One Final Snap: The last down of Earlville football was 40 years ago

On a cold, overcast afternoon just over 40 years ago, the Earlville High School football team called its last play and took its final snap.

That November 3rd in 1979 saw the Red Raiders fall to Genoa-Kingston in not only the final game of a 4-5 season, but also in the program's fine history.

Earlville, which fielded football teams for a number of years in the early 1900s, resurrected the sport with a couple practice games in the fall of 1949 and a seven-game schedule in 1950. The pinnacle of the program's success came between 1968 and 1972 when the Red Raiders carried an outstanding 31-game unbeaten streak.

The 1979 Red Raiders defeated Wheaton Christian 13-0 to begin the season, but then dropped consecutive games to state 1A champion Hampshire (34-0), Kirkland Hiawatha (18-0) and Burlington Central (28-0) on Earlville's homecoming. They snapped the losing streak with a 27-0 win over Richmond, but the following Monday night would prove to seal the end for Red Raiders football.

Coming off three consecutive 2-7 seasons, declining numbers, the Little Eight Conference set to disband after the 1979-80 school year and the Little Ten Conference welcoming Earlville back after a few years away, the Earlville board of education voted on October 15 to discontinue football.

"As a senior, I think I just looked at the practicality of it, but at the same time I felt sorry for the younger kids," said John Anderson, an honorable mention Little Eight pick at receiver who now lives outside Philadelphia working at an investment management firm. His dad, Tom, played on the 1950 squad. "There were some good football players that weren't going to get to continue playing football. I know my younger brother, Mark, really wanted to play his senior year, and it's just a shame he didn't get to.

"We were a 1A school playing a couple schools that were 3A. We got our butts kicked, but we finished 4-5, so I feel that was pretty darn good. We had a first-year coach and a bunch of kids that were coming out for football for the very first time.

"There is that photo in the yearbook of a couple of us walking down the ramp to the locker room and someone cleaning off their cleats after the last game of the season. That, to me, is the epitome of how the season ended. It was kind of like, 'I wish we could have ended on a stronger note, and I still think we should be proud of how we did, but at the same time it's over, and it's disappointing.

" 'It's just done.' "

It was also a tough situation for EHS first-year head coach Kevin Lasley, who was a four-year letterman as a member of the Eastern Illinois football team and is now retired after serving as a professor of sports administration at EIU and five seasons as an assistant coach at Illinois College.

"I was really an outsider and a spectator, just trying to coach the boys for the next game." Lasley said. "We had a few really good players, but we also had freshmen playing that really had no business being out there. That really bothered me a lot, and still to this day. We were just undersized and outmanned.

"I remember we won our first game of the season against Wheaton Christian, but we also suffered some injuries, and I think that started members of the community to start thinking maybe this wasn't the best idea to be playing football.

"I have so many fond memories from that season. From a coaching standpoint, the kids would just work their tails off. We could be competitive, but we just ran out of players. Against a very good and very big Burlington Central (team) on homecoming, I remember we ran about every trick play that was possible in that game. They were just so big, and I just knew we wouldn't really be successful just running the Veer (option play), plus I was so afraid our guys were going to get hurt."

Lasley said the lack of numbers and size had him searching in the early practices and games for an offense that would suit the team best.

"In 1978, Eastern Illinois won the Division II national title, and my former teammate there Mike Shanahan had come back to be the offensive coordinator that season," said Lasley of the two-time Super Bowl head coach of the Denver Broncos. "The previous year the team was 1-10 ... they went from an option offense to a pro-style offense with a quarterback slinging the ball all over the place to good receivers.

"Having observed what happened at Eastern and observing our first few practices at Earlville, I made the decision to go with a Veer offense, which is a hybrid of triple-option, but an offense that you can still throw the ball. We only had a couple of good-sized linemen, but we did have a couple of good receivers, a couple of tough running backs and a good athlete at quarterback.

"I'm not sure if it worked well, but some of that I feel was almost all the kids were also playing on the defensive side of the ball as well. I was trying to best fit an offense to the kids and talent we had."

The Saturday after the board's decision, the Red Raiders defeated Hebron 6-0, but then lost to Huntley 46-0. However, they would bounce back to top Mooseheart 20-19 in what would be the last ever EHS victory on the gridiron. The final game of the season at Earlville ended with Genoa-Kingston rolling to a 33-0 triumph.

"I graduated from Earlville High School in 1972, and that was the time the program was in the middle of that 31-game unbeaten streak," said Jim Hughes, a member of both the Genoa-Kingston High School and Illinois High School Football Coaches halls of fame who is a retired athletic director, but still an assistant coach, with the Cogs. "It was very special to be part of football in Earlville. Growing up in Earlville, football was a huge part of my life, and I learned a lot from it.

"In that last game in November of '79, I was coaching at Genoa-Kingston, and we beat Earlville that day, so to say I had an interesting perspective would be an understatement for sure. At the time, only 16 teams in each class made the playoffs, and we needed that win to earn a spot. So while I was thrilled that we won and accomplished that goal, there was a part of me that was very sad because I knew that was the end of something special that had been part of the community for many, many years. It was a day of very mixed emotions for me.

"I can still remember the bus ride back to Genoa after that game. Of course our kids were so excited, and I was too that we had made the playoffs, but there was a part of me that thought, 'That's the end of something that was a big part of my life growing up.' "

Mark Anderson, who in addition to private practice as an attorney also currently serves as an Assistant State's Attorney for La Salle County (Civil Division) and is a Thirteenth Judicial Circuit-approved Family Law Mediator, was the Red Raiders quarterback and a Little Eight Honorable Mention selection that final season.

He said he was obviously disappointed with the fact he would have no senior year of football, but instead soccer. However, he felt it turned out in many ways to be the right step to take.

"We were always fighting the numbers, trying to get people to play, but when we did have the people to play the other side always had way more, and they were way bigger.

"Some of it too was, I think sports rivalries are born out of proximity, and it's also because you know the people, your opponents. Like most of the schools we played in the Little Ten. We really didn't have that on the football side of things in the Little Eight, but those are also hard to develop when for the most part you're on the short end of the stick in those games.

"I know we only had 17 out my sophomore year, and my junior year we had a few more new guys come out, but we were still outnumbered almost every game and really would have been again my senior year. When football ended and they said we were going to be playing soccer, I wouldn't say it was a relief, but a chance to try something new, something different.

"While we were 4-5 that last season, the seasons before were a struggle to get one or two wins, so I felt optimistically it was a chance to go in a different direction, something where we could physically compete with schools.

"I didn't know anything about soccer, but I looked at it as a chance to compete. Liking football and being good at football are two different things. As disappointing as it was to know that a big part of history at Earlville — school pride with fans lining the field on a Friday night during the '60s and '70s — was coming to an end, I remember thinking during the soccer season that this is where we should probably be.

"I guess the success of the soccer program at Earlville since the switch speaks for itself."

The soccer-playing Red Raiders were 0-13 and 2-13 in the first two seasons, but the tides turned as the club posted a 9-9 record in the fall of 1982 under first-year coach Roger Essmann.

"I think my sophomore year we were maybe a little bit of a surprise because of it being just a few years removed from football," said 1985 EHS graduate Tony Cox, now a few years removed from retiring as Battalion Chief at the DeKalb Fire Department. "I think more of the community started following us, and the more support we got, the better we got. The following year we won 17 games and our first LTC regular-season championship."

The 1984 Earlville soccer team captured the first regional title in program history.

Cox, who was a seventh-grade manager for the '79 football team, finished his EHS soccer career with 77 goals and 58 assists, earning all-state honors in his senior year.

"We grew up dreaming of playing football for Earlville, losing it was very disappointing," said Cox. "I always say that I wasn't so much a very good soccer player, but a football player playing soccer. I think those early years of soccer at Earlville, we played a rough game because of that. Growing up playing football all the time and then having to switch to a game like soccer that many of us didn't know much about, it's hard to get that out of your system. We weren't as skilled soccer-wise as many of the teams we played, so I guess the physical part is how we tried to counter that.

"I remember we would line up for warmups in football formation, smack each other on the shoulders still and roll out and jump up. We just had a different mentality than other teams.

"I still look back at those seniors and juniors that played that very first year of soccer. They may not have won any games, but they busted their butts from start to finish in every one. They deserve a lot of credit for making the best out of a situation that they didn't expect to be in as juniors.

"Our '85 class was a pretty successful one in soccer my four years, and I truly enjoyed ever minute of it, but I'd probably give up every soccer game that we won for one losing football game.

"It's still to this day a heartbreak for me that I was never able to play football for Earlville, but only in the sense I wish I would have gotten a shot at it."