January 17, 2025
Sports - McHenry County


Sports - McHenry County

High school football: Jacobs QB Chris Katrenick set for busy fall

Jacobs' Chris Katrenick  is one of the Northwest Herald's Five to Watch this football season. “Iron Horse” steam locomotive location provided by the Mathews Company in Crystal Lake.

This fall, Chris Katrenick’s first priority is quarterbacking his Jacobs football team.

On Saturday morning, he'll be with his team for film.

But later in the day, he'll be all over the Midwest.

Welcome to the world of a top-tier junior football recruit. Since coaches could start calling players from the Class of 2017 on Sept. 1, Katrenick estimates he's talked with coaches from 15 schools. And he's set three unofficial visits for gamedays, attempting to make them all night games so he won't miss any time with his teammates at Jacobs.

On Sept. 12, he'll be in Bloomington, Indiana, when Indiana takes on Florida International. On Sept. 19, he'll be at Notre Dame for the Fighting Irish's game against Georgia Tech and, on Sept. 26, he'll be in Madison to watch Wisconsin host Hawaii.

"We have film and work out Saturday morning," Katrenick said. "I don't want to miss that and, so far, no games are going to have to interfere with that.

Although it sounds like a great time, it also means paying his own way and spending most of his Saturdays this fall driving to and from schools. Proximity also means it will be difficult for Katrenick to visit the one school that has given him a scholarship offer to this point: Virginia.

Katrenick said Indiana has shown the most interest during September, with four coaches calling and about eight following him on Twitter. Plenty then saw last week's highlight, as he threw a 34-yard touchdown pass to Nathan Meland to beat Prospect on a one-handed catch. Meland will join him on the Indiana visit.

"Indiana is definitely high on my list," Katrenick said. "I really like that school. I'm excited to go down there. I really like Wisconsin, and I'm hoping for things to heat up there, too."

The main person recruiting Katrenick at Wisconsin is graduate assistant and Marian Central grad Jon Budmayr, who works with quarterbacks and spent the day with Katrenick during an unofficial visit this summer.

Katrenick never met Budmayr before that, although he did play his freshman year at Marian Central along with now-Marian starter J.R. Budmayr, while father Rick was a sophomore coach and brother Brody was an assistant. Hampshire starter Jake Vincent also was at Marian at that point.

Katrenick said he also hopes to visit Northwestern and Illinois this fall. He has heard from coaches at Minnesota, Iowa State, Pittsburgh, Penn State, Miami (Ohio), Bowling Green and Missouri.

‘It’s mainly position coaches,” Katrenick said. “A few of them are their director of recruiting and player personnel and at Indiana it’s a lot of the coaches.”

Jon Styf

Jon Styf

Jon is the Senior News Editor of the Shaw Media Local News Network and the Editor of the Northwest Herald. He was previously the editor of The Herald-News in Joliet and Morris and a sports editor for Shaw Media at the Northwest Herald and Daily Chronicle.