Fremd tailback Faulkner is ready to roll

Fremd’s Jayden Faulkner is ready to release his pent-up energy.

The three-year starting tailback, a 2025 Mid-Suburban West all-conference player when the Vikings reached the Class 8A semifinals, has seen a limited diet of carries mainly to keep him fresh for the postseason.

While the opening round began last week and Faulkner was in on the action, he took just one handoff from Fremd quarterback Will Clark. In the No. 20 Vikings’ 42-12 win over Taft, they didn’t need more.

“We were able to rest him last week, which is good,” said Fremd coach Lou Sponsel, who against Taft went to the air with Clark for touchdowns to Ben Riddle and Carter MacDonald, plus a pair of Mateo Ruiz touchdown runs and another from Clark.

“I know that he’s a competitor and he was out there and still took a lot of snaps but we decided to throw the football. Jayden’s ready to go, locked and loaded,” Sponsel said.

“I was perfectly fine with that,” said Faulkner, a 5-foot-9, 205-pound mass of power and speed. “I think it was the best decision, too.”

He said playing in Sponsel’s program is “the best thing that ever happened to me.”

A selfless player who will volunteer to block for another back at the goal line, Faulkner said he pulled a muscle running over the summer, which lingered into the hard-hitting regular season.

“Those guys take a pounding in 8A football,” Sponsel said. Fremd (7-3) will get more of it in Friday’s first-round game at No. 13 Naperville North (7-2).

Averaging fewer than 10 carries a game thus far, the coach said Faulkner has run for 562 yards and seven touchdowns on 95 carries this season, with 16 receptions for 124 yards out of the backfield.

Faulkner has run for at least 100 yards against Prospect, Conant and Hoffman Estates behind Vikings offensive linemen Gio Nikolic, Joe Pulkrabek, Hakeem Coleman, Kyro Kamel and Jameson Phillips.

A different Fremd team than those with premier passing quarterback Johnny O’Brien, now at Northwestern, dual-threat Clark so far leads the Vikings in rushing with 609 yards. Faulkner led the team in rushing as a sophomore and junior and with a playoff push could easily do so again.

“I feel great, I feel ready, I’m ready to do whatever the team needs me to do,” said Faulkner, yet to decide on a college destination.

Middle linebacker Tom O’Brien, a fellow Fremd three-year starter and senior co-captain, began playing football with Faulkner in the Palatine Amateur Football Association.

The all-conference buddies are mutual admirers.

“It prepares us as a defense, week in and week out, to be able to go against one of the best backs in the state,” said the 6-foot, 205-pound O’Brien, no relation to the team’s former quarterback.

“His level of physicality, speed, acceleration, ability to cut … I can 100% say it’s made me a better player myself, to be able to go against someone his caliber every week,” O’Brien said.

Faulkner countered.

“Every time I step on the field,” he said, “Tom is the best linebacker I’ve ever played against. He’s the best tackler, he’s always good at sniffing out screens.”

O’Brien entered the playoffs with 304 tackles at Fremd, third in program history behind Troy Pepe (321) and Luke McIlhon (311).

“Tom, he is the best tackler I know, hands down. The smartest player on the field, hands down,” Faulkner said.

The running back said the Vikings specialize in playing hard-hitting, fun and “reckless” football. Faulkner, O’Brien and their teammates will need all of that to keep playing.

“Those are two selfless leaders,” Sponsel said. “They want to see all their high school buddies keep winning and stay together for one more week throughout the playoffs.”