St. Edward's story is waiting for a championship ending

I've been kidding St. Edward coach Mike Rolando for the last couple of years to hurry up and win a state championship so we can write a book already.

Well, partly kidding anyway.

Of all the interesting stories on the Fox Valley prep sports beat over the last decade, none would merit elaboration in book form more than the revival and eventual rise to a state championship of St. Edward football.

That's because everyone loves a good rise-from-the-ashes-against-all-odds tale, a story in which the team everyone writes off rides off into the sunset.

The revival chapters are already written. Heck, they practically wrote themselves.

St. Edward has reached the playoffs three of the last five seasons, and a win this Saturday at Walther Christian would make the Green Wave 6-0 for the first time in their 71-year history.

But that's post-turnaround.

For those too young to remember St. Edward football as anything but highly competitive, here's an outline of the first few chapters of “For Whom the Victory Bell Tolls” (working title):

Chapter 1

It's 2005, late July. The previous St. Edward coach and staff quit without notice weeks before fall practice is scheduled to open. The players don't find out until they show up at the Elgin Sports Complex for practice only to find a note taped to a porta-John that reads “season canceled.”

Chapter 2

The Elgin Catholic school turns to a well-known, former local athlete to guide the football program: Rolando, who quarterbacked Larkin to a state quarterfinal in 1990.

At the time he has no experience coaching at the high school level. His experience encompasses seven seasons with various Elgin youth football teams, including the Crusaders, which he led to the eighth-grade Super Bowl title a year earlier.

Several St. Edward upperclassmen give up on the program, advised by others to transfer to public schools. The job of continuing the St. Edward football program falls mainly to underclassmen.

Chapters 3-4-5

Seventeen of Rolando's players from the Super Bowl champion Crusaders join him as freshmen at St. Edward. Due to low varsity numbers after transfers, eight freshmen must start on the varsity right away. It's literally boys against men.

If the book is someday made into a movie, these chapters will be condensed into a video montage of St. Edward freshmen and sophomores getting the snot knocked out of them by upperclassmen from state championship-caliber teams from Montini, Driscoll, Marian Central, etc. St. Edward goes winless in 2005 and 2006.

Chapter 6

Finally, in Week 7 of the 2007 season, Rolando and his players break into the win column, beating St. Francis 28-26 by denying a 2-point conversion that would have tied the game in overtime. Tears are shed. Hugs are exchanged between strangers. The school's 26-game losing streak comes to an end. The victory bell rings for the first time since the 2004 season.

Chapters 7-8

The Green Wave win 4 games in 2008, including a 20-8 victory over Marmion in Week 9.

Just as importantly, the Green Wave hang tough with the big boys in the final year of the old Suburban Catholic Conference. They lose 21-12 to eventual Class 4A quarterfinalist Driscoll (9-3), they lose 28-12 to eventual 5A state champion St. Francis (13-1) and they drop a 33-27 decision to eventual 5A quarterfinalist Montini (11-1).

They play well, but the Green Wave still lose with one of their better teams. The 2008 season perhaps more than any other shows the need for St. Edward, a school of between 400-420 students depending on the year, to find a less-tilted playing field. But that doesn't happen until 2014.

Chapters 9-10-11

These chapters cover the playoff years. St. Edward reaches the postseason three of the next five seasons, including 2013. However, because of the difference in size and philosophy between St. Edward and the SCC powers, the Green Wave will always face an uphill battle, outmanned in at least 3 games per season by schools more than twice their size. No matter how hard Rolando, his players and his staff work to improve, they will struggle to earn a high seed in Class 4A against a mostly Class 5A schedule.

That's why St. Edward and six of the smaller members of the SCC left and merged this season with the Metro Suburban Conference. St. Edward now finds itself in the conference's East Division with Ridgewood (2-3), Chicago Christian (2-3), Guerin (1-4), Elmwood Park (1-4) and Walther Christian (0-5).

The MSC West includes Glenbard South (3-2), Riverside-Brookfield (3-2), IC Catholic Prep (2-3), Wheaton Academy (4-1), Aurora Central Catholic (4-1) and Fenton (4-1).

It does not mean St. Edward will annually have an easy path to the playoffs. Several MSC schools boast three or four times St. Edward's enrollment and could well develop strong programs that enjoy a string of successful seasons.

However, the level of competition is simply fairer now. In its better seasons, like this one, St. Edward will have the opportunity to win 7, 8, perhaps 9 games. That means a high seed, a first-round home game and a more realistic chance to get past the second round of the playoffs, something this program has yet to achieve.

In fact, several more firsts could be on the way in coming years. More wins tend to beget more players, and more players beget more wins.

“Success breeds success,” Rolando said Wednesday. “It's no longer like the old days against the big schools we played where we were a third or half their size, but we're also not playing Class 1A and 2A teams either. We're playing schools that are equivalent or bigger than us. In some cases, much bigger. It's a little different landscape, but now our schedule is filled with teams we could be seeing in the playoffs like Ridgewood. The schedule now sets us up to have more success, but we still have to earn it.”

Making the move from the SCC to the MSC not only gives the talented 2014 squad a chance to go 6-0 for the first time in school history, it means Green Wave teams of the future will have the opportunity to reach the playoffs with a high seed if they work as hard as their predecessors who saved the program a decade ago.

It could eventually mean a deep playoff run, maybe even that long-sought state championship.

It means sometime in coming years we might finally get to write that book.

No kidding.

jfitzpatrick@dailyherald.com