OK, we can wait one more day
MENDOTA -- You couldn't have asked for a better night for football than Friday in Mendota.
Comfortable temperatures. A light breeze. Not a drop of rain. Maybe a few too many mosquitoes, but after the week we've had, that seems like nitpicking.
And all the pageantry -- the band, the full stands, the Friday night lights -- that makes high school football so special.
Just what you want for the opening night of the season.
Only there was a big part missing. Make that several big parts.
Like Batavia. And St. Charles East and North. Geneva. Kaneland. West Aurora.
Friday was a day at the Daily Herald office we normally experience in April. The fax machine spits out a rained out tennis match, or a colded-out baseball game.
Only this Friday the cancellations were coming in just as fast as they do in the spring, but for football games. Not just any football games. Opening night football games.
That's what Thursday's storm -- the worst the area has seen in almost 50 years -- will do. That and the threat of more rain Friday night didn't make any school want to see its football field torn to pieces in the first game of the year.
It made the decision not to play a lot easier, even though the postponements still caused their share of logistical headaches for a lot of people. If you think the "will we or won't we" day was hard on parents, players, officials and fans, how about the coaches?
"What a week," St. Charles North's Mark Gould said.
The week will now extend to Saturday for St. Charles North (at Cary-Grove tonight), along with Dundee-Crown at Geneva, West Aurora at East Aurora, Batavia at St. Charles East and Burlington Central at Kaneland.
At Geneva it wasn't hard pushing the home opener to today.
"The field is in good shape ... hoping not to tear up for the season," Vikings coach Rob Wicinski said. "Not a tough decision. The Saturday forecast helped with the decision."
The night in Mendota didn't go perfectly for Aurora Central in a 43-26 loss, but the Chargers, while thin as could be on the defensive line, showed they should be able to move the ball this year. Junior quarterback Mike Adams took a beating while combining for more than 300 passing and rushing yards and 3 touchdowns.
Adams staked the Chargers to a 23-20 lead in the third quarter, only to see Mendota outscore ACC 20-6 in the fourth quarter, a Chargers team with eight players going both ways, including Adams.
"For two-and-a-half quarters he was tough," his coach Mike Curry said. "But he's a human being. He's going to get tired. They've got a hard-hitting team. They were coming after him."
As for the rest of the area? Fans of Batavia, Geneva, Kaneland, St. Charles East and St. Charles North will have to wait until the Saturday night lights come on to see if their players step up the way Adams did.
It will be an end to a wild first weekend, one that started with the disappointment of all the postponements Friday but should end with some Saturday night fireworks and good weather. Maybe the optimistic fan can look at it like this: We've waited nine months since Batavia's appearance in the Class 6A championship game for high school football to return.
What's one more day?
jlemon@dailyherald.com