Super debut for Wauconda's Kent

His name is Brian Kent, not Clark Kent.

And yet, Wauconda's senior quarterback sure did his best Superman impersonation last week in a 44-34 season-opening win over Huntley.

Kent had a hand in 5 of 6 touchdowns for the Bulldogs (3 passing and 2 running) and rolled up a whopping 396 yards himself. Kent rushed for 167 yards on 18 carries and also completed 12-of-19 passes for 229 yards.

"He had a really great game," Wauconda coach Dave Mills said. "He can run well and he has a cannon for an arm. I know I'm biased, but I think he's the best quarterback in northern Illinois."

Kent could certainly be one of the hardest workers.

According to Mills, Kent completely devoted himself to football in the last year.

"He was so excited (after the Huntley game) that all the hard work he had put in during the off-season showed itself," Mills said.

Kent worked not only on improving the physical part of his game, he also made it a priority to study the game inside and out.

"I got lucky because I got Brian in a couple of classes second semester of last year and we were able to develop a really great relationship and trust," Mills said. "He's such a smart kid. He's got great grades and he really became an even bigger student of the game. We talked a lot about football and different plays. We spent a lot of time together."

Now, Kent and Mills are practically finishing each other's sentences.

"If I miss a call when I send in a play, Brian will be like, 'Coach, don't you mean this, or that,'" Mills said. "And I'll just say, 'Yeah, you know what I mean.' We're just really on the same page."

Football family: At 6 p.m., just as his players are powering down after the completion of another day of football practice, Carmel coach Andy Bitto is gearing up.

For another football practice.

Bitto runs practice for the Corsairs from after school at 3 p.m. until about 6 p.m. Then, he awaits the arrival of his other team. His smaller, younger team.

This year, in an effort to spend more time with his own kids, sons Pete (12) and Jack (11), Bitto volunteered to coach Mundelein's Saturday middleweight youth football team.

The team practices at Carmel so that Bitto doesn't have to waste time driving to another site, and can maximize every minute of both team's practice times.

The middleweights go from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

"It works out pretty well," Bitto said. "I don't eat dinner until 9 p.m., but at least I have a chance to coach my boys and spend some time with them."

Besides coaching Pete in baseball for a couple of years in the past, this is Bitto's first experience coaching his sons. He says he's never coached Jack before.

Pete is a quarterback and Jack is a tight end.

"They are having a lot of fun with it," Bitto said, beginning to laugh. "And so am I. My intensity is about the same, but I'm a lot nicer. I take a lot of deep breaths and I smile a lot with the little guys."

So far, Bitto is .500 on the season. Carmel won its opener last weekend against St. Charles East, but his youth team lost its opener, 18-14.

"It was a great game because the kids played hard," Bitto said of his youth team. "You just work on things and you raise expectations a little each week."

O, yes: Part of the reason Carmel gained a gaudy 545 rushing yards in its season-opening win against St. Charles East last week is because of talented backs.

Carmel is stocked with them, from Michael Panico to Jordan Kos to Brian Brennan to Brian Serio and Matt Maher.

But the other big reason is the offensive line.

With just one returning starter back, senior Logan Lester, the line seemed destined to be slow to come around. But that was anything but the case last weekend.

Newbies Shawn Wolf-Lewis, Shane Toub, Michael Dyer, Jack Butler and Patrick Mulroy looked pretty darn cohesive in their first official outing together.

"We were really excited about the offensive line," Carmel coach Andy Bitto said. "In some ways, we were just hoping they'd hit their stride by the middle of the season. But they've really come along a lot faster than we thought they would. It started to show itself a little bit during our camp in July and it really came together last week."

Never say die: Down 28-0 in the first quarter at Barrington last weekend, Libertyville could have folded up its tent right then and there and went home. Or at least checked out.

But the Wildcats did nothing of the sort.

They kept their heads in the game enough to cut their deficit to 28-20 in the third quarter. They were also down just 35-28 in the fourth quarter, before ultimately losing 41-28.

Libertyville coach Randy Kuceyeski says he's proud of his team's character, and is excited about the new high-energy spread offense that helped cut down the deficit so quickly.

"We showed a lot of character. We could have folded and we didn't," Kuceyeski said. "And we saw our offense really working in the second half. We were rushing the ball, we were throwing the ball. We were doing what we thought we should be doing all along."

Quarterback A.J. Schurr, the focal point of the spread offense, threw for 177 yards and ran for another 91 yards.

Starving Sequoits: After a 12-1 dream season in 2008 that yielded a berth in the Class 6A semifinals, Antioch had high expectations last year.

Instead, the Sequoits didn't even make it to the playoffs, finishing 5-4 and without enough playoff points to squeeze in.

"We had a good team, we had talent and we probably should have been 6-3 or even 7-2," Antioch coach Brian Glashagel said. "But we were a team of individuals a lot of the time last year. We didn't come together as much as a team. And then we had some guys get injured. We had some issues last year."

Glashagel says this year's team, which got a huge win over Streamwood last week, has had only one issue so far: an insatiable hunger.

Apparently, missing out on the playoffs last year bothered the Sequoits more than even Glashagel was aware.

"It was probably about a week after the season ended last year and the kids wanted to get back on the weights to start working for this year," Glashagel said. "They had a bad taste in their mouths because they felt like playing 9 weeks of football was totally insufficient. So, we got the weight room going right away, and attendance was great. The guys have been working hard like that every day since."

And Glashagel means every day.

"There was one day this summer that, for whatever reason, we couldn't open the weight deck for them," Glashagel said. "You'd have thought we told the kids that Great America was closed for the day. That's how upset they were."

Here and there: Numbers have always been an issue for the Vernon Hills football team.

So head coach Tony Monken is always trying to do more with less. That's why he's been known to move his players all over the place: here, there and everywhere.

"When you don't have 80 people out for football, you've got to get people to play a lot of roles," Monken said. "You've got to take what each person has and use every single bit of it."

For example, DaVaris Daniels, a major Division I prospect at wide receiver, started at quarterback last week in the Cougars' win over Niles West.

In the past, he's also started on defense and special teams and played a little bit of running back.

"The idea is you throw a bunch of different looks at a defense," Monken said. "It gives them a lot to think about."

Likewise, Monken has taken to rotating in multiple quarterbacks in different situations. With a smaller pool of athletes to choose from, he might not always get the one quarterback who can do it all: run and pass. So, he'll rotate in a running quarterback in running situations and a passing quarterback in passing situations.

That's what he did in 2007 with PJ Marsek and James Hallendorf, and that's what happened last year with Daniels, Steve Nelson and Tyler Peterson.

Last week, Nelson, the starter, and senior Chris Argianas shared snaps. Argianas threw for 2 touchdown passes and ran for another while Nelson ran for a touchdown.

"Steve is our starting quarterback. He's been there before, he's seen it all and the game has really slowed down for him," Monken said. "But we'll see what each night brings and a lot of (a potential quarterback rotation) will be situational. Chris is a different kind of quarterback than Steve, and he can help us in different situations."

Big deal: Listed at 5-foot-7, 170 pounds, Joe Lofthouse might be on the small end for a linebacker.

But the Grant senior sure did make plenty of big plays last week against Crystal Lake South.

He had 6 tackles and was in on dozens of other plays. On top of that, he seemed to welcome the challenge of facing bigger guys head on.

"He surprised me," Grant coach Kurt Rous said of Lofthouse. "He might be only 155 or 160 pounds and you'd think he might get smacked around by bigger guys. But he held his own. (Crystal Lake South) has some pretty big guys and he took them on and fought through them.

"Joe did exactly what he was coached to do and played even better than we thought he would."

Ditto for fellow linebacker Matt O'Donnell, who like Lofthouse, is a first-year starter.

O'Donnell played so well in his debut that he's already getting a promotion of sorts.

"He was our weak-side linebacker (against Crystal Lake South)," Rous said. "But he played so well that we're moving him to strong side, where a lot more is expected of you.

"The way Matt and Joe played was a really nice surprise for us."

Youth movement: There's a reason the Grant freshman team went 6-0 in the NSC Prairie Division last year.

The class has talent. And varsity head coach Kurt Rous is ready to use it.

He says he'll be starting five sophomores this week against Plainfield North: Keion Miller at wide receiver, Jared Lalanda at guard, Dan Haeffele at tackle, Tony Cashmore at linebacker and Luis Echeverria on the offensive and defensive line.

"I won't bring up a sophomore unless he's going to start," Rous said. "These guys are all good. They're all going to see a lot of time this year."

Speed vs. size: The field never actually tilted, but Grayslake Central was at a decided weight disadvantage last Friday against Johnsburg.

While the Skyhawks had three offensive linemen weighing in at more than 270 pounds, Central's front line averaged a relatively meager 205 pounds per man.

Yet it was the Rams' offensive front featuring John Curtis (6-0, 195), Chris Loeffl (6-2, 210), junior Charlie Risinger (6-2, 185), Nick Celeslie (6-1, 230), Jon Sell (6-3, 195) and Conner Hirt (6-3, 215) who cleared the way for 445 rushing yards in Grayslake's 36-20 victory.

"There's no doubt we try to play with speed," Rams coach Nick Goshe said. "Although big guys are nice, we don't necessarily need them because of all the speed we have."

It was an incredible offensive performance for Central, which never once reached fourth down. Junior Joey Valdivia rushed for 216 yards, Vinnie Culhane totaled 121 and Jahard Nelson added 109. Obviously, the offensive line did its job well.

"They've got to be nasty," Goshe said of his blockers. "They're undersized, so be nasty. Cary-Grove won a state title (last year) with a small group. So we showed film on Cary-Grove and we said, 'Guys, if they can do it, so can we. We have to get to work.' We still have a lot of work to do. With these backs, anything can pop at any time."

• Mike McGraw contributed to this report.