Glenbard West vs. WW South -- a rivalry with deep roots
Rumor has it there's a Class 8A state championship football game Saturday night in Champaign.
For the local connoisseur the buck stops at 7A with the colossal matchup of 13-0 Glenbard West and 12-1 Wheaton Warrenville South.
It renews a love-hate relationship between neighboring communities that began with Wheaton's 72-6 win in 1916, includes series postponements due to incivility and one-sided dominance, and one prior playoff meeting.
Unless 11th-hour hysterics happen there won't be a midnight assault on the Hilltoppers' bell or flaming initials burned into Tiger turf. Not these days.
"When I first came up here, there was that old-fashioned cross-town rivalry-type stuff that got a little bit too aggressive. And there were nasty things happening and it was not always healthy fun," said John Thorne, the North Central College coach whose Hall of Fame career includes a 7-3 Wheaton Central win in a 1990 Class 5A second-round playoff over Jim Covert's Hilltoppers.
According to figures produced by Glenbard West football historian Joe Carlton, author of the big green Hilltopper tome, "As the Backs Go Tearing By," Wheaton South/Central/Community leads the series 30-25 including 9 ties and 1 forfeit - the Tigers' 1998 1-0 victory during the District 87 teachers' strike.
"Early records are a bit sketchy, and there were a number of times the series was interrupted for a number of reasons," Carlton reports. "It was interrupted in the early '20s due to student rowdiness for four years."
He noted a Red Grange-led Wheaton squad won an early 1920s practice game 84-0, and that 1939 student riots in downtown Wheaton again suspended the rivalry from 1940-44. Carlton said the 1954 and 1955 contests were not held for some reason, and that after Glenbard West's 28-0 win in 1974 (the eighth straight over the Tigers) the series was off until 1988 when Thorne headed Wheaton Central with Covert at Glenbard West.
"There was always stuff going on between the campuses, but we were never involved because we were players. The (school) kids, certainly. ... The players kept out of it," said Lake Park coach Andy Livingston, a 1974 Wheaton Central graduate and former Tigers lineman.
Cooler heads prevailed during the time of Thorne and Covert, and they extend into the current regimes.
"When I was coaching, John Thorne, (current Tigers coach) Ron Muhitch, (late Wheaton North coach) Jim Rexilius, we ran a camp. It was for technique, character," said Covert, the Hall of Fame coach who will provide color commentary on IHSA Television Network broadcasts of the WW South-Glenbard West and Montini-Joliet Catholic title games.
"We all had a good mutual respect for each other," Covert said. "Our kids, when they played, there was a lot of respect shown between the two teams."
This championship game will be the first meeting between the programs since the series again wore out its welcome after 2004. WW South won that game 21-7 following 35-19 and 48-7 victories.
Still, Glenbard West's coach at the time, current Benedictine quarterbacks coach John Karpowicz, said there was "always pretty good sportsmanship" between the squads during his tenure.
Thorne recalled that when he took the Tigers job in 1980, he wasn't sure he wanted to play the "Hitters" again.
"We were just trying to figure out how to get to the playoffs for the first time," he said.
He figured it out. The Thorne-Muhitch team has combined for five titles in eight appearances while Bill Duchon took Glenbard West to a championship appearance in 1976 and Covert won the 1983 5A title.
Thorne met Hilltoppers coach Chad Hetlet at a clinic a couple years ago and was so impressed he told the younger man that one day he would win a state title.
How could he have known it could well come at the expense of Thorne's former "right-hand man," Muhitch?
"I think both programs believe in getting stronger and faster and also in having fun," Thorne said. "I think it'll be a great, really, really exciting championship game."
Covert agrees.
"I'm excited about the game, I really am," he said. "I know both schools really well, I feel they're both very good representatives from out here in the western suburbs."
Come out fighting, boys. And fans - keep it clean.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com