Mulhern's leg gives Neuqua a boost

Special teamer Ryan Mulhern's 42- and 24-yard field goals last Friday - the latter the difference in Neuqua Valley's 20-18 win over Naperville Central - pleased Wildcats coach Bryan Wells to no end.

"Having a kicker is a pleasant surprise for us," Wells said.

Last year's kicker, Trent Snyder, is much more valuable as a running back. Mulhern brings Wells back to the days when Nick Schneider set a program-record 8 field goals spanning the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

Schneider, incidentally, is a junior mechanical engineering major at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He's been named to the Fred Mitchell Award Watch List which highlights collegiate place-kickers. Rose-Hulman's 2009 special teams player of the year, Schneider is the Terre Haute program's most accurate field-goal kicker in history and last year broke his own school record with 43 extra points.

Mulhern, a sophomore, has converted both his field-goal attempts and is 6 for 6 on extra points. Last week's 42-yard field goal tied David Plouffe's program-record 2004 blast against Bartlett.

Wells said Mulhern has "worked on his craft" with former Naperville Central and Northern Illinois University kicker Chris Nendick, among others.

After a strong tradition of kickers including Schneider, Plouffe, Jeremy Gehl and Peter Acquaviva, Wells is glad to have Mulhern in house as an impact kicker.

"It's one of those things that you get used to," Wells said. "Then it's like you leave for home for the first time and you don't have mom's cooking."

Silver and Gold: Supremacy in the West Suburban Conference divisions once again appears pretty clear.

In last week's crossovers the Silver Division swept all seven games against the Gold. Four games had a margin of 28 points and only one game - Glenbard West's 21-16 win over Downers Grove South - was decided by single digits.

"The Silver's a very good conference," said Hinsdale Central coach Mike DiMatteo, whose team beat Proviso East 28-0. "I'll put it up against any conference in the state. We become so battle tested during the season, I think that's why we have so much success in the playoffs."

Since 2004 Silver teams Downers Grove North, Hinsdale Central and Glenbard West each have reached a state title game. With four teams starting this season 2-0 and all seven with at least one win, another large Silver group appears destined for the playoffs.

The same, however, might not be true for the Gold. There are no unbeaten teams, four teams remain winless and no one has double-digit playoff points.

With that in mind, it's possible that five wins won't guarantee a postseason berth for the Gold teams.

"One year to the next is different, but the reality is that five wins might not get you in," said Hinsdale South coach Alex Bitto. "We're looking at it like we need six wins to clinch a spot."

Dirty trick: We'd previously reported about Lisle coach Dan Sanko's fiancee, April Sorce, who had a stroke July 15 while the couple were on vacation in Colorado.

She returned home in late August, but while her movement has been restored, last week Sorce was readmitted into University of Illinois-Chicago Medical Center to further test her blood circulation, missing Lisle's home opener against Coal City. Through Tuesday she'd spent 45 of 52 days in a hospital but now was back at home.

"She said there's nothing stopping her from going to this game Friday night (at Westmont)," Sanko said.

Westmont coach Mark Orszula and his wife, Maria, visited Sorce at UIC last Saturday. Orszula, a former Lisle lineman who after college returned to become one of Sanko's assistants, caught his old coach with his guard down.

Sanko left Sorce's hospital room momentarily and returned to find Orszula had convinced Sorce to put a Westmont cap on her head. Sanko caught him taking photos of her with his cell phone.

Future foes: Fenton and Glenbard South have played each other in nonconference action the last four years, and they'll meet again tonight in Glen Ellyn.

Starting next season, though, the matchup takes on new meaning. Glenbard South, already a member of the Metro Suburban Conference in most sports, joins the MSC football fray in 2011.

"This will be a good barometer for how the conference may look next year," said Fenton coach Mark Kos. "Glenbard South's a pretty good football program. When they come in they'll probably be the perennial favorites."

Expanding the MSC by one team is a positive for current members Fenton, Elmwood Park, Ridgewood and Riverside-Brookfield - a group that has to play each other twice this football season to fill out the schedule.

Next season's format with five schools, though, presents its own problems. The teams will go from playing six conference games to only four, meaning everyone has to find five nonconference opponents.

Kos said the ideal situation would be to schedule crossover games against a similarly small conference to complete the nine-game slate.

"It'll make for an interesting schedule," Kos said. "Hopefully, it works out."

Starting next year Glenbard South and rival Glenbard West no longer will play in the season opener, adding another new wrinkle to the schedule. Raiders coach Jeremy Cordell said his team will play Prairie Ridge in next year's opener, but much of the rest of the nonconference slate is still a work in progress.

"We're working on some different matchups, but nothing is firm yet," Cordell said.

Class difference: Montini coach Chris Andriano felt proud to be a part of last Saturday's home opener with Loyola - at least until the Ramblers won a 31-9.

The opener featured a ceremony saluting Duffy Memorial Stadium's new permanent lights, which helped illuminate the first of a two-year contract with Loyola. (Season opener Joliet Catholic has had to drop the second year of its contract with the Broncos due to a reshuffled East Suburban Catholic Conference schedule.)

"I've been here a long, long time. The atmosphere and the excitement, the nice big crowd - I was very proud to be a part of the Montini sidelines," said the 32-year coach. "It's been a long time coming, and there's a lot of people to thank, and we'll never be able to do it all. It was kind of a (big) moment for me."

Then Loyola began executing with speed and size. One longtime Broncos backer later noted the difference between a Class 8A football team and a Class 5A team. Andriano agreed.

"Up front they're faster, it's a faster game," he said. "Normally when you get teams now, they get a chance to platoon, and I think in terms of coaching and schemes they can do a lot more. We saw some combinations of stunts with the defensive line and blitzes from the linebackers behind them you don't normally see.

"It really tests your ability to apply your rules and your schemes, and your X's and O's, because bodies aren't staying in one spot, they're moving. We saw some twists and saw some blitzes - and saw a combination of them at the same time - that we prepared for. We went over it, but we weren't good enough to handle it."

Andriano said his staff took notes on Loyola's defensive looks, 15 pages with one to two schemes on each page.

He pointed out, however, that Montini lost its 2004 opener 47-3 to Sacred Heart-Griffin and went on to win the Class 4A title.

"These guys are good, and it tests you," Andriano said. "Some of these guys don't know that. They don't listen to us, but sophomore football is like molasses in January compared to the varsity game."