Now they're all just Spartans
Some were Rams as kids. Others were Lancers.
Now the St. Francis Spartans football team is, in the words of two-year starter Ryan O'Donnell, "doing the dream that everyone else is trying to go for."
On Saturday morning O'Donnell, his old pal from the Wheaton Rams, lineman Ryan Spatz, and the rest of the Spartans will play in St. Francis' first football state championship game, aiming to take down mighty Metamora for the Class 5A title (10 a.m., Channel 50).
Seemingly out of nowhere, or at least out of a 3-6 season in 2007, St. Francis (12-1) explodes into the big show.
"Right now it still hasn't sunk in yet," said three-year starting lineman Nate Olver, who played grade-school football for the St. Michael's Lancers in Wheaton with, among others, high school teammates Stan Bobowski, Mark Kachmer and Ryan Ferguson.
"We're all pretty tight, and a lot of us have known each other for a while," Olver said.
Metamora (13-0) brings in a 27-game winning streak, going unbeaten in 2007 to win the 5A title. If the Redbirds believe they'll intimidate underdog St. Francis they can check with Driscoll, Marian Central, Nazareth and Montini to see how that worked.
"We always feel we're kind of labeled as underdogs," O'Donnell said, "because we're a small school and we're in the middle of Wheaton."
The players have rallied around second-year St. Francis coach Greg Purnell, a leader who with last week's 21-20 semifinal win over Kankakee earned his 200th career victory spanning 26 seasons.
Diminutive in stature, Purnell logs a large resume with four state titles and seven championship appearances in Iowa, where he's a hall of fame inductee.
St. Francis' development officer is obviously a people person.
"He's the one that instilled the mentality to us," said senior captain Kachmer, who with fellow running back Bobowski will challenge Metamora to contain a combined 3,064 yards rushing - 1,864 and 30 touchdowns by Kachmer.
"He turned the program around," Kachmer said. "He put it in our heads that we can be a great football team and we can change the perception of the school.
"Right when he got here he got all the football players together and talked to us about making football a priority at school. He just stuck with it with all of us. He just got under our skin and made us want to play football for him."
That's easy to do when the boss sprays praise around like freshly uncorked champagne.
As with senior quarterback Jeff Reckards, for example.
"One of the most accurate short passers I've ever worked with," Purnell said.
Or for the leadership of his 12 seniors.
"They've taken care of the motivation," the coach said. "They're always pulling the kids together, making the kids work harder."
Purnell mentioned a sign posted at the Spartans' football field that says: "St. Francis football: Where no one cares who gets the credit."
"Just give us two and a half hours and stay focused on what you're doing and how you're trying to do it," is the crux of Purnell's message. "It's led to some success because we have talented kids who have bought into what we're doing."
Just two and a half more hours are left in some of these players' decade-long careers.
"We're going to approach it like any other game," Kachmer said. "Obviously, on a much bigger stage."