What we learned in Week 2: West Suburban Silver setting up as must-watch football during league play

Through the first two weeks of the regular season, 147 teams remain unscathed.

This isn’t a relatively high or low number, but what’s a bit strange about the number is that there’s a lot of clustering of undefeated teams in certain conferences.

So buckle up for those conference races, many of which begin in earnest this week, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest storylines of Week 2:

Conference craziness

Nonlocked conferences largely begin league play this week and some of them are shaping up to be real doozies.

Six of the seven West Suburban Silver teams – Glenbard West, York, Lyons, Downers Grove North, Proviso West and Oak Park River Forest – emerged from the first two weeks with 2-0 records. The only team to take a loss? Last year’s defending conference champion, Hinsdale Central.

That sets up for a wild conference race in a league that was already showing tendencies toward being too deep for its own good. The West Suburban plays six divisional games and one crossover with the West Suburban Gold. Unlike the Silver, things did not go well for the Gold in the first two weeks as the league collectively went 1-13.

Those crossover games could be extremely critical for Silver Division teams as the divisional games clearly look to be more difficult and have the potential of having quality teams stacking up some losses in league play.

Another conference doing major damage in the nonconference slate was the Central Illinois. Six of the eight teams left the first two weeks with spotless records.

Between the West Suburban Silver and Central Illinois, nearly 10 percent of the state’s undefeated teams reside in those two conferences.

CPL making some major strides

The Chicago Public League has always struggled to match up with non-CPL schools in both the regular season and postseason contests.

But the CPL might be turning a corner in that regard.

Simeon has had a monster start to the regular season with wins over Wheaton Warrenville South and Bolingbrook. The win over WWS added some more cache after the Tigers rebounded from the Simeon loss to defeat a highly regarded Neuqua Valley team in Week 2.

Kenwood also copped a solid win over Bradley-Bourbonnais in Week 2 after falling in a close encounter to Glenbard North in Week 1.

And although Taft lost both of its games by very narrow margins to non-CPL schools to start the season, it opened some eyes with how competitive of a game it gave Palatine in the opening round of the Class 8A playoffs last season.

A new order?

Of those 147 teams undefeated teams through two weeks, there’s a lengthy list of the usual suspects on it.

But there’s also a handful of teams that aren’t exactly accustomed to surviving the first two weeks of the season without a blemish.

Stagg leads the list of those surprising teams. With wins over Reavis and Oak Lawn to start the year, the Chargers stand at 2-0. Prior to the start of the 2022 season, Stagg hadn’t won a game since kicking off the 2019 season with a victory over Little Village, snapping a string of 23 consecutive losses with the win over Reavis.

Other teams rising up to make a unique, if not entirely unprecedented, appearance at 2-0 are Proviso West, Ridgewood, Elk Grove Village, Argo and Lincoln.

Long droughts ending....

East Peoria snapped a 26-game losing streak with a road victory over Aurora Central Catholic on Friday night.

That was one of the longest losing streaks in the state, but later in the same evening, the state’s longest current losing streak came to an end when Litchfield earned a 22-14 win over Staunton.

It ended a 47-game losing streak for the Panthers, who last won a varsity contest on October 16, 2015.