NORMAL, Ill. The runner-up trophy was beside a box of bandagesin a corner. For healing purposes, it had been placed beyond view ofthe Wheaton Central football players, who sat in a circle on the coldgym floor, silent except for their sobs.
Outside, raindrops began to fall over the ironing-boardlandscape of rural Illinois. They had to be the tears of Red Grange.In the year of his passing, the team from his high school that playsin his namesake stadium came within minutes of its first statechampionship.
Wheaton Central is an everyday public school with 5-6 backs andsideline heaters provided by a local plumber. Mount Carmel, itsopponent in Saturday's Class 5-A final, is a private South Sidepower that recruits the area's finest players, publishesyearbook-sized game programs and wins titles as often as it stagessock hops. It shouldn't have been a game.
Instead, it was a scholastic treasure. Remember "Hoosiers?"Wheaton Central was Milan High, leading 14-7 with seven minutes left."We're gonna do it!" yelled Central alum and former football starDana Noel, now the White Sox publicist. "This is unbelievable!"
In the bitter end, it turned out to be unbelievable, a littletoo wild for real prep life. Milan High can happen in the movies,but Wheaton Central couldn't happen on a field. Mount Carmel chargedback in a frenzied finish, forcing a turnover, tying the score withfour minutes left, then winning in the last seconds on a 41-yardoption keeper by star quarterback Mike McGrew. Red Grange's teamlost 21-14.
Still, wherever he was, the Galloping Ghost had to beenormously proud of the lads. The beauty of teenage competition,unlike the adult version, is how it allows us to look at sportsclearly, without the irritating fog of big egos, huge salaries andbig business trappings. Wheaton Central didn't win. But don't daretry to say it lost.
"No one out there gave you any chance at all," coach JohnThorne, in impassioned tones, told his players in the gym. "Theysaid you didn't belong on the same field with that team. They saidyou had no business being here.
"Well, you stood up and took over the football game. Took itover. We are one team, one goal, one dream. The dream didn'thappen. But you don't stop dreaming. You don't stop setting goals.You don't stop winning because you're all winners."
The man could teach Mike Ditka something about drama. But,then, all Thorne did was convey the proper words. His team didn'thave one player who will become a Division I college star. Itdoesn't have the luxury, as a public school, to recruit greatplayers. It must rely on its own resources. But what resourcesWheaton Central has.
Mostly, they are human resources. School enrollment is 1,628students, but judging by the far sideline at Illinois State's HancockStadium, you'd have thought every student and parent in the districtwas present. "It's a wonderful school," Noel said. "It's partbluecollar, part white-collar, and everyone pulls for each other.It's almost too good to be true. Everyone rallies around football.You don't see any petty things. All good feeling."
The wind was frosty, but the stands were warm as the Tigerstook a 14-0 lead. It has been an emotional season, with Grange'sdeath and an impending consolidation with Warrenville, and the fanscould sense a fairy tale from heaven. Looking at them, you wonderedwhat antics John and Jim Belushi would have been pulling if they werepresent. John was an all-conference linebacker at Central. Jim toldjokes.
"Watching our boys is what high school athletics is about,"school principal Charles Baker said in the third quarter. "They playhard, they're all home-grown boys and they believe they're not goingto lose. There are no big egos here. It's all teamwork."
Alas, just as the story was getting weepy, it suddenly turnedon us. Mount Carmel's Simeon Rice, 6-5 and 225, sacked quarterbackJeff Brown and forced the pivotal turnover. Central's moms and popshuddled under blankets. Players, for the first time all day,gathered beside the heaters. They were braced for the worst. And itcame.
The champs, in a classy scene, consoled the losers. MattCushing came over and hugged Peter Economos. McGrew, the hero,walked up to each Wheaton player and said, "Great season." No onecould be soothed, of course.
You get the feeling, though, that the kids will be all right,that they will benefit from what happened on a cold, overcastafternoon on a plastic rug. "There isn't a principal in the state ofIllinois who wouldn't trade places with me right now," Baker saidafterward. "The only way these kids are losers is if we attach ouradult values to them. And no one's going to do that. They've madeus too proud."
The rainfall was only brief. Red Grange must have started tosmile.
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