The Hughes family tradition continues on the West Chicago sidelines

It’ll be tough, but West Chicago is seeking its third straight football playoff qualification, which for the Wildcats would be a first.

“He would have been very excited,” Cindy Macko said of her father, Clarence “Ren” Hughes Jr., a 1962 graduate of the school, who died in July at 81.

Maybe more than the team’s recent success, Hughes would have been proud to see his daughter literally following in his footsteps.

For nearly a half century the Hughes brothers — Ren and younger brother Dennis, 76, a 1967 WeGo graduate — walked the sidelines compiling West Chicago football stats. Ren did the offense, Dennis the defense.

“It was great,” Dennis Hughes said.

“We used to just hang out together on Friday nights,” he said. “That’s what we did, just me and him. It was wonderful to be together nine weeks on a Friday night together, just to — no offense to our families — but just to get away.”

It had been “me and him” all their lives. Despite the age difference Ren Hughes walked his little brother to Carrie Roundy Kindergarten in West Chicago, and once Ren and his friends were able to drive, Ren insisted that his brother cruise with them.

“He used to tell his buddies, it’s a package deal,” Dennis Hughes said.

As it was on the sidelines at West Chicago High School, which has matriculated four Hughes generations starting with parents Clarence Sr. and Dolorus, in 1935.

Doing stats as a team could get colorful, neither brother bashful in contesting what they deemed a bad call.

Ren Hughes once threw an official’s penalty flag over the stadium bleachers in disgust, his daughter recalled. Another time, after an incomplete pass Hughes thought should have been ruled pass interference, rather than toss the stray football to the official he launched it in the opposite direction.

“He watched the rest of the game in the press box, of course, because they kicked him out,” Dennis Hughes recalled.

When former athletic director Doug Mullaney offered the brothers a free dinner if they remained penalty-free for an entire season, Hughes said, they simmered down.

Good times … until around 2021, in the latter stages of Ren Hughes’ 48 seasons doing stats. He was forgetting things he’d done for decades, would ask Dennis the same questions minutes apart.

“That’s when I finally told Cindy — because Cindy’s his oldest (child) — ‘You probably need to come to the games and just watch your dad.’ I said, ‘I think he’s slipping.’

“And she did.”

“It was just nice spending time with him,” said Macko, a 1983 graduate and former Pep Club president. “He was doing the teaching.”

She didn’t need much help. In her last two years of high school, Macko joined Ren Hughes compiling Wildcats statistics. After she graduated her younger sister, Brenda, did it for two years.

This season is Macko’s fourth in her father’s old job tallying offensive numbers while Dennis Hughes handles the defense.

“I still do it by hand on the same sheets that he used,” said Macko, who lives in the house her father and uncle once did, about three blocks from the high school.

Ren Hughes, who died of Alzheimer’s disease July 22 at Covenant Living Holmstad in Batavia, was honored with Dennis on the field in 2023 for their service to the school. Both served as president of the Community High School District 94 Educational Foundation.

This Oct. 3 at its homecoming game, West Chicago held a moment of silence in Ren Hughes’ honor.

And it is an honor for Macko to follow her father’s footsteps.

“I really enjoy it. It felt really great to jump in and help my dad and take over where he left off,” she said.

“I enjoy spending the time with my uncle, and my Friday nights have been free for years since my husband (John) works nights. It was a no-brainer, really, to just jump in.”

Dennis Hughes, who cherishes the working relationship with a niece he once babysat, said he’ll keep the defensive numbers “until I can’t walk anymore.”

Cindy Macko is of the same mind. She also can’t help but consider the line of succession.

“I’m going to do it as long as I can,” she said. “It’s like a family thing now. And I’m thinking, which one of my grandkids might want to take over.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com