Playoffs are among the goals in sports from high schools through to the professional ranks.
The first games of the season in high school football and all Fall sports started last weekend.
The Chicago White Sox continue to be in a strong running for postgame play this season as one of the six American League playoff teams. Can the Sox continue to find enough pitching to be competitive? Long baseball seasons have many experiences of ups and downs. Their functions follow positive paths now with more than four weeks remaining in the regular season. Will the Sox pitching hold up?
- Football in high school went through the first games of nine weeks last weekend. Week two will include Friday’s fierce battle of two top teams in non-conference, Lincoln-Way East at Batavia. General consensus puts both teams in the top of the ladder in the Chicago area. There are six college football schedules listed with one game played early, Navy against Notre Dame in a special focus in Dublin, Ireland. The season should be special in many ways for our teams and we will be interested each week.
- Change continues with the makeup of all conference and keeping constant may be a thing of the past. Certainly, change in conference makeup is continually new for West Aurora High School, which in approximately the last 30 years the school has been in the Upstate Eight Conference, DuPage Valley Conference, Southwest Prairie Conference, and back to the Upstate Eight in two years.
West Aurora will be one of four schools to join the Upstate Eight Conference in the 2024-2025 season, along with Elmwood Park, Ridgewood, and Riverside-Brookfield. That will bring the school to a total to 14 schools. Riverside-Brookfield has been ill-fitted in several conferences and in the last 20 years has played as a dominant team. In Aurora, the most notable change is the West Aurora reunion with crosstown rival East Aurora. Previously the teams have played one game in basketball, however, no games in football. It should be welcome change for both schools in both football and basketball. The Upstate in two years will be 14 teams, barring any other changes in the next two years.
- Yorkville continues its growth in football and in week two will play host to a big-school with a rich sports tradition, New Trier, from the north suburban area near Chicago. The game will be at 7 p.m. Friday this week. Yorkville head coach Dan McGuire was happy with his team’s season-opening game, Friday, Aug. 25, a 30-6 non-conference victory against Plainfield South in a non-conference game. In other high school football scores, Glenbard West defeated Marist, 7-6, York defeated Glenbrook South, West Aurora defeated Proviso East, 42-0, and Batavia defeated Chicago Phillips, 42-20.