Herald-News Week 6 Football Notebook: Joliet Catholic captures third consecutive conference crown

Joliet Catholic’s 49-28 victory over St. Laurence on Friday night quietly earned them their third consecutive CCL/ESCC Conference crown.

The Hilltoppers currently are 2-0 in the four-team CCL/ESCC Orange Division with wins over St. Laurence and Providence. They have one league game remaining against Montini, which already has two divisional losses. Even if the Hilltoppers happened to lose that Week 9 matchup, they’d hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the only two teams that could potentially tie them.

Joliet Catholic also won the CCL/ESCC Orange Division title in 2021. The spring season in 2021 didn’t have official conference races. The Hilltoppers also won the CCL/ESCC White crown in 2019. Joliet Catholic has never lost a divisional game in the CCL/ESCC since the league began in 2019.

The last time Joliet Catholic did not win a conference crown was 2018, when it finished in a tie for fourth in the final year of the East Suburban Catholic Conference as a standalone entity.

Other conference races are also clearing up.

Plainfield North and Minooka have broken free of the pack in the Southwest Prairie West, as neither has a conference loss as of yet. That logjam will be broken this week when the two face off in Minooka on Friday night.

The Southwest Prairie East will also end its tie at the top, as Plainfield Central and Plainfield South lock horns Saturday afternoon.

Lincoln-Way East stands alone atop the Southwest Suburban Blue Conference race and can sew up the title with a win over Homewood-Flossmoor this week, while Lemont owns at least a one-game lead over the field in the South Suburban Blue race.

Reed-Custer’s comfortable win over Wilmington on Friday gave them sole possession of the lead in the Illinois Central Eight. Coal City, the Comets’ Week 8 opponent, is the only team with a reasonable path to try to knock them off the top rung.

Morris and Sycamore seem poised for a collision in Week 9 to decide the Kishwaukee River/Interstate Eight White Division crown. Both have won all three divisional games.

Punt formation rookies

When Reed-Custer ran what appeared to be a fake punt while comfortably leading Wilmington on Friday night, Comets coach Gavin Johnston claimed it wasn’t a planned fake. It was just general inexperience with the actual act of punting.

Believe it or not, when Reed-Custer’s Jace Christian lined up to take the snap and ultimately picked it up off the ground and tore around end for a first down, it was Reed-Custer’s first time being forced into a punt situation all season.

“I will be dead honest, that was not a fake punt,” Johnston said. “That was the first time we punted all year. Jace just took off with it. That was the first time we were in punt formation all year. We’ve been highly efficient on offense all year.”

State’s active winning streak shifts hands again

Wilmington’s reign with the state’s longest active winning streak lasted just one week.

The Wildcats took the mantle away from Joliet Catholic after the Hilltoppers fell to Crete-Monee in Week 5. Wilmington’s string reached 24 victories, the same length of JCA’s streak when it lost, before the Wildcats lost 50-5 to Reed-Custer on Friday.

The new owner of the streak is Lena-Winslow. The Panthers win streak is only 11 games. Lena-Winslow’s last loss came in Week 9 of the 2021 season, and then they swept the Class 1A playoffs before winning the first six games of this season.

Seneca currently is second on the list with an active win streak of eight games.