Eagles keep their poise, add to area's amazing run of success
Isn't a shame nobody wins anything around here?
Just week after week with nothing to write about. Another day without a five-column photo of smiling kids hugging their teammates and coaches, clutching a state trophy.
Certainly not a girls state cross country championship - two straight now - by Geneva one week.
Or a St. Charles East thriller to claim the volleyball state title the next.
Or Rosary blowing away the rest of the state to win a third straight girls swimming state championship this week.
That's three state champions in three weeks for this little neck of the state - a little neck that needs to be renamed Championship City, USA.
And all we get to cap the fall season next weekend is not one but two teams playing for a state football title.
Can you imagine five state champions in a four-week stretch in the Tri-Cities area?
Aurora Christian followed Geneva's heart-stopper Friday night with an equally nerve-racking 29-20 win at Richmond-Burton Saturday in the Class 4A semifinals.
The result is history on numerous levels: Aurora Christian's first trip to state, their first 13-win season, the chance to become the first Aurora school to win a state football championship.
Or how about this? How many players who have won a Super Bowl have also coached a high school team to a state championship? That's got to be a first.
Eagles coach Don Beebe used some of his NFL experience to help the Eagles keep their cool when Saturday's game was anything but.
"What wins really big games? This is the difference between the Buffalo Bills and the Green Bay Packers," Beebe said. "At Buffalo we couldn't control our emotions during the course of the game. Our emotions got too high and then got too low. You'd thought we were down 30 points when we made a turnover. Well, Green Bay didn't handle it that way. We just kept going and kept plugging away and kept making plays.
"That's what I'm trying to teach these kids, especially the last two weeks, because the bigger the game, the bigger the emotion. You can get yourself so high, so low, so fast, you'll just tank it. There was many a times we could have got down, and we just kept plugging away."
The Eagles did indeed, coming from behind to win a game for the first time in the playoffs and only the second time all year. The only other game they trailed was the season-opener against Immaculate Conception when the Eagles were without All-State wide receiver Matt Morse.
"We knew we had to keep our emotions, we knew we couldn't go on any emotional roller-coasters," said two-way lineman Braxton Warner, a starter all year on the offensive line who has also played defense the past two weeks.
"We just had to be reminded throughout the game to keep steady emotions and not get out of whack or anything."
The game got out of whack several times. It started a defensive battle, then turned into Batavia-Huntley II with a stretch of four touchdowns in 3 minutes, 51 seconds in the second quarter.
Yet, Aurora Christian never got rattled. You couldn't script a better playoff run for the Eagles, actually beginning a year ago not long after a season-ending loss to Plano in the Class 3A semifinals.
"We were in the weight room the next week working our butts off and coming together as a team," Warner said.
The 6-point loss to Plano became the team's mantra this year.
"That really motivated us," Morse said. "For us to be going down to state now is an unreal feeling. A lot of us remember the empty feeling, losing by 6 points, we know we could have won that game. We didn't want that to happen again."
It almost did. Maybe it was Richmond-Burton's 8-4 record, maybe it was hard to follow last week's win over 7-time defending state champion Driscoll, but the Eagles were not themselves while falling behind 14-13 at halftime.
"Definitely a wake-up call," said wide receiver and defensive back Zac Copple, who celebrated his 18th birthday Saturday with a trip to state.
"I can't speak for everyone, but it just seemed some guys were looking past this team, looking toward state, I don't know. That was a real wake-up call."
"We came out flat a little and maybe overlooked this team a little," said quarterback Jordan Roberts, whose 3 touchdown passes extended his state record to 122, and his 271 passing yards pushed his record to 9.390.
Beebe also woke up the team at halftime.
"He's amazing," Copple said. "He gets me pumped up about doing anything."
Aurora Christian reached state despite moving up a class to 4A this year. The Eagles didn't wince, avenging a loss to Plano, ending Driscoll's reign and winning a hard-fought tester on the road.
"It's just an amazing feeling, everything we have been through," Warner said.
Yes, amazing, and one this area is becoming all to used to seeing.
jlemon@dailyherald.com