‘We have new life’: Rolling Meadows makes IHSA football playoffs as the final team selected

Rolling Meadows coach Devonte Amos blew his whistle to end a football practice that, until Monday, wouldn’t have happened.

The Mustangs gathered around their coach to hear what he would say on the first day of an unexpected Week 10 for the 2-7 team.

“Enjoy every single moment,” Amos told them.

When Illinois High School Association member schools approved expansion of the football playoffs to 384 teams from 256, someone had to be No. 384.

Rolling Meadows was it. One of 17 playoff teams to finish the regular season 2-7, the Mustangs vied with Rockford East and Deer Creek-Mackinaw for the last two playoff slots.

It came down to the sixth tiebreaker under IHSA rules: the least number of points those teams allowed against the playoff qualifiers they faced.

The Mustangs allowed more points than Rockford East but earned the final position by being a little tighter defensively than Deer Creek.

Seeded No. 23 in Class 6A (seeding is based on different criteria than selection, said the IHSA’s Sam Knox, as Rockford East is a No. 24 seed in 6A), Rolling Meadows will open the playoffs Friday at No. 10 Addison Trail (6-3).

“We have a new life,” said Amos, once a three-year starting receiver at Rolling Meadows now in his second season coaching the Mustangs. Last season they went 7-4 and reached the second round in 6A.

“For our seniors, they get another opportunity to strap it up and go out there and play football. For our juniors and sophomores it gives them one more opportunity to learn and grow, so that way they can set themselves up for a successful season next year,” Amos said.

There was no team watch party Saturday for the televised playoff pairings (“Our hopes weren’t very high,” Amos said), so senior linebacker Will Ciccone was at a restaurant with friends when the good news came in.

“We popped up,” Ciccone said. “I got a message from my fellow captain, Noah (Brickman), he said that we were in. I was pretty excited with the guys. I was like, ‘One more game for the boys.’

“It’s pretty exciting. I don’t want this to end. I love these guys and I just love this team,” Ciccone said.

A co-captain with seniors Ciccone, Aiden Gallucci and Dom Polenzani, Brickman admitted the season did not go how the Mustangs plotted when football got underway this summer.

Graduating 22 seniors and 16 of 22 starters from 2025, Rolling Meadows lost its last four games in the Mid-Suburban East Conference — to Prospect, Buffalo Grove and Hersey, teams with a combined 23-4 record, plus a Week 9 squeaker, 20-19 at Elk Grove.

The Mustangs feel “blessed” to get at least four more practices and one more game this week, Brickman said.

“People want that final game,” he said.

“I think our run game is definitely really good. We have a stud at running back (Luke Harvey), so that definitely helps the offensive line play a whole lot better,” said Brickman, who plays center.

“We had three returning starters on the offensive line including myself, so that definitely helped out a lot. It wasn’t as (tough) as getting new people in and trying to develop players, so that was definitely good. But the season’s been fun.”

In this historic setting, being the 2026 IHSA football playoff equivalent of the NFL Draft’s “Mr. Irrelevant” — the last player chosen — seems to have steeled Rolling Meadows to focus on the task at hand, this next opponent.

“Being at 2-7, winning a playoff game would kind of show that we kind of turned things around towards the end, battled a little bit of adversity throughout the regular season,” said Gallucci, a tight end and defensive end. “Coming together at the end is all that matters, I think.”

Personally, it’ll give him a chance to finish strong.

“My reaction to the Elk Grove game, thinking that it was the last game of the season, going back home that night I felt like I could have given more,” Gallucci said.

“So this extra game that we’ve been given the opportunity to play kind of gives me that opportunity to do more of what I wanted to do,” he said.

Like all 384 teams, Rolling Meadows starts the playoffs at 0-0.

“We’ve got a chance,” Amos said.