Metea Valley sports program looks to build own traditions

The backs of their wrinkled, sweat-soaked T-shirts say it all: "Tradition Starts Today."

Hundreds of potential Metea Valley athletes have been working out on courts and fields across Indian Prairie Unit District 204 this summer preparing to become the first generation of Mustangs at the new high school that opens in mid-August along Eola Road in Aurora.

The athletes aren't the only ones feeling the heat. Athletic Director Tom Schweer, formerly of St. Charles North High School, is scrambling a bit himself to build an athletic department from scratch while keeping tabs on teams and coaches using far-flung facilities while waiting for Metea's to be completed.

"Getting camps going and trying to navigate our way through this logistical morass of being all over the district has been interesting," he said.

"Just about every day I spend an awful lot of time in the car, just going from Indian Plains (High School) to Waubonsie (Valley High School) to Granger (Middle School) and maybe over to the (Metea) site trying to make contact with coaches to make sure there's nobody at the camps that needs some assistance," Schweer said Thursday from the sidelines of football conditioning camp.

"It's a little bit like a traveling road show right now. I use the analogy that I'm almost an air-traffic controller just trying to make sure everybody's not trying to land on the same runway at the same time."

Schweer helped open St. Charles North in 2000, but he says scheduling and logistics have proven much more difficult than establishing a culture of pride and tradition for the freshmen and sophomores who will attend Metea this year. The school will include juniors next year and seniors the following year.

"I opened St. Charles North so this isn't totally a foreign experience, but to say that prepares you for the onslaught, I don't think is a very true statement," Schweer said. "I think you learn it's a big job and you never truly have your arms wrapped around the whole thing. You do your best to manage all the different points of impact your program is going to have."

Newly appointed Superintendent Kathy Birkett - who was principal when Neuqua Valley High School opened in south Naperville in 1997 - says she knows how hard everyone has been working to get ready, but she had a reality check a short time ago, when she still was deputy superintendent.

"I was driving to work down Eola Road and off to the right was this kid in full pads and black and gold. That's the first time it made the whole thing real to me," Birkett said.

"So I pulled into Indian Plains and I saw the kids lining up and I went inside and talked to the football coaches. I said 'Hey, I'm the deputy superintendent and I just saw this going down Eola Road and this school is for real now. We may not be in a building yet, but it's a real school. That kid is going to play for Metea Valley. That kid is Metea Valley.'"

Schweer says coaches have been working for months to establish a culture and tradition for Metea and the work already is paying off.

"Really, I think it comes from the head coaches as they develop that sense of community and team camaraderie," he said. "But had the coaches not done that work on the front end and really been prepared for those kids when they showed up, it could have been a whole different thing."

Girls cross-country coach Joy Braun says she knows her runners are ready for a great season.

"Camp is going great because there's a seriousness that the girls really want to work. They've seen that they can be varsity runners so they've been working their butts off just to go do it," Braun said. "Our goal is to compete in the state series and that's a real possibility for us."

Head varsity basketball coach Bob Vozza, who is running his camp in the stuffy Granger Middle School gymnasium, is treating the program like it's been around for a decade.

"Our varsity guys were freshmen last year so they know the drill and they know they need to step it up and lead this year," Vozza said. "So we're preparing for a great year of Mustang basketball."

Throughout the camps, there seems to be little concern about the 2010 school year when Metea's varsity teams, which will consist only of juniors and some sophomores, will go head-to-head with the conference's best seniors and juniors.

"We're not mailing it in because everything we do this year is to put us in position to be competitive next year. I've never been one to believe there's such a thing as a lost season," Schweer said. "Next year is not going to be a lost season. We're going to compete and if you compete against the Mustangs you better bring it because we've got great coaches and we've got great kids and great parents."

Regardless of how the teams finish, Schweer said he won't be measuring success based on wins and losses and he hopes students won't either. Instead, he wants them to focus on playing the game the right way or things like running with the proper stride to avoid injury.

"I put the highest value on the interaction between the kids and the coaches. That is clearly where our success will lie," he said. "You can talk about new helmets and new swimming pools and all of those things, which are all great, but our success will really come from the quality of the interaction between our coaches and our kids."

It wouldn't break anybody's heart, of course, to beat a team or two from sister schools Waubonsie and Neuqua.

"Next year as we're varsity players we'll be able to play against the guys we grew close to and played with in our first year at Waubonsie," said sophomore Justin Pruitt, who's hoping to win a spot on the football team's offensive line. "I'm excited because it will show we can compete against guys who are older than us and have more experience."

Sophomore runner Amanda Levin is more excited about being a leader on the cross-country squad in only her second year after spending her freshman season as a Waubonsie Warrior.

"We have to start being leaders now. We were so used to relying on the upper classmen to help us, but that's us now," Levin said after a couple-mile run through the neighborhood around Indian Plains High School. "We have to build everything up from new. We can't rely on our previous Warrior chants that we were used to. We're not Warriors any more."