Marmion's big run builds civic pride

Updated: March 22, 2011 4:58PM

The players may hail from cities across the Fox Valley, some even as far west as DeKalb, but no matter where their grades are mailed to or how long it takes to get home, one thing is for certain - the athletes that make up the Marmion Cadets' 6A title game roster are Aurora boys, through and through.

"The tradition of Marmion, Marmion athletics, Marmion football, has been strong for a long time. A long, long time," said Aurora native and former East Aurora head coach Dick Schindel. "It's great to see that they've advanced to this point. And to carry the flag for Aurora down to Champaign to win a state title, that's great. It's great for the city, great for the school and great for the kids at Marmion and all their alumni.

"The whole city of Aurora is going to be behind Marmion to win the championship."

The Cadets have been playing football in this city since the Benedictine monks took over the Fox Valley Catholic School for Boys in 1933, beginning a proud 77-year history of football that began on Lake Street in the heart of Aurora to the sprawling campus on Butterfield Road.

As the decades passed and demographics shifted for the survival of the private, all-boys academy, many Marmion players and coaches have not grown up here, or currently live here - but that doesn't matter much.

You can see in their faces - and uniforms -on the field and off it, that they are full of civic pride.

"I live in Yorkville and I'm an Aurora Christian coach, and I'm an Aurora guy," said Aurora native Don Beebe, who led the Eagles to the 2008 Class 4A title game. "Where your school is, is where your heart is, in my mind."

A-Town should be proud. The Cadets are, and they're representing you in a way not many athletic programs have in this city's long and rich sporting history.

"We're not a city that's been used to doing that," longtime Marmion coach Jim Reiland said. "It's the second time in football and we've had all the great basketball teams around here we've only had one state basketball champion at West High in 2000. All the great teams East High's had and they couldn't do it. For a Marmion team to be playing for a state championship in any sport is not that common and an Aurora team in general."

One of the men who have helped educate this current group of Cadets is assistant head coach Kurt Becker. It may be easy for them, or their parents, to remember his playing days at the University of Michigan and with the Chicago Bears, but Becker is a proud Tomcat, Class of 1977.

"It means something to me," he said of the Cadets' advancement. "It means something to me for a number of reasons: Number one, Aurora is the second largest city in Illinois and has a deep, rich tradition in football. It has the oldest rivalry in the state of Illinois, the East-West game, the third or fourth (oldest) in the nation. It's not like football is new to the city.

"So, being from Aurora, playing football in Aurora, and being part of the history and tradition, that would be very special for me to go on and be a state champion and represent the city of Aurora."

This civic pride may surprise some, especially those who are fans or alumni of the three established public schools in the city. In the current sports climate, it's easy for public school fans to dismiss private schools as a mish-mash of outside talent, devoid of any true tie to a particular city.

Perhaps that's true in other outlying suburbs, but not here.

Aurora has its own sporting identity, and once you're in it, you're in it.

"I can certainly speak for (my) kids because they've talked about it," Beebe said of his historic 2008 team. "You see it with the comments you read from the Marmion guys - they're the same way. They're going to win this for Aurora, Aurora Marmion."

And should the Cadets win, they'll be able to lay claim as the greatest high school football team this city has ever produced.

True, East and West have been going at each other since 1893 and both programs fielded unofficial state champions in the early 20th century, barnstorming throughout the state to play any challenger that claimed supremacy.

But since the Illinois High School Athletic Association made the hardware official in 1974 with the advent of the current playoff system, the Cadets and Eagles are the only teams to make a bona fide run at a state championship.

There's always something to be said for being first, especially in a city that now has seven football-playing high schools.

"I don't see 'em getting beat, to be honest with you," said Beebe, whose Eagles lost 42-20 to Marmion earlier this season. "They'll never be able to take away that we were the first Aurora team (to get there) and I really believe this Marmion team will be the first team to ever win it.

"Nobody in the history of Aurora can ever take that away, and that's an exciting thing. I don't want to crown them kings yet, but kudos to them if they can pull this thing off. What a great feat, what a longstanding history in Aurora, to be the first team to be able to do that? That's saying something."

And for anyone who feels this town's sporting life revolves completely around the spinning of a basketball, they have short memories.

Ira Jefferson doesn't.

The former West head coach can recount moments from the 1994 season as if they had happened yesterday, and he remembers fondly how the city rallied around his Blackhawks after a 7-2 regular season.

"The feeling I got from that you just can't explain, the way the town got behind us, the way the school got behind us. It was so exciting," he said. "That's one of those where it's hard to explain in words."

Currently a coach at Champaign Central, Jefferson said he will head to Illinois (where his son is a senior on the Illini football team) to watch the Cadets.

"It's great for the community," said Jefferson, who coached West from 1993-99. "Up there, everyone always looked at basketball as one of the big things, but to get a football team from Aurora to go to the state finals, I think that is fantastic.

"To me, Aurora is still my home even though I've been gone for long time. It's just neat to see a hometown school make it to the state finals. I wish it was West High, but it's a great thing because we're not known for football coming out of the city of Aurora. I think it'll put the place on the (football) map."

For the second time in three seasons, the City of Lights will be represented on the grandest of stages in high school football. Most will say it was only a matter of time, with eight champions being crowned a season. While that may be true, not one has been from Aurora.

"Now it will be official if Marmion could come through," said Neal Ormond, the "voice of the Blackhawks" and historian of Aurora sports. "Marmion has such a great sports history to it. That's one of the things that is exciting for me as an Aurora sports fan. They've had some strong teams in a lot of sports, but football and basketball go way back. And I have to feel that the old football coaches, wherever they are looking down on us, have to be pleased that Marmion has done so well."

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