‘It feels good to hear the sound of the cleats banging’

Considering two months ago it didn’t look like there would be a football season and a week ago there was more than 20 inches of snow on the ground, the likelihood of an outdoor practice for the Sycamore football team ahead of a season opener seemed unlikely.

But Wednesday, the Spartans were on their practice field in preparation for their March 20 opener against Kaneland, as teams across the state began practicing for the shortened six-game spring football season.

“We’ve been inside for so long, and we’ve had so many little mini-seasons, whether it was summer, fall, the winter season and now getting an actual practice,” Sycamore quarterback Caden Carrier said. “It feels good to hear the sound of the cleats banging. I know the guys are really excited.”

DeKalb, Sycamore and Kaneland all opened practices Wednesday, as Hiawatha did for its upcoming eight-man season. Genoa-Kingston will start practices Wednesday, as the Big Northern Conference has elected to skip Week 1 and play a five-week season.

The Barbs had arranged to practice at an indoor DeKalb Park District Facility indoors with turf. They’ll practice there through Friday, then shift back to the high school Saturday.

For all the moving parts, coach Keith Snyder said things went very smooth.

“We were pleasantly surprised,” Snyder said. “Not only is it the spring, we were off-campus. We recognized how fortunate we are to have administration help us out, let us use a park district facility. That made for a comfortable practice. We know we get to be indoors for the first three days [and that] is a blessing.”

Kaneland also was outside Wednesday, but coach Pat Ryan said without a fieldhouse there’s not a lot of indoor options.

Ryan said the players and coaches all were excited to be preparing for a game for the first time.

“We haven’t really done anything since October, so it was a good first day,” Ryan said. “Everybody was rusty, but we’re really excited about the year. We have a strong senior class to lead the team, and it doesn’t look like we missed a beat from the last time we were together in October.”

Sycamore coach Joe Ryan said he made the decision to practice outside around noon today. The practice started in the fieldhouse as scheduled but the last half finished outside. He said that he appreciated the work athletic director Chauncey Carrick has done balancing every team’s schedule and getting times in the facilities.

Ryan said his Spartans are ahead of where a team normally would be after one practice. The fall contact days let the coaches install a lot of things, so now it’s more the timing and little things that are the focus.

“The fall we had no idea [if there were going to be games],” Ryan said. “The seniors did a really good job of keeping all this together. For a first day of practice, there wasn’t any learning. It’s just getting better now.”

Sycamore senior lineman Dylan Shuman said it was good to not only get on the field but to get back outside.

“For a while I didn’t really think at all we were going to play this year,” Shuman said. “Then it got announced. It’s going to be nice. I can’t wait to get on the field.”

Ryan said that although there are no playoffs this year there will be a conference championship. And repeating as Interstate 8 champs is the main goal of the season.

Besides, he said, conference championships are hard to come by.

“I’ve gone to the state semifinals more times than I’ve won a conference championship – that’s how hard it is to win conference championships,” Ryan said. “Morris has been to state championship games coming out of our conference without winning the conference. Those are important, and that’s what we have to play for this year. I get it, there are no playoffs this year. But there’s still a lot to play for.”

Snyder said the goals for the Barbs are the same as always – get 1% better every day and go 1-0 each week.

He was absent from coaching the Barbs in the fall because he had opted into remote teaching where he works in Kaneland, so he couldn’t coach the contact days in person. He said he was just glad to be back.

“For me personally it felt good to get in there and actually coach and teach again,” Snyder said. “It’s been since June or July when we did our football camp and really didn’t know what was going on. That was fantastic. I kind of forgot what that was like, as long as I’ve been off.”