Jayden Sutton, IC Catholic Prep have eyes on Champaign prize, not caught up in settling semifinal score with Byron

It would only be natural for Jayden Sutton to occupy his thoughts on IC Catholic Prep’s opponent as he prepares body and mind for Saturday’s game.

He’s not taking that bait.

As Sutton and the Knights get set to face Byron in a rematch of last year’s Class 3A semifinal, his eyes are on the ultimate prize rather than settling a year-old score. At least that’s the company line he’s holding to.

“We’ve been looking forward to it for a while, but it’s just the next game we have,” said Sutton, IC Catholic’s two-way senior starting lineman. “We know last year was a great team, and so is this year’s. We just have to execute better than we did last year.”

To set the stage for Saturday in Elmhurst, allow a brief primer on last year’s game.

IC Catholic led Byron 14-0 at halftime and deep into the fourth quarter. Byron scored two touchdowns in the game’s last four minutes, the second on Chandler Binkley’s TD run on fourth down with five seconds left. Then Binkley ran in the two-point conversion, handing IC Catholic a crushing 15-14 loss. The Tigers went on to win the Class 3A championship.

“I would say our focus since then has been about finishing,” Sutton said. “Going into halftime, up 14-0, we just didn’t finish the game. Fourth quarter, didn’t finish. We had two possessions in the second half, three-and-out. That cannot happen.”

Back in the identical position – same round, same field, same opponent – IC Catholic hopes to take the next step. That would be a trip to Champaign for the state finals, where the Knights won three consecutive state titles from 2016-2018 but haven’t been since.

Knights coach Bill Krefft, setting the tenor for his team, won’t allow himself to dwell on Byron and recent history.

“I’ll be honest with you, it’s not our way to be focused on Byron and the past. We are very much in the moment,” Krefft said. “It’s the next team on the way to the ultimate goal. We have not talked about Byron, we have not mentioned last year. Not to be arrogant, but we expected to be in this game. We expected that we would run into a good football team here and that is the situation.”

IC Catholic (11-1) is here with a team that is 90 seconds at Joliet Catholic in Week 2 and a point away from a perfect record. All-State juniors Dennis Mandala and KJ Parker are the high-flying headliners. Mandala has completed 69.4% of his passes for 2,352 yards and 32 touchdowns with just four interceptions. Parker, perhaps the most dangerous player in all of 3A, a receiver with offers from Wisconsin and Iowa, has 33 catches for 996 yards and 15 TDs.

Sutton, though, is the substance behind all that sizzle.

The 6-foot-3, 260-pound left tackle and three-technique defensive lineman is a four-year varsity player. He got reps as a defensive lineman as a freshman, and has been entrenched at left tackle protecting Mandala’s blind spot since he was a sophomore. Sutton is the bookend to 2021 All-State lineman Isaiah Gonzalez for the Knights up front.

“Sutton is one of the best players who has ever gone through IC,” said Krefft, who has had plenty of good ones. “He’s absolutely incredible in terms of his performance in big football games. You talk about character, at Monday’s practice he was an absolute animal and was doing everything the right way like it was the first day of summer camp. He’s really physical, he has explosion off the football, he’s relentless, is great technically, a leader – he has always been a presence for us.”

Sutton will most assuredly be busy against a Byron team that rarely gets cute with how it goes about its business.

The Tigers (11-1) have rushed for 4,075 yards over 12 games out of its power wing-T offense, and has attempted just 48 passes all season. Five Byron players have rushed for over 400 yards on the season, led by freshman fullback Caden Considine with 665 yards and nine TDs.

“We know it’s going to be a physical game,” Sutton said. “The game will be won in the box. We have to be physically more dominant than they are if we’re going to get to where we want to go.”

While the Knights prefer a more balanced approach offensively than their counterpart, their depth likewise showed in last week’s 27-20 overtime win at Princeton.

Junior Joey Gliatta, who had just six carries on the season through 11 games as a third-string running back while being the team’s second-leading tackler, rushed for 182 yards on 22 carries with three TDs, including the game-winner. Denzell Gibson, the Knights’ leading rusher on the year with 819 yards and 13 TDs, had 51 yards on just 10 carries against Princeton. Second-leading rusher Malik Gray was limited to one carry.

“We have a couple kids like Joey who are do everything type kids. He’s really a backup receiver and backup running back,” Krefft said. “Our first two backs were a little limited with the injuries and he ended up getting the carries.”

It’ll need to be all hands on deck for the Knights to take the next step that eluded them last year.

“It’s very rare in life that you get a chance to compete in a semifinal, and we’re here back-to-back years,” Krefft said. “Our focus is on the little things that give us a chance to have success. There is no need to prove ourselves to Byron. We don’t care. We’re not in that world. We need to prove it to ourselves because we want to be the best team in Illinois. We prove that by beating a good football team.”

“It would be, for us, for me, like a dream come true to get to Champaign,” Sutton said. “Knowing the weight room, the offseason, all the work we put in, it would mean a lot.”