Steve Soucie’s Week 1 games to watch: Some of state’s top teams challenging themselves right out of the gate

There’s so many questions that have yet to be answered in football camps all throughout Illinois.

In that spirit, it is more than understandable that teams wouldn’t exactly want to face a top-flight opponent right out of the gate. In the past, numerous programs would undertake that challenge as an opportunity to test themselves and see exactly what needed to be done to reach the level they hope to achieve.

Those games, however, seem to largely have been relegated to a thing of the past.

Some teams waited longer than seemingly ever before to fill vacancies on their schedule before acquiescing to a very difficult game to start their season.

10 of Friday Night Drive’s Top 25 preseason teams are playing one another in Week 1 including two games that pair off two teams that are both ranked in the top six of those rankings.

Several other teams had to venture out of state to find a willing foe. The problem was particularly perplexing for those teams in the CCL/ESCC. Already facing loaded conference schedules from Week 3 until Week 9 when they are embroiled in league play, many of those teams were pressed into accepting non-conference games against other CCL/ESCC teams that were having the same scheduling issues they were. One of those, IC Catholic, wasn’t able to secure a Week 1 opponent until late last week.

While the whole process hasn’t been all that thrilling for football programs and athletic administrators, it creates a virtual nirvana for high school football fans as they have the opportunity to see a number of marquee matchups of schools of all sizes all over the IHSA football landscape right off the bat.

Let’s take a look at a few of the big showdowns of Week 1:

East St. Louis vs. Loyola at Illinois State’s Hancock Stadium, 7 p.m. Saturday: Last season, this opening weekend kickoff contest featured East St. Louis and Mount Carmel in a contest that seemed to be a fitting way to kick off the 2023 campaign.

While a rematch between the two power programs wasn’t in the cards, this might be the next best thing.

Loyola seems to be the consensus pick as the No. 1 team in the state, while East St. Louis is doing what it always does – testing itself against not only the best of the state of Illinois has to offer but the nation as well. East St. Louis has scheduled games against top teams in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Florida this season.

Maine South at Lincoln-Way East, 7:30 p.m., Friday: Two more programs that simply had to agree to collide in the opening week to avoid the distinct possibility they would have a game at all. In retrospect, this game becomes even more important for Lincoln-Way East because its intended Week 2 game is no longer being played. The game itself should be a proving ground for both. Maine South has a truckload of returning performers but they’ll be tested immediately by a Lincoln-Way East team that looks even stronger on paper than last year’s Class 8A runner-up.

Kankakee at Nazareth, 7:30 p.m., Friday: An interesting little non-conference rivalry has quickly evolved between these two in just two previous meetings. Nazareth won one of the more bizarre games in recent memory with a 2-0 win in 2022, last year’s clash provided a surprise Kankakee win. Nazareth was at the beginning of what produced one of the oddest postseason tales ever as the Roadrunners became the first team to finish the regular season 4-5 to win a state title, while Kankakee bowed out at the hands of East St. Louis in the Class 6A quarterfinals.

Hope Academy at Wilmington, 7 p.m., Friday: Another pair of programs where both schools were struggling to find willing foes this time at the small school level. Wilmington has won two of the last three Class 2A titles, while Hope Academy reached the semifinal round in Class 1A last year and has a long history of playing against schools of any size and doing a nice job of holding their own.

Batavia at Glenbard West, 1:30, Saturday: Neither of these two teams could be criticized for playing down in the nonconference schedule considering both face daunting conference schedules later in the year, but to their credit and perhaps out of necessity the two power programs will lock horns at Duchon Field as each try to get ahead of the ominous road ahead.

Other games off note: Hersey at Warren; Prospect at Lyons; St. Charles North at Palatine; Rochester at Simeon; Christian Brothers (Mo.) at Sacred Heart Griffin; Prairie Ridge at Jacobs; Coal City at Morris; Barrington at South Elgin; Newman Central Catholic at Princeton; Kenwood at St. Francis, Morgan Park at Marist, Providence at Wheaton North