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Friday Night Drive

What we learned in Week 8: Stunning results across the board

Power programs take notable losses

Montini Catholic's Payton Nelson, left, gets congratulated by teammates Santino Tenuta (32) and Laddie Asay (0) after a pick six during the game on Friday Sept. 19, 2025, while taking on Fenwick held at Montini Catholic High School.

In this space last week it was pointed out that just four schools with enrollments of 1,950 or larger remained undefeated.

The fact that the list now has just one team on it tells you all you need to know about what happened in Week 8.

Mount Carmel was the only one of that undefeated group that survived the carnage that was Week 8, and they didn’t exactly have an easy stroll, getting past an inspired effort turned in by Fenwick to make it a clean sweep of losses handed to premier programs.

Lincoln-Way East’s loss to Naperville North was surprising for a number of reasons.

Simply put, the Griffins just don’t lose regular-season games. You have to go back to 2022 to find the last regular-season loss for Lincoln-Way East, a 30-27 decision won by Sandburg in Week 6 of that year.

Lincoln-Way East played without star quarterback Jonas Williams, a USC recruit, who is battling a foot/ankle injury and was listed as day-to-day by Lincoln-Way East coach Rob Zvonar after the loss.

• Just when it looked like the West Suburban Silver Conference was getting some clarity, it became jumbled again.

Glenbard West fell to York, whose backloaded schedule caused some to forget that the Dukes might still be a factor in this race. Now York is in the driver’s seat after they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker and Downers Grove North, another team that seemed positioned to swoop in if Glenbard West would falter, lost themselves to Lyons and fell a step behind.

• After eight weeks of play, just two of the 24 teams in the CCL/ESCC power conference remain undefeated.

Mount Carmel and Montini are the lone two teams that have the opportunity to run the league gauntlet without a loss.

Oddly enough, another team that almost always finds itself in this conversation at the end of most years, Loyola, finds itself in a precarious position. The Ramblers, who haven’t missed a playoff field since 2002, are now 4-3 after a loss to Carmel.

Loyola wasn’t able to schedule a Week 2 game, which not only now is hurting the program’s chances of five victories it has also slowed the flow of playoff points in case they don’t. Loyola’s chances of making the playoffs if they lose to Mount Carmel in Week 9 are limited. The field, which may still need a few four-win teams to reach full capacity of 256 teams, has several squads that should be in better shape to claim those spots because they played a full slate of nine games.

New blood

We already knew that there were going to be some different combatants in various classifications at the state finals this year.

Five of the teams that made state championship games (Montini, DePaul Prep, Nazareth, Joliet Catholic, Mount Carmel, Chicago Christian, Belleville Althoff) would all be in different classes if they returned in 2025 because of changes to the multiplier rules as well as teams climbing a class because of success factor.

But some of the schools that played in title games won’t have the opportunity to make it all as DePaul Prep, Chicago Christian and Geneva have already assembled too many losses to make the postseason field.

Belleville Althoff has a difficult ninth game at Kaneland it needs to win, while both Loyola and Joliet Catholic (who plays Providence) face extreme challenges of their own to earn a place in the field of 256.

Scoring still not slowing down

The stretch run isn’t seeing much soldiering up by defenses around the state.

There were still 118 games where teams notched at least 40 points in victories with both Byron and Newman Central Catholic clearing the 70-point barrier. Byron is one of three teams, joined by Peoria and Westville, that have already posted at least 400 points on the season.

There were 23 other games where victors put up 60 points.

Streak stopped

Urbana’s 42-26 victory over Peoria Manual went largely unnoticed in a crazy Week 8.

But it was pretty notable in that program’s camp. It was Urbana’s first on-field victory for the school since 2019.

The record book shows that Urbana won a game in 2022, but that was a reversed decision against Peoria when it was forced to forfeit all of its games that season because of IHSA infractions.

Urbana’s last victory on field came in 2019 when the Tigers pulled off a 22-12 victory over Champaign Centennial in Week 6 of that season.

It was a string 38 consecutive on-field losses that was snapped by Friday night’s victory.

Record book

Richmond Burton’s Mike Noll won his 300th career game at an Illinois school on Friday night. Noll is the ninth coach in state history to reach that milestone and is second on the currently active coach win list behind Pana’s Mark Ramsey.

Closing in on that milestone is Wilmington’s Jeff Reents, who sits with 292 career victories all at Wilmington.

Also notable in this area is Lincoln-Way East’s Rob Zvonar, who recently eclipsed the 250-win mark. Zvonar has coached every win in Lincoln-Way East’s 25-year history.

Steve Soucie

Steve Soucie

Steve Soucie is the Managing Editor of Friday Night Drive for Shaw Media. Also previously for Shaw Media, Soucie was the Sports Editor at the Joliet Herald News. Prior to that, Soucie worked at the Kankakee Daily Journal and for Pro Football Weekly.