Christian Liberty’s Bennett gets busier
Three-sport athletes may be a dying breed but three-sport varsity head coaches are a creation from generations ago or comic strips.
Jed Bennett played basketball, soccer and baseball at Christian Liberty before he graduated in 2004. The irony is he wouldn’t have envisioned himself returning to coach at all.
“When I left high school I never dreamed I’d be back here,” Bennett said. “It wasn’t in my future thinking at all. Then I got an offer to coach and I ended up loving it.”
So much that Bennett is now in charge of all three sports. He took over the basketball program this summer when Ken Kramer stepped down because of work and family considerations.
Bennett took over the baseball program last spring and this fall led Christian Liberty to its first regional title in a boys sport in soccer. He’s about as close as anyone would come these days to the real-life version of comic strip character Gil Thorp.
“I love it,” Bennett said. “When Ken couldn’t do it again, I had coached the frosh-soph team the last two years so it made sense for me to take over.
“The other reason I feel good about coaching three sports is because I can right now.”
Christian Liberty athletic director Steve Rowland is impressed with the passion Bennett has for coaching.
“He is the most driven young coach I have ever seen,” said Rowland, who gave up his girls basketball head coaching position to assist Bennett. “He can’t learn enough and is always looking for more clinics, books and videos to make himself a better coach.
“I really appreciate his love for the sports, and it doesn’t hurt that he played two of his three sports in college (soccer and baseball at Dordt College in Iowa) so the kids really get attached to him.”
Especially varsity soccer and basketball players such as Luke Comerouski and Mike Hennek.
“It really has gone very smoothly,” Bennett said. “There are a lot of the same players I coach in soccer and a couple I coach in all three sports. They’ll be absolutely sick of me but that’s OK.”
Odd schedule: The East Suburban Catholic Conference’s decision to cut its league schedule by one-third to eight games put teams such as St. Viator in a scramble mode to fill all of its regular-season dates.
And that, along with other schedule issues, has the Lions playing their last Friday night regular-season game Jan. 20 at home against Nazareth. Their last Saturday game is Jan. 28 at Marian Catholic.
“The way the schedule is set up is somewhat strange,” first-year Viator coach Mike Howland said of its last six games played on weeknights. “It will definitely be an adjustment and we’re going to have to make due.
The 4-0 Lions are at Wheaton Academy tonight and open ESCC play Dec. 9 at St. Patrick. The eight-game schedule leaves little to no margin for error.
“I don’t like the whole change and it doesn’t seem like it’s big enough,” Howland said. “It seems like such a small sample size.
“You have to be ready to go, especially early on, because you can lose the conference race in a hurry.”
On the road again: The replacement of the floor in the Rolling Meadows gym has put its home opener on Jan. 3 against Barrington.
“I tell people it’s like the Bulls’ circus trip,” joked Meadows coach Kevin Katovich. “Hopefully we can come back and be successful.”
Meadows opens Mid-Suburban East play at approximately 7:30 p.m. today at Buffalo Grove after the girls varsity game. The Mustangs play their only game at Forest View at 6 p.m. Saturday against Hoffman Estates.
Katovich said in the preseason there are times his team practices in the morning in the Meadows field house and other times it practices after school at Forest View.
“It’s been OK,” Katovich said. “This group is so mentally strong it doesn’t faze them.
“I don’t think it affects the kids at all. I thought it would be much worse than it’s been.”
The upside starting in mid-January will be seven consecutive home games. Katovich said Meadows will also get to showcase its new floor in the postseason since it will be hosting a Class 4A regional.
North of the border: Buffalo Grove will be heading up to Wisconsin on Saturday to play Milwaukee Morse-Marshall at 8:15 p.m. in the Terry Porter Classic at South Milwaukee High School.
BG coach Ryan O’Connor said his team played South Milwaukee a couple of years ago in a summer tournament at Loyola. He said the opportunity to play in the regular season arose when Zion-Benton dropped the Bison from its schedule.
“I called and said we’d like to go up there,” O’Connor said. “I wanted to do some fun stuff with our nonconference schedule.”
Milwaukee Marshall was 11-10 last year but returns its top three scorers — including second-team all-city pick Nick Allen (18 ppg).
The two day event is named after South Milwaukee graduate Terry Porter, who played for four NBA teams from 1985-2002. Porter made two all-star teams and had his uniform No. 30 retired by the Portland Trail Blazers.
MSL scheduling: The girls will play first at 6 p.m. followed by the boys today in MSL doubleheaders with Elk Grove at Prospect, Fremd at Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates at Conant, Barrington at Palatine and Meadows at BG. The Hersey at Wheeling boys game starts at 7:30 p.m. since the Hersey girls play Crane in the Maine West Tip-Off Classic at 8 p.m.
All of the MSL’s Saturday boys division and crossover games will be 6 p.m. varsity starts this season.