Football: DVC once again flexing its playoff muscle

Updated: November 8, 2011 6:59PM

Year in and year out, the DuPage Valley Conference has continually been considered among the best football leagues in Illinois.

The numbers don’t lie.

Since West Chicago captured a Class 3A state championship in 1974, the DVC has won 14 football state titles.

Wheaton Warrenville South has been responsible for half of that total with its seven championships, which have all been won since 1992 and include claiming Class 7A crowns in the past two years.

Over that same time period, DVC members have combined for 23 state title game trips with six of eight schools making at least one appearance during the final weekend of play, led by the Tigers’ 10 trips, with Naperville Central, Naperville North, Wheaton North and Glenbard North all tied for second with three appearances each.

“The DVC prepares you for playoff play better than any conference in the state, or as good as any conference,” Naperville Central coach Mike Stine said. “There are some other good conferences out there. So our kids are battled-tested. Our conference is battled-tested when it comes to the playoffs.”

The success the conference has carried perennially into the postseason as a whole has also generally held true through the nonconference portion of the schedule in the regular season.

Over the course of the last 10 years heading into this season, the DVC combined to put together a nonconference record of 121-39 — a .756 winning percentage.

Registering 14-2 records in both 2008 and 2010, the worst the conference went in nonconference play in that time frame was the 10-6 combined record it produced in 2002.

The uncharacteristically poor 8-8 combined record that the conference’s eight schools turned in this year probably sent some shock waves around the state as a possible indication that it might be a down year in the DVC, but perhaps that record is indicative of challenging scheduling.

“I think what you’re gonna find is somebody’s gonna be standing tall through these tough, tough matchups,” Wheaton Warrenville South coach Ron Muhitch said back in September. “Whatever team that is will probably be significant in survival of injury and probably some tight games. That’s probably gonna be the biggest thing. I’ve noticed this season, we’re playing a one-score game difference or a five-points game. I think somebody’s gonna win a close one and I think they’re all gonna be close. I don’t think there’s gonna be some blowouts this year.”

Showing how competitive the play was inside the conference this year, consider that heading into the season’s final two weeks, in the 12 head-to-head matchups between the five perceived contenders before the season, the largest margin of victory in any of them was the 11 points Wheaton North enjoyed in its victory over Naperville North.

The lopsided victories Wheaton Warrenville South and Glenbard North earned over Wheaton North and Naperville North, respectively, in Week 9 skewed that note a bit, but the competitive balance throughout the conference this year was as good as one has come to expect from the DVC.

In addition, the conference title Wheaton Warrenville South and Wheaton North shared this year marked the first time since 1997 the DVC champion didn’t go 7-0 in the conference.

“I don’t think the records of the DVC schools were as good as they’ve been in the past,” Wheaton North coach Joe Wardynski said last month. “Maybe that’s a reflection of the quality of the league this year. I don’t think we have a team that’s, right now, you’d pencil in as a favorite to get downstate like we’ve had certainly with Wheaton South in the past few years and Naperville North and even Glenbard North a few times. I think for anybody from the DVC to make a deep run in the playoffs, it’s not going to be an easy path. I think there’s a lot of quality teams out there this year.”

After the relatively uninspiring first two weeks of play to begin the 2011 season, the conference has once again started to flex its muscle throughout the postseason’s first two weeks.

A week after four of the conference’s five representatives opened the postseason with victories on Oct. 28, Wheaton Warrenville South and Naperville Central both emerged victorious last Friday to situate themselves in the state quarterfinals, as one of eight teams in their respective classes still gunning for a trip to Champaign and a state title come Thanksgiving weekend.

While Wheaton North lost in a Class 7A second-round game to Rockford Boylan a day later, Glenbard North followed the lead of Wheaton Warrenville South and Naperville Central with a 35-21 victory over Palatine on Saturday to give the DVC three teams in the state quarterfinals for the first time since 2007.

The triumvirate of Naperville North, Glenbard North and Wheaton Warrenville South that reached the state quarterfinals in 2007 marks the only time since the IHSA expanded to eight classes in 2001 that the DVC has sent three teams into the state quarterfinals.

Highlighted by Naperville North’s 46-19 victory over Glenbard North in the 2007 Class 8A state title game, all three schools made state title game appearances that fall, with Wheaton Warrenville South falling to Lake Zurich in the 7A finals.

However, a trio of conference teams reached the state quarterfinals in 1995, 1998 and 2000 and the DVC had a representative playing in a state title game in 1995 and 2000.

With Naperville Central and Glenbard North on opposite sides of the 8A bracket and Wheaton Warrenville South looking ahead to its Class 7A state quarterfinal meeting with East St. Louis three wins away from a third straight Class 7A state title, the opportunity to repeat the success the conference enjoyed in 2007 is there.

“It’s quite ironic that probably the three best defensive teams and probably the three teams that run the ball best all are the three that are still involved in playoffs,” said Naperville North coach Sean Drendel, whose team lost to Downers Grove South, 37-24, in a Class 8A first-round game. “I’m not surprised that those three are still around.”

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