Dean was determined to restore Elgin’s pride

It’s half past 10 on a July night in 2031. Patrolman Jordan Dean is anticipating action. Exactly what kind remains to be seen.

The relative tranquillity of a hot, humid night is interrupted as the police radio crackles to life with a call from dispatch. Dean and his partner respond. Seconds later the cruiser’s cherry tops are lit, its fuel injectors pushed to their maximum output. Dean is needed across town. This is no drill.

It’s exactly the kind of future scenario the Elgin High football and basketball standout hopes to make a reality.

“I want to be a police officer,” he said. “I like the anticipation of not knowing what’s going to come next, not knowing what you’re going to deal with.

“I don’t want to have a job where you do the same thing over and over again. I want to have a job where you never know what’s coming next, where you never know what’s going to happen.”

Not knowing what’s going to happen next aptly describes the defenses Dean tormented as a leader of Elgin’s successful football and basketball teams during the 2010-11 school year.

“He’s dangerous on a football field because you never know what he might do,” Elgin football coach Dave Bierman said. “The kid is a difference maker. In his two varsity seasons I think he scored in every conceivable way.”

As a varsity football player Dean scored touchdowns via a kick return, a punt return, an interception return, a fumble return and a blocked field goal return, not to mention multiple rushing and receiving touchdowns. He was voted Defensive Player of the Year in the River Division of the Upstate Eight Conference by league coaches last fall after he captained the Maroons to the playoffs for the first time in a decade.

During basketball season the squad’s lone senior provided stability, leadership and a deft scoring touch from the perimeter to a team that won Elgin’s first title in the Upstate Eight Conference since 2000-01. His late-game heroics were a key reason the Maroons won their first regional title since 2008.

“I just wanted to make sure that we were a competitive school,” said Dean, who turns 18 on July 14. “I didn’t want to be the type of team that people just walked all over. Elgin wasn’t very good at basketball in the recent past. Guys thought they could just come in and raise their stats or whatever.

“I had it in my heart that in my senior year I wasn’t going to allow that to happen.”

For his determination to bring out the best in himself in order to achieve his goal of restoring pride to Elgin High School athletics, Jordan Dean has been named the 2010-11 Daily Herald Male Athlete of the Year in the Fox Valley. Dean is the first male athlete from Elgin High to receive the award since its establishment in 1997-98. Two female Elgin athletes have won the award previously: Kristin Groth (1998-99) and Katie Grens (2001-02).

In order to handle the rigors of being Elgin’s top playmaker on the gridiron — a brutal season immediately followed by the pressure of playing shooting guard for a basketball team on the rise — Dean rose early throughout the summer. Daily workouts began with a two-mile run, followed by long sessions in the weight room for the 5-foot-11, 180-pounder.

Dean took team bonding just as seriously in both sports. Whether it was dinner with teammates or just watching movies or playing video games together

at someone’s house, It wasn’t uncommon for Dean to spend most of his evenings with his basketball and football teammates “basically, doing the stuff we didn’t do when I was a junior.”

The football season was an unmitigated success for Dean. He grabbed 3 interceptions in the defensive secondary and made 38 tackles. Offensively, the two-time all-area pick rushed for 458 yards (4.8 avg.) and 6 touchdowns on 95 carries and made 18 catches for 213 yards and 2 touchdowns despite the fact he was the focal point of opposing defensive schemes.

Dean’s Maroons had a 3-2 record after his 16-yard touchdown run helped defeat cross-town rival Larkin 28-7, but the momentum didn’t stop there. The following week against St. Charles North he gave Elgin its first lead with an 85-yard punt return for a touchdown. The Maroons went on to win the game 26-19.

However, Elgin’s playoff berth was not secured until Week 9, when Dean accumulated 157 all-purpose yards in a 50-14 defeat of Metea Valley. The win vaulted the Maroons into the playoffs for the first time since 2001

“We went in with the mindset that it was already the playoffs because we had to win or go home,” Dean said. “We were facing a pretty good team. They ended up 1-8, but they had played some good teams like Waubonsie Valley tough. They had some talent and it wasn’t going to be easy. We knew we had to win or it might be our last football game together and we came out with a big win.”

The Maroons bowed out of the playoffs with a first-round loss to powerful Carmel, but the season was successful. It was then Dean turned his attention to basketball.

“My favorite sport is basketball, but everybody tells me I’m better at football,” said Dean, who will play football next season at North Central College in Naperville. “My mom (Shelley Thomas) tells me that’s all she wants to do is see me play football. I do basketball for my own enjoyment.”

It turned out to be a basketball season to savor for Dean and Maroons fans alike. As the only senior in the lineup, Dean was a mentor and leader for a talented core off younger players like juniors Kory Brown and Dennis Moore and sophomore Arie Williams, all quad captains along with Dean.

“He was much more mature than a lot of kids on that team,” Elgin basketball coach Mike Sitter said. “He’d been through a lot of things before so he knew when it was time to get loud and when it was time to lead by example. That’s how he led that team.

Dean was a starter at shooting guard who could get hot from 3-point range, but it was not his role to lead the basketball team in the same manner he led the football. He connected on 34 shots from 3-point range and finished with a scoring average of 9.3 points per game.

“He knew he didn’t have to do it all. He knew he could play a role,” Sitter said. “If we needed a defensive stop, he could do that. If we needed 2 free throws in a regional game to win it, he could do that. But he didn’t need to go out for four quarters and win a game that way.

“I think it was nice for him to play that secondary role on the basketball team and just come out and work hard and enjoy the success and the team aspect.”

“I was more like a player-coach because I was the oldest,” Dean said. “It worked out pretty well, though.”

In fact, things worked out pretty well for Elgin basketball in regional play, largely due to Dean. At the conclusion of seven months of intense competition in two physically demanding sports, Dean saved his best basketball for last. He scored a team-high 29 points combined in two regional playoff wins, which Sitter called Dean’s two best games of the year despite the fact he was finally beginning to wear down physically.

The capper to his athletic career at Elgin High occurred with 5.3 seconds left in the regional title game against Dundee-Crown. With his team trailing by a point, the senior leader calmly stepped to the free-throw line and sank 2 highly pressurized free throws to give Elgin a 1-point victory and a regional title.

What no one knew at the time, not even Dean, was that he was injured. After knocking knees with another player during a victory over Larkin on Feb. 10, Dean played the final 4 games of the regular season and 3 playoff games with what turned out to be a partially torn meniscus.

“During the game I just thought I had bumped knees and it was just bruised bad,” he said, “but I did feel pain after the games.”

Dean’s athletic career officially ended on March 8, when the Elgin boys basketball team lost to Huntley in a sectional semifinal. He went to his doctor soon thereafter.

“He told me it didn’t look good at all so I was terrified,” Dean said. “I’m just glad it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”

Dean underwent arthroscopic surgery recently. He’ll be cleared to run again in 10 days and expects to be at full strength by mid July. Dean reports to football camp at North Central on Aug. 13.

In the meantime, Dean can look back at the goals he accomplished this season: a football victory over Larkin to win the Town Jug trophy and the school’s first playoff berth in 10 years, and conference and regional titles in basketball.

“It took a lot of hard work and dedication and a lot of help from my teammates, obviously, but I think we did a good job of restoring some pride on the east side,” Dean said. “I hope the guys who come after me can keep doing that in the following years.”