They turned off the lights at SLUH Stadium at approximately 10:15 p.m. Nov. 18, 2011, and just like that, The Season was over. SLUH had just suffered a painful state semifinal loss to CBC, 66-28. If you really want to read about it, St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Nate Latsch did a fine job recapturing the […]
SLUH Stadium
SLUH Stadium is arguably one of the more unique venues for high school sports in the St. Louis area. Nestled between the campuses of St. Louis University High School and the St. Louis Science Center, the stadium has a Nexturf field, a four-lane track, a nice little concession area and bleachers for 2,345. Yet it […]
The Ice Man Cometh
DeSmet’s Durron Neal is going to have a fine college career at the University of Oklahoma. Maybe even beyond NCAA Division I into the NFL. He’s that good. And on Nov. 11, 2011, in an epic game already being described as an instant “classic,” Durron Neal (right) very nearly pulled off a Missouri state Class […]
Eleventh game, twelfth night
On May 31, more than five months and a lifetime ago, the SLUH football team gathered on the archery fields in Forest Park for the first day of football camp — the first day, really, of The Season. A talented group of rising seniors and juniors were coming off a disappointing 4-6 2010 campaign knowing […]
Red October, Blue October
Early in the 4th quarter of a tense, tightly played game — with the score tied 21-21 — SLUH quarterback Trevor McDonagh connected on a short pass from the SLUH 27-yard line to Cameron Stubbs (left), who caught it at the 35 with a Lindbergh defender right on him. Stubbs pivoted, then ran the opposite […]
A game for the ages
The first time SLUH quarterback Trevor McDonagh played at DeSmet’s Pierre LaBarge Stadium, the game didn’t go so well. McDonagh was a sophomore, making his varsity debut because SLUH senior quarterback Michael Riddering had broken his collarbone in the previous game. McDonagh’s first set of downs was a disaster: a sack, a missed throw and […]
Freshman finale
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 […]
Tackling Virgil
This team is on a roll. Eight games into The Season, the Jr. Billikens are 5-3 and have won four in a row, including the Oct. 14 pasting of Mehlville. The game was over one minute, 32 seconds in, when Terek Hawkins (left) barreled in from the 3-yard line for his first of what would […]
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 […]
Center of attention
High school football is both brutal and beautiful, exhilarating and humiliating. For the moms. The players? They’d probably choose different adjectives. Now seven games into the season, there’s a motherhood of brotherhood that has evolved around SLUH football. At every game you’ll find 45 moms in various incarnations of Jr. Billiken apparel, proudly wearing our […]
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
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