What we learned in Week 1: Statement win for East St. Louis at Illinois State

There is something of an information overload that happens in the first week of the IHSA football season.

The speculation that surrounds how teams might fare actually starts to be backed up by real production on the field.

For the most part many of the expected top teams produced in the manner most expected. But a few made major statements and others have to make some significant adjustments to make if they are to make the impact they hope to.

Let’s take a look at some of the big storylines of Week 1:

East St. Louis looks dominant

East St. Louis entered Saturday night’s showdown with Loyola in a role that they’ve become accustomed to in recent years by playing a schedule laden with nationally ranked teams, which is to say they were the underdogs in the minds of most.

Loyola entered Saturday night’s contest as the state’s consensus top ranked team, riding a 19-game winning streak and back-to-back state championships in Class 8A.

But it became apparent very quickly that all of that pregame analysis was offbase as the Flyers were dominant from the kickoff, displaying game-altering speed on both sides of the football, particularly on the defensive side of the ball in a 34-7 win for the Flyers.

“We felt like we had a good plan, we watched these guys on film all summer,” East St. Louis coach Darren Sunkett said. “We kind of knew their tendencies and we just wanted to come out and execute on both sides of the ball.”

That execution was nearly flawless, particularly on defense where the Flyers limited Loyola to next to nothing offensively outside of a first-half scramble of 50 yards by Rambler quarterback Ryan Fitzgerald. Loyola’s lone touchdown came on a fumble return for a score in the third quarter.

East St. Louis won’t play another non-conference opponent in the state of Illinois for the rest of the season, testing themselves against Covington Newton from Georgia next week and playing Imotep Charter Prep from Philadelphia in Week 3. They close the regular season with a Week 9 game against IMG Academy. If Saturday night is any indication, teams from any state are going to have trouble with the Flyers.

“We didn’t want to get into a wrestling match with those guys because we know that’s their bread and butter, if we ran them in between the tackles it would have been a brawl and we didn’t want a brawl,” Sunkett said. “We’re fighter pilots. We wanted to attack through the air and come to the ground attack when we had to and that worked to our favor.”

Power conferences flex muscles

A lot of attention has been placed on the CCL/ESCC and the expectation that all of its schools need to do as well as they can in the nonconference schedule because the league portion of their schedules are going to be unforgiven.

And for the most part the league responded to that call.

The league collectively went 18-6, with one of those losses (St. Patrick’s loss to Niles Notre Dame), coming at the hands of another league opponent. Perhaps the most surprising thing in that calculus? That the only one of the divisions that posted a .500 record in Week 1 was the CCL Blue, as Loyola’s loss was coupled with Mount Carmel’s loss to a very good school from New Jersey, the Hun School, on Thursday night.

Other leagues that flourished in Week 1 included the DuKane Conference, which went 7-1 as a group as St. Charles East was the only team to lose. Batavia, who outlasted a gritty Glenbard West squad, Wheaton North, who edged out Providence on the final play of the game, and St. Charles North, who needed a last-second two point conversion to upend Palatine, all claimed non-conference wins over teams that would easily be classified as high quality opponents. The reformed Kishwaukee River also saw its leagues post a collective 6-2 record as did the North Suburban.

Another first year league, the Southwest Valley, a combination of the former SouthWest Suburban and DuPage Valley conferences, also showed up well, posting an 11-4 record as a group.

Things weren’t as rosy for the Mid-Suburban East, where all six of its teams dropped an opening round contest, the Southland (collectively 1-6) and the Upstate Eight’s first foray in years into nonconference games was a bit of a struggle, particularly in the West DIvision where West Aurora was the only one of the division’s seven teams to net an opening weekend win.

The surprises

• Fremd, a program that has collectively gone 5-22 over the last three seasons, made a resounding statement that things might be turning around for the Vikings by collecting a resounding 31-0 victory over Lake Zurich, a program that has made a semifinal appearance in each of the last two seasons (6A in 2002, 7A in 2023).

• Schaumburg, who hasn’t made a playoff field since 2017, topped Antioch 12-7 in Week 1. It was a surprising regular season loss for Antioch, who has gone through four of the last seven full seasons without a regular season setback.

• Although Warren’s win over Hersey wouldn’t be characterized as a surprise, the explosive nature of Warren’s offense in the 55-26 win probably would be. Warren is typically known as a defensive first program, and while that may not change, Aaron Stewart’s 361-yard rushing yard effort shows the Blue Devils might be a huge problem on both sides of the football.