Covering Maroons a special experience

The scene, of all places, was a shower area in one of the locker rooms at Proviso West High School back in 1999.

There stood legendary Chicago King coach Landon "Sonny" Cox pacing back and forth after his team had just lost to Elgin in one of those shootout-type events.

A group of reporters waited afar for him. I think one of us asked if we could talk to him about the game. He saw us and offered no comment from the showers other than Elgin played a great game.

Welcome to the most recent glory days of Elgin High School boys basketball.

I was asked to write this piece and give my thoughts about Elgin's 1997-1998 season that culminated in the Maroons advancing to the Class AA state finals in Peoria. This year is the 10th anniversary of that team qualifying.

That season I was still fully entrenched in the girls beat, having chronicled names over the years like Parker, Schock, Bahe, Ettner, Knake, Kaschub, etc. But I still covered a number of Elgin boys regular-season contests and then followed the team on a regular basis as part of the boys beat the next season when I first arrived at the Daily Herald.

And while I have specific memories of games, plays and interviews from both seasons, what still sticks in my mind the most to this day is the overall body of work.

Call it the aura of Elgin High boys basketball.

This mystique was created by a number of factors. For starters, there's the obvious local area team having 3 future bona fide Division I impact players on the same roster. That goes without saying. Who wouldn't want to watch a team with that kind of talent?

But even stronger than Sean Harrington, Marcus Smallwood and Marcus Howard was the overall atmosphere when you watched an Elgin game during those years.

Chesbrough Field House is a place like no other in our area. Even these state-of-the-art new gymnasiums that are popping up at many area schools can't hold a candle to this facility.

Beyond just the sheer size (and many nights the Elgin side of the stands would be near capacity), there's the concession stand in the gym itself and the media balcony that made it feel like we were covering a college team.

And Elgin's fans were equally part of this run, from the Quindel brothers sitting in their usual places on the scoring table side to Marcus Howard's mother and her catchy chants in the bleachers underneath the far basket. And I can't forget about people like Frank Termini, or longtime Elgin follower Chappie Wells, who would call nightly into the sports department asking, "How did Elgin do tonight?"

Now take an already electric atmosphere and add in the constant media presence, especially at home games.

When you covered an Elgin game those 2 years, you would usually see, beyond the local print media, the two Chicago dailies, the standard WRMN-AM setup and the venerable Jeff Myers doing the local Jones cable broadcast.

John Radtke and I had a running inside joke (that still comes up occasionally to this day) about the amount of media that used to cover the team. The joke being there were so many members of the press there some nights that we might have to remind Elgin coach Jim Harrington not to forget about us. Something like, "Jim. Jim. Over here. Talk to me, Jim."

Which brings me to Harrington. Always very business-like and cordial, Harrington was a master at dealing with the media pressure. Harrington always gave you what you needed and treated you as an equal. If I had to draw up a list of area coaches over the years in terms of dealing with the media, Harrington might be on the top of the list.

The way he handled both his son's college recruitment to Illinois (gave the media equal treatment by setting up a small, but well-done press conference at school; none of this telling select media members garbage) and his retirement as coach from EHS (interviewing a teary-eyed Harrington in his coach's office is a fond memory of that run).

There was also a specific incident with Smallwood where he had to miss time because of a discipline issue. Harrington was straightforward about it, as was Smallwood. No run-around.

There was just something special (much like going to the Elgin pool office downstairs to talk to former Maroons girls coach Lee Turek, or going to former Hampshire girls coach Milt Awe's math classroom for a chat), about going into Harrington's office for that post-game media session.

His assistant coaches (Mike Termini, Jeff Smith, Rob Brault and Dr. Nick Bumbales, etc.) would usually be sitting in the background and we'd fire away until everybody got what they needed. Harrington's thoroughness usually meant few questions had to be asked.

In terms of specific memories from this timeframe, Sean chasing the school all-time scoring record (I seem to remember Sean being sick while getting close to the mark was a storyline) sticks out, as do the meetings with Dom Cannata's Larkin teams (the crowds at Larkin were always massive for this rivalry). The win over King was something to see. Smallwood more than held his own against King's XXXXX. And, of course, there was this run's final swan song in a loss to Schaumburg at the Prospect sectional final in 1999.

Simply put, I don't think we'll ever see anything like this again in our area.

The odds of 3 impact Division I recruits playing on the same team just aren't very high. All three were awesome talents in high school and enjoyed fruitful collegiate careers.

But even slimmer are the odds of ever replicating the overall experience of Elgin High boys basketball from 1997-1999.