St. Charles Kick-A-Thon another smashing success

At their last football game of the season, St. Charles North and St. Charles East both looked deep at kicker.

The 18th annual Kick-A-Thon, held between sophomore and varsity games during last week’s Cross Town Classic at East’s Norris Stadium, enjoyed a record turnout.

After attracting 125 participants for the 2010 game, according to St. Charles East Kick-A-Thon co-chair Ann Byington, a record 144 community kickers lined up on Friday, They spanned the length of the field, with each school’s drill teams behind them. The 62 high-stepping girls were in fine Rockettes form.

Kick-A-Thon, started by former St. Charles High School drill team coach Kari Batka, was initially a fundraiser for that school’s dance squad. The very first effort raised more money than needed. In honor of St. Charles teacher Rose Drach — the wife of retired Saints and West Aurora football coach Buck Drach who succumbed to cancer — Batka and the girls donated the rest to American Cancer Society. Kick-A-Thon has since added the Living Well Cancer Resource Center in Geneva as a beneficiary.

Last Friday the long line of community kickers included representatives from all District 303 elementary and middle schools, as well as St. Charles Mayor Don DeWitte and District 303 superintendent Dr. Donald Schlomann.

Sean Daley counted off the 100 kicks. His daughter, Anna, is a St. Charles East junior who has leukemia; a bone marrow donor drive was held simultaneously in the field house, drawing some 150 people to join the donor registry, said Byington, who co-chaired the St. Charles East portion of Kick-A-Thon with Gretchen Murphy. Shirley Wehking was the St. Charles North chairwoman.

Over the past 17 years the Kick-A-Thon has helped energize people to donate more than $500,000 to the Fox Valley Chapter of the American Cancer Society and Living Well Cancer Resource Center.

“It’s astonishing how much we’ve been able to donate,” Byington said. “It’s so nice to be able to do it and so nice to get these girls involved. It gets these drill team girls to get accustomed to do for others.”

She’s No. 1

Augustana sophomore tennis player and Batavia graduate Kim Sawyer, first singles for Augustana, finished the fall portion of her season with a collegiate career record of 46-11. That gives her an .807 singles winning percentage, the best career mark in Augie history.

As a freshman in 2010-11 Sawyer split time between first and second doubles and went 29-7 to set a school record for single-season victories. This fall the right-hander went 17-4 at No. 1 singles.

Add the wins Sawyer contributed in doubles and she has 73 total victories for Augustana, on pace for 100 total wins by the end of her sophomore year. Only 15 female players in Vikings history have reached the century mark.

Helping Augustana to a fourth-place finish in the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin — which qualifies the Vikings to play in the Division III national tournament in the spring — Sawyer earned her second first-team all-conference honor with a second-place finish at No. 1 singles.

On Sept. 14 she was named the CCIW’s women’s tennis player of the week after going 5-0 in singles and 3-1 in doubles.

The power of prayer

The following story is not for the skeptical.

On the third play of Aurora Christian’s Oct. 7 football game at Immaculate Conception, Eagles receiver Chad Beebe ran a comeback route, caught Anthony Maddie’s pass, ran for 20 yards and was tackled hard near the sideline.

The IC defender landed square on Beebe’s left shoulder — the same shoulder where Beebe had broken his collarbone more than a week before the season had even started. In the game for the title of the Suburban Christian Conference Gold Division championship against the Knights, this was Beebe’s first game back.

The 5-foot-8 receiver played five more plays then complained of pain in the shoulder and headed toward the bench.

Next time his father, Eagles coach Don Beebe, looked over at his son, Chad had ice on the shoulder and a trainer was looking at his left foot — which he’d fractured before his sophomore year, and played on every game but one in Aurora Christian’s march to the quarterfinals.

“This is crazy,” Don Beebe said.

It got crazier.

Aurora Christian won the game 35-28, and with it the conference title. Then the Beebes, a deeply religious family, did what they could that weekend to set things right.

“Just praying,” Don Beebe said. “Give him the strength to get through this again.”

On Monday Chad had an MRI taken of his foot and a CT scan of the shoulder. That night the radiologist called with the news: a 50 percent re-break of the collarbone, and another fractured foot.

“He said he’s probably done for the year (thought) he might be able to come back for the state championship, which would be a little over seven weeks,” Don Beebe said.

Even with a team as strong as Aurora Christian, you can’t bank on that. That night the Beebes laid hands and prayed some more.

“This is happening for a reason,” Don Beebe said, “and we’re just going to trust in the Lord.”

Chad, though, was doubting.

“It was hard to get to sleep,” said the junior receiver. “I was questioning God in a way, like why, why did it happen again?”

He was reading the Bible at 1 a.m. when it hit him: “Who am I to even question God?”

He then was able to sleep.

On Tuesday, Don Beebe took his son to their family physician for a new set of X-rays.

“That next morning I felt different,” Chad said. “I was almost excited to go to the doctor’s in a way, to see what it was. I just had a good feeling about it.”

They — doctor, patient, father — were amazed by the results, particularly in comparison with the initial X-rays the Beebes had taken along.

Though the MRI showed a first-degree separation of the AC joint at the top of Chad’s left shoulder, there was no break in the collarbone. What’s more, the foot looked healed. Chad Beebe said it appeared that calcification had formed over the breaks.

“That foot’s never looked better, Don,” the doctor reported.

Now, the young receiver sat out of that week’s game against St. Edward due to the AC joint. He returned last week to catch 7 passes for 140 yards and 3 touchdowns in Aurora Christian’s 49-6 win over Aurora Central.

The explanation?

“Faith, plain and simple,” Don Beebe said. “Now, that sounds to some people like, ‘Really? Come on.’

“I can tell you if I wouldn’t have seen it with my own two eyes I wouldn’t have believed it myself.”

The coach already was a believer. Chad’s case was the clincher.

“I’m a big believer in the power of prayer, no doubt about that. And if God wants to do something He can do anything He wants. I’m not going to question Him, good or bad,” Beebe said.

“We were fully prepared to deal with a worst-case scenario — that he wasn’t going to play the rest of the season. But God had a different plan.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com