The Saints come marching back to St. Charles to celebrate past state championship squads
The 1990s currently are peak nostalgia. Deservedly so in St. Charles.
St. Charles High School won 25 state titles in numerous sports in that decade before St. Charles North helped usher in the new millennium and the old high school became St. Charles East.
The coach of one of those Saints juggernauts, Paul Keenan, whose boys soccer teams went 205-22-19 from 1991-99, is recognizing the 30th anniversary season of the program’s 1995 state championship with a reunion.
Since a number of those boys also played on St. Charles’ 1996 repeat champs, they’ll be honored, too.
“It’s really just a get-together, it’s not going to be anything formal, there’s not going to be a whole lot of speeches, it’s just a chance to get together. It’s hard to believe it’s 30 years on,” said Keenan, a Northern Ireland native who lives in Niles.
Some won’t be able to make it, like All-American Derek Shanahan, now living in Colorado. But his Colorado neighbor, Kevin Brady, is among those making the trip, and Keenan was picking up 40 special T-shirts Wednesday for those who do.
One championship player is easy to find. Josh Robinson is boys coach at Metea Valley, which comes to Norris Stadium at 11 a.m. Saturday to play in the St. Charles Invitational.
At halftime, Robinson and the 1995-96 championship Saints will be saluted on the field.
Otherwise, Keenan said everyone will meet at school Friday with coach Vince DiNuzzo’s current team, have a scrimmage and go out to eat. They’ll reconvene Saturday for the game, followed by a trip to a St. Charles pub.
Keenan obviously has an affinity for that special time. He praised everyone from parents to the booster club to those who pitched in behind the scenes such as Don “Doc” Nielsen and Pat Frye, plus assistant coaches like Eddie Puskarich, who will come in from Plano, Tex.
Keenan said his players, pretty smart guys in high school, have done well for themselves.
“You could see they had success written all over them on the field and off the field,” Keenan said.
“It’s amazing that it’s been 30 years, I’m just so looking forward to catching up. We’ll talk soccer, but we’ll talk a lot of things.”
Those perfect Broncos
When Montini football beat Crete-Monee 38-15 on Nov. 28, 2015, it gave the Broncos the Class 6A title and their sixth state championship. They added No. 7 last season.
The 2015 season was Montini’s sole undefeated campaign, a perfect 14-0.
The school is celebrating that at its opener 7:30 p.m. Friday at John Duffy Memorial Stadium in Lombard, where the Broncos host Michigan’s Lumen Christi, a 14-time state champion and three-time defending champ within its class.
A reception will be held before the game at Montini’s Vince Gavin Stadium Club, with personnel introduced on the field at halftime.
“It sounds like there’s 30 or so kids coming back,” said Montini athletic director Brian Casey, quarterbacks coach for that 2015 unit.
“It’ll be fun to see those kids again. It was a fun bunch, a lot of personalities,” he said.
None bigger than Joe Spivak, a junior two-way lineman on the 2015 team. A gregarious, 6-foot mauler, Spivak went from being a Northwestern University senior honored by Philadelphia-based Uplifting Athletes to his current incarnation as “Tank Ledger” on the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) circuit.
Spivak will be there, Casey said, and other players such as receiver Tyler Millikan and center Sam Detmers.
Retired coach Chris Andriano is scheduled to attend, along with former offensive coordinator Robert Aurelio and receivers coach Joe DiCanio, Casey said.
Other coaches like John Grayson, Steve Nye, and Kyle Petros are coaching elsewhere and will show up later at wherever the party continues.
Mike Bukovsky, Andriano’s defensive coordinator, is now, of course, the Broncos’ head coach.
“A special team in anybody’s mind, really,” Andriano said, “but when you go 14-0 and you do it with the class that we did and the coaches and players that we had, I’m very proud of them all.”
Montini opened that season by beating Maine South, East St. Louis and St. Rita.
Casey admitted the 2015 achievement is “still kind of new” as anniversaries go, but there’s never a wrong time to celebrate this sort of thing.
“It’ll be fun to have that group back and on campus that day and that evening, and around our current kids,” he said. “That team’s still the poster child for being the only undefeated team. It gives them something to aspire to.”
doberhelman@dailyherald.com