The record will say SLUH’s freshman football team finished at 4-5, a subpar season if you are simply looking at the record. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. The picture at left, a blocked extra point attempt by Hazelwood West, in the final game of their freshman season, tells the story: A hodgepodge […]
Sibling rivalry
Late in the fourth quarter of the SLUH-DeSmet freshman game Oct. 11, Pete Klug (right), in at wide receiver for the Spartans, leaped, reached and hauled in a long pass near the SLUH 10-yard line. DeSmet, leading 30-16, had the game well in hand after putting up 23 unanswered points in the third quarter. Klug’s […]
Air Force One
It’s not every day the President of the United States flies into town to see a freshman football game – especially your freshman football game. OK, so maybe that wasn’t the reason President Barack Obama was visiting St. Louis on Oct 4, 2011. Something about a $25,000 per person fundraiser at one of the stately […]
The roster
Watching a freshman football game is like trying to keep track of fish in an aquarium. For five games now this season, I’ve watched the players run up, down, backward, forward, hither and yon on a 120 x 531/3 square-yard piece of grass, thrilled when they made a play and wondering why I kept forgetting […]
Spots and inches
With a little over two minutes left in the Sept. 22 SLUH-Vianney freshmen game, the Golden Griffins took possession on their own 35-yard line, down 20-14 with one final chance to mount a comeback. It had been a tight game. SLUH scored early in the 4th quarter but narrowly missed the extra point, and the […]
My 15
We are in a stretch of five games in nine days, two varsity and three freshmen games — including a designated “D” game that found us at CBC yet again Sept. 19, looking west into a late-summer setting sun. So that’s why I didn’t see The Fumble Recovery (right). Yeah, let’s blame it on the […]
Blink, and you’ll miss it
Freshmen football is a rollercoaster ride, up one minute and down the next. The SLUH freshmen are on the downswing, suffering another big loss at the hands of the CBC Cadets. 42-7 was the final score, and even I got that wrong. Besides updating the game on the Twitter feed, I was doing a pretty […]
Starry, starry night
Jack is a true football freshman, buckling up the pads for the first time and figuring out how to run, scramble and tackle in full football regalia. So expectations regarding playing time are low; we are happy with any snap or play in which No. 15 runs out on the field. So a 42-0 shellacking […]
The roster is set
It’s official! Jack brought home jersey No. 15 so now we have two Junior Billiken football players living under our roof. I wasn’t too worried. Jack has always been a pretty good athlete who simply enjoyed participating in soccer and volleyball in the fall, basketball in winter and baseball in the spring. He played games […]
Writing The Season
Seventeen years at The Sporting News, a national weekly sports magazine, should have prepared me for one year of covering HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL. But while the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern taught me the intracacies of story development, nothing I learned there prepared me for feeding, clothing and watering a 190-pound defensive end and a 130-pound wide receiver. So I'm writing about it -- and tweeting everything from how to stay awake when the spin cycle begins at midnight to watching your sons run onto a field on a golden, crisp fall evening.
The Game Plan
Next up:
Forever
SLUH vs. Life
Graduation, college, jobs, marriage family. Lessons learned on a football field will stay with these young men always.
SLUH VARSITY (9-4 Final Record)
Aug. 26 Parkway North 38, SLUH 35
Sept. 2, SLUH 49, Ladue 27
Sept. 9, Webster Groves 49, SLUH 28
Sept. 16, CBC 34, SLUH 7
Sept. 23, SLUH 48, Vianney 0
Sept. 30, SLUH 35, Chaminade 28
Oct. 7, SLUH 38, Eureka 14
Oct. 14, SLUH 38, Mehlville 0
Oct. 21, SLUH 37, DeSmet 31
Oct. 28, SLUH 35, Lindbergh 21
Nov. 4, SLUH 57, Oakville 27
Nov. 11, SLUH 47, DeSmet 46
Nov. 18, CBC 66, SLUH 28
SLUH FRESHMEN (4-5 Final Record)
Aug. 26, SLUH 27, MICDS 6
Aug. 31, Webster Groves 42, SLUH 0
Sept. 15, CBC 42, SLUH 7
Sept. 19, CBC 20, SLUH 7 (D)
Sept. 22, SLUH 20, Vianney 14
Sept. 29, SLUH 28, Chaminade 7
Oct. 4, SLUH 35, Normandy 26
Oct. 11, DeSmet 30, SLUH 16
Oct. 20, Hazelwood West 21, SLUH 18
Extra Points-The Twitter feed
Follow @lgmpreps on Twitter