Carmel satisfied with its stand on stadium issue

Carmel has just four home football games on its schedule this season, but it almost had none.

During maintenance of the home-side bleachers at the school's stadium earlier this month, an engineer found that the south half of the structure, which is about 40 years old, needed either substantial reinforcements or to be replaced.

The north half of the home-side structure was replaced eight years ago and is sound.

"I found out about this right around when we started doubles," said Carmel head football coach and athletic director Andy Bitto. "At first, because of how close we were to the season starting, we were thinking that we were going to have to give serious consideration to playing every game on the road. It was pretty close to coming to that."

But Bitto says that the engineer was able to come up with a solution that will allow Carmel to continue to utilize a significant portion of the bleachers.

The entire bottom half of the compromised seating area will be reinforced with steel cross bars to meet current safety standards. Meanwhile, the upper rows of bleachers in the area will be roped off and fans will not be allowed to sit there.

Temporary bleachers will be erected in the end zones to make up for the loss of seating.

"This is going to affect only about 400 to 500 seats on that south end and we're bringing in at least 600 more seats," Bitto said. "So we'll actually have more room."

The Corsairs open the season tonight at Gately Stadium against Morgan Park. Bitto says that work on the bleachers should be completed over the weekend and that the stadium should be ready for next week's home mega-tilt against neighborhood rival Libertyville.

Then, there will be only three more home games -- against Marian Catholic on Sept. 7, St. Joseph on Sept. 21 and Nazareth on Oct. 5.

According to Bitto, Carmel plans to tear down and rebuild the south end of the home bleachers as well as the press box as soon as the season is over.

"This will actually be good in the long run," Bitto said. "We're going to redo that whole area and actually expand the stadium."

New digs: Lake Forest is getting a new address.

No, the school isn't moving, just its athletic facilities.

In the 1970s, Lake Forest used to have two campuses, the main one that it uses now along McKinley Road and a freshman-only campus at the corner of Waukegan and Townline Roads.

But in recent years, the freshman campus has sat empty. So, now, after some substantial renovations, it will be used as the athletic campus.

Beginning with their home opener Sept. 1 against Deerfield, the Scouts will play football games at the new West Campus stadium, which comes complete with not only new bleachers, a new press box and a new concession area, but a new FieldTurf playing surface.

"It looks beautiful," Lake Forest coach Chuck Spagnoli said. "They're still finishing up over there so we haven't been able to actually play on the field yet, but it's going to be nice.

"The whole stadium is nice. The home side kind of reminds me of Stevenson and the visitor side is like Libertyville. I think we'll be able to seat around 4,000."

But fans won't be sitting under the lights.

Lake Forest will remain the only North Suburban Conference team to not have lights at its football stadium.

"There are no lights...yet," Spagnoli said. "We've been hearing that there will be lights in the future, which we would love. We would love to play under the lights."

For kicks: Good kickers at the high school level can be hard to find, so coaches are looking more and more to non-football players for help.

Plucking steel-legged athletes off the school's soccer team has become a popular practice in recent years and Libertyville coach Randy Kuceyeski can now see why.

His kicker this season will be soccer player Alvaro Castro, a senior who will continue to play soccer while also kicking for the football team on the side. Kuceyeski says conflicts between the two teams should be minimal, but that Castro's first priority will be soccer.

"We were in need of a kicker and Alvaro was interested in playing," Kuceyeski said. "We're pretty excited because he's going to be a great weapon for us. He's one of the best kickers I've seen.

"He's unbelievably strong. He consistently puts the ball (on kickoffs) in the end zone. And he kicked a 57-yarder (field goal) in practice the other day. He's unbelievable."

Search team: Stevenson found itself in a little bit of a scheduling pickle over the off-season.

The Patriots discovered one day that they didn't have an opening game.

"We thought we were going to play Elk Grove again in Week 1 and then we found out that they had dropped us and never told us," Stevenson coach Bill Mitz said. "So we had to start calling everywhere to look for a game."

And Mitz means just about everywhere.

Since most teams around the area book their schedules several years out, it's not easy to find a single game on short notice. So Mitz and his assistants even considered going into Indiana for a game.

But then word came that York dropped Loyola and Mitz was only too happy to lock in with the Wilmette Catholic school.

Stevenson hosts Loyola tonight.

"We would much rather stay around here than drive all the way to Indiana," Mitz said. "The one concession was that Loyola wanted a home game next year, so this year we play them at our place and that gives us six home games. That means that next year, we'll only have three home games.

"But it was worth it to play a good opponent right in our backyard."

Stevenson and Loyola have faced off only one other time on the football field -- way back in 1990. It was a state playoff game and Loyola won 10-7.

From that point on, Mitz was eager to schedule a series with Loyola, especially since its former coach was the late John Hoerster, a dear friend of his.

Hoerster died several years ago of a heart attack.

"We just couldn't ever get our schedules to match up," Mitz said. "It's too bad, because we wanted to play each other. We had coached in some all-star games together. I knew his wife real well. We were really good friends."

Numbers game: It helps to get to the state championship game.

A team usually gets more fans -- and in some cases, it gets more players.

Lake Zurich has definitely seen its numbers swell since advancing all the way to the Class 7A state championship game last November.

Last year, the Bears' roster totaled 98 players between both the varsity and sophomore teams.

This year, there are 95 players on the freshman team alone. Overall, there are about 215 players program-wide.

In fact, the Bears have so many players out this year that additional equipment had to be purchased and more coaches had to be added to the staff.

"Even our youth programs are getting more kids than ever before," Lake Zurich coach Bryan Stortz said. "Since we got downstate, we've definitely seen more interest and more involvement in football throughout the entire community. It's great and we'll find a place for everybody.

"A lot of times, you get kids who may not be that big or that talented when they're younger and by the time they're juniors and seniors they wind up being your best players because they've had that chance to grow. If guys come out, we don't want to say no because we don't want to discourage them at that young age when they could eventually be very good."

Stortz says that he has 14 coaches on staff and that he added three volunteer assistants to help handle the load.

Thunder rule: It used to be that when a bolt of lightning was seen in the skies, an outdoor IHSA athletic contest was postponed for 30 minutes while the teams and fans were asked to take shelter.

This year, the IHSA has instituted a new weather policy.

Now, the mere sound of thunder will be treated in the same manner. But only for IHSA state tournament games.

However, some individual conferences are extending that rule to regular season games and the North Suburban Conference is one of them.

"The IHSA's Sports Medicine Advisory Committee recommended this policy and they're the experts," Stevenson athletic director John Martin said. "It's about safety. The IHSA doesn't really want to get involved in anything other than the state tournaments, so it's up to the conferences outside of that. And I think most conferences are going to handle this in the same way during the regular season."

Martin says a common concern shared by coaches and athletic directors was that delaying underlevel games for too long could create an excessively late start time for varsity games.

In the North Suburban Conference, the decision was made to postpone the sophomore game until the next available day so that the varsity game starts as close to on time as possible.

Quote of the week: New Grayslake Central coach Nick Goshe on how his offense, based on the offense at Division III power Mount Union College, where he both played and coached, has given him instant credibility with his players: "I've shown them tapes of it, so for them to see it in action, and working at the college level, they know it's not just something I drew up in the sandbox."