Game on for Huntley High School athletes

Games on.

Huntley High School buzzed with activity Wednesday afternoon as student-athletes returned for practices in several sports.

The Huntley Unit District 158 school board and teachers union agreed to a new contract early Wednesday morning, ending a strike that canceled classes and all extracurricular activities, including athletic contests and practices, since Monday. The agreement was reached too late to avoid the cancellation of Wednesday athletic contests, however, practices did resume in boys varsity soccer, all levels of tennis, varsity cheerleading and all levels of football for those who could attend on short notice.

"We couldn't get a hold of all the kids today," Huntley varsity football coach Steve Graves said. "A lot of them are out of town doing different things, so we won't count (Wednesday) as an unexcused practice. We'll do what we can today with the partial team that shows up and have one full practice Thursday. It's better than none.

"At least we're playing football."

Friday's scheduled football games at Jacobs will go on as scheduled, which means Jacobs' homecoming festivities will center around a football game instead of boys soccer, which had been the contingency plan.

News of the settlement came as a relief to the varsity football players. The Red Raiders are 3-0 and off to their best start in seven years.

"It feels really good to be back," junior Hubert Radom said. "We had a couple of days off, which gave us all time to chill, but I think we're all ready to be back. We've been conditioning pretty hard since summer, so two days off won't really affect us very much."

The football players did what they could to stay sharp without supervision for a days.

"A couple of us got together a few times and went over some plays, but it wasn't real organized, obviously," junior Clayton Oates said.

That's the way it had to be, according to Graves, who said his staff avoided any contact with the players during the labor negotiations.

"We wanted our hands to be clean," Graves said. "In order to do that we knew we had to stay away from them and that's what we did. I'm not going to be going into the next few weeks looking over my shoulder. We kept it honest and clean and what (the players) did, I have no idea."