
"They work hard," O'Halloran said. "What's impressed me the most is that those kids never quit, and I can't always say that about every program, especially those that go through that kind of losing streak."
Central's recent close calls are just one sign that the program could be approaching a turnaround, the coaches say. Next year, the school is switching to the Southwest Prairie Conference, and while athletic director Steve Locke said the move is primarily meant to cut down on travel, he expects the football team to benefit.
"We're hoping that going over there, maybe because of (geographic) rivalries, athletes will want to stick it out a little more and play those opponents," he said.
Central is also forging tighter bonds with local youth teams by letting them play on the school's field and holding coaching clinics. One of the programs, the Joliet Ravens, has had success recruiting kids within Central's attendance boundaries by handing out promotional fliers written in Spanish.
"I've got more Gonzalezes and Martinezes than you can imagine," said Ravens President Frank Bermudez. "Our program is now about 40 percent Hispanic."
The only good thing about losing streaks is that they inevitably end, and when they do, they can be quickly forgotten. West Carroll High School, which, under its former name of Savanna High, holds the state record for consecutive football losses with 63, has turned things around since those dismal days in the 1990s and 2000s: This season, it has a 4-2 record and aspirations for a playoff berth.
"We're not thinking about the past; we're thinking about the future," said athletic director Joseph Hansen. "That's the motto we're trying to follow in all our sports."
The Steelmen have three more games this season to create a new future of their own, and when the final horn sounded last Friday, Boyter gathered his exhausted players in the end zone to remind them once more what it would take.
"Over the last two weeks, if anything, you should have gained faith in yourselves and faith in each other," he said. "Stay hungry. You've got to believe what I'm telling you now. They're not (empty) words, because you guys know me -- I don't (lie to) you, ever. I believe in you guys. Now you've got to continue to believe in each other. Keep your heads up and let's get back to work tomorrow."
jkeilman@tribpub.com
