For Wheaton Academy's Pell brothers, football is a snap

The Pell brothers, Wheaton Academy sophomore Aaron and senior Brian, have admittedly discussed their differences over the rare wrestling match.

Any hard feelings were fleeting because as their father, Jeff, said, "they never competed at anything."

Team sports were to Brian as gymnastics and karate were to Aaron. The older boy sings in Wheaton Academy's choir. Aaron learned the instruments. They share brains - Brian has a 4.4 grade-point average, Aaron a 4.8 - but not much else.

A lack of rivalry is why Jeff Pell said, "They were as close as brothers could be."

Now they've grown apart... by about 5 yards.

Aaron Pell is in just his second year playing football, but he's the Warriors' starting varsity center, sending shotgun snaps back to Brian at quarterback.

"The line coaches at our school have done a great job," said Brian, a 2008 all-Private School League pick, passing for 1,979 yards and 20 touchdowns. "He's stepped right into it. Honestly, he's one of most consistent linemen we've had. I haven't had to do much."

They benefit by the ability to take their work home with them.

"They worked on snaps all summer and at home in the back yard," said Wheaton Academy coach Ben Wilson, who coming into Friday's game against Aurora Christian has the Warriors at 3-0 for the first time since well before the school suspended the program in 1989. Varsity football returned in 2007.

Brian has long received expert coaching first as a lineman as the family followed employment from Florida to Utah to New York, back to Florida and finally to Streamwood. He shifted to quarterback in Bartlett youth leagues; graduated Hawks quarterback Josh Hasenberg showed him the basics.

Former Wheaton Academy assistant coach Chris DuBos recruited Aaron as an eighth-grader, out of the Warriors' weight room. Aaron Pell benches 225 pounds, squats 400.

"One day he said you would be great as a lineman," said Aaron, the same 5 feet, 10 inches as Brian but 45 pounds heavier. "Eventually I said, 'OK, I'll try it.'

"I kind of got out there and they were like, 'We need a center.' And I said, 'OK.' "

After a year of seasoning on junior varsity, there remains the occasional technical blip.

"Is that a pass?" Aaron might ask his brother about a play call.

The focus has mainly been honing Aaron's long snap - "It became almost a personal thing," he said - while Brian's mission has been helping his brother "cope with the emotions of Friday night."

"Obviously he's giving me knowledge and the camaraderie of helping me fit into a team," Aaron said. "Definitely (Brian helps with) the team mentality, which I was not familiar with coming from my background in karate and gymnastics."

Being brothers, they do have a slight measure of telepathy that, for instance, allows them to identify a blitz coming from the inside.

And, being brothers, Aaron saw a higher calling in his coming out for football.

"One of the driving forces was the fact that I would eventually be able to defend my brother, and that was the key thing," he said. "I would be a part of the wall that kept my brother from quote, unquote, getting killed."

Great in the pool, deep at coach

Naperville Central just swept the IHSA coaching awards for water polo. Boys coach Bill Salentine and girls coach Jeff Plackett each earned respective nods for coach of the year.

"Without the support of my players, their parents, my coaching staff and the school administration none of this would have been possible," said Salentine, a two-time winner. He got the award in 2006 as well as Illinois Water Polo Association boys coach of the year.

Salentine, 207-56-2 over nine seasons since Redhawks water polo joined IHSA ranks, finished in third place in 2009 at 31-4, all 4 losses to state champion Fenwick. Redhawks all-state forward Mark Menis returns from that club.

"In my opinion it is an award for more than just our wins and losses, or what place we finished at the end of the year," said Salentine, who started water polo as a club at Naperville Central when he started teaching there in 1992.

"It is an award for the entire program, not just for me. It is for all our players, our assistant coaches and the school."

With a 31-3 record in 2009, Plackett improved his seven-year career mark to 174-49. The girls finished fourth in state in 2008 and were even better last season. Junior first-team all-state selection Claire Fleming, seniors Haley Nelson and Emily Wooten and junior goalie Sam Virella led Naperville Central to second place.

"Obviously, you don't win an award like this without a group of girls who are willing to work hard," said Plackett, deflecting credit to others just like Salentine.

"And it's an extra honor to win this award with Bill, one of my closest friends outside the pool," Plackett said. "He gave me my first opportunity as an assistant with the boys squad in 2002 when Naperville Central made its first state appearance, and to have someone with his resume to bounce ideas off certainly makes my job easier."

Figures are in and up

Distributed to the media Tuesday by Matt Troha of the Illinois High School Association, the National Federation of High School Associations' annual Sports Participation Survey found that prep sports participation increased for a 20th consecutive year.

An all-time high of 7,536,753 students nationwide participated in high school sports in the 2008-09 academic year. The study found that 55.2 percent of high school students participate in sports.

Football remained the most popular boys sport, with 1,112,303 playing it, followed by track and field, basketball and baseball. Track supplanted basketball as No. 1 for girls, with 457,732 participants - overall, just behind boys baseball's 473,184.

Swimming and diving gained the most combined participants, with 29,967 newcomers. Illinois (341,763) ranked fourth in prep athletes behind New York, California and the nation's leader, Texas, with a whopping 781,000.

Certainly not 'Running on Empty'

Press types representing this past Sunday's Chicago Half Marathon recently polled more than 1,000 local runners on their favorite music to listen to while running.

Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" was consensus No. 1 followed by three tunes from the Black Eyed Peas.

Other standards were the "Rocky" theme, "Gonna Fly Now"; the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up"; Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run"; AC/DC's football standard "Thunderstruck"; and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'."

The three Black Eyed Peas selections (possibly reflecting a heavy female 18-34 demographic or Oprah Winfrey on Michigan Avenue) indicate those polled were unfamiliar with Vangelis' "Titles" from the "Chariots of Fire" soundtrack. And they never heard Rush's "Marathon" or Yes' "Going for the One."

doberhelman@dailyherald.com