No matter the league, Sterling leaves a legacy

The Sterling football team has made a habit out of finding quick success in new conferences. It’s already making its mark on the Western Big 6.

The Golden Warriors won or shared the league title in each of their first two seasons in the WB6, and are 17-2 since joining the league, winning their first 12 games after entering the conference.

“We knew that it was going to be tough coming in and playing nothing but Quad Cities schools. We knew that there are always good teams in this conference,” Sterling senior lineman Junior Farnham said. “I think that we came in and we’re handling it the way that we should. It’s Sterling football, and we’re doing what we’ve got to do.”

Farnham was a freshman starter in 2018, the Warriors’ final year in the Northern Illinois Big 12 West. Sterling won the conference crown in each of the last four seasons in the NIB-12 West, and all told won six titles in nine years in the league.

And before that? Sterling won the last two championships before the NCIC Reagan broke up.

In fact, since the start of the 2008 season, the Warriors have lost more than one conference game just once – in 2013 – and have compiled a 62-8 record in conference games spanning the NCIC Reagan, NIB-12 West and WB6.

Sterling (6-2, 5-1 WB6) has already secured its 18th playoff berth in the last 19 seasons where the postseason was held; it finished 5-1 ion the COVID season this past spring. The Warriors played in Week 10 in all 10 seasons under Greg King, and have now done it in eight of current coach Jon Schlemmer’s 10 seasons (spring 2021 notwithstanding).

Senior Carter Ryan credits the coaches for all that success, no matter the league.

“I think we have the best coaching staff in the state,” Ryan said. “These guys are really, really good, and they know exactly what they’re doing. Every week, they put us in the best position to win. We know we can go out and win every game we have because of every coach on this staff doing their job and making sure we have the best chance to win.”

Farnham also pointed out that it didn’t really matter to the players what conference they were in; instead, it’s all about lining up against the team across from you on Friday night and finding a way to win.

“I think it was just going out there and playing the game,” he said. “We all knew the teams we were going to play, and we obviously knew a few kids from those teams. We just knew we had to go out there and play better, just play our game and win football games, get to where we need to be.”

After a trip to the semifinals in 2018, Sterling and Geneseo joined the Western Big 6 to expand that historic league to eight teams. The Warriors rolled through their first season in 2019, outscoring their opponents 451-200 in a 7-0 campaign.

Last spring started 5-0 before a 47-44 loss to United Township in the season finale, a game Sterling led by 10 points in the fourth quarter. The Warriors then won their first five conference games this season before a 38-7 loss to Moline last week.

Schlemmer believes the key for instant success in such a tough league was due to the fact that the Warriors never forgot their identity.

“I think when you come into a conference, doing anything, any kind of change, you’ve got to make sure you’re doing all the little things right,” he said. “It’s easy to get caught up in, ‘Oh, what does this team do schematically?’ that you forget maybe about all the fundamental stuff, and that’s something that I’m so lucky to have the staff that I have, because we haven’t forgotten that. That’s not something that we overlook.”

The opposing teams’ talent level increased when the Warriors joined the Western Big 6. But even though Sterling was playing a better level of talent with the same talent it had in the NIB-12 and NCIC, there was no drop-off in the win column.

Ryan has a theory about that, too, and it ties in with his previous assertion.

“There are really explosive athletes in this conference. We’re just really well-coached, and we know that sometimes when we play – you could say better athletes – we work really, really hard, and we’re always in a really good spot, we think,” he said. “When you’re always in the right spot, it’s pretty easy to make plays.”

The key might be that Sterling is smart enough to realize it don’t have all the answers going into the games, and the coaches and players are willing and able to adjust on the fly when necessary.

“It’s a good conference, there are athletes at every single school you go to, and you’re going to see a lot of good competition – and at the end of the day, I think this conference does a good job of exposing us athletically sometimes,” Schlemmer said. “It makes us figure out where we’ve got to be better, on the perimeter and in the trenches. That makes for long nights and long weeks, and sometimes really long Friday nights as well.

“But we’re happy to be a part of it, and I think it’s going to continue to prepare us for what we want to do later in the season and the postseason. The ultimate goal hasn’t changed, and it’s still pretty lofty, and it ends somewhere else a little bit bigger than here.”

It’s also apparent that the Warriors have the talent – and depth – to match up with the rest of its new league. To compete in the Western Big 6, it takes starters who are talented, experienced and know what they’re doing … but it also takes second-stringers and third-stringers and even fourth-stringers to do the same.

“I think the best part about this program is the ‘next up’ mentality. No matter what happens, we have a guy ready to go and compete hard and do the best he can, and usually he does a good job,” Ryan said. “That’s what my role was at first, to step in when someone else went down, and people continue to do that. No matter who goes out there, it seems like they do a really good job, and that’s the sign of a really strong program.”

While the Warriors always have single-minded focus and determination on a week-by-week basis, there will soon be time for this group of seniors who ushered in the Western Big 6 era at Sterling High School to look back and see what they’ve accomplished.

And while that time is not yet – and hopefully not for another five weeks, say right after Thanksgiving – Farnham and his mates know how they’ll remember their time as Golden Warriors … and how they’ll be remembered.

“We’re beyond proud,” he said. “We’ve won so many games in the past four seasons I’ve had here on varsity, it’s been amazing. Nobody’s going to forget about this, because it’s high school football and because of our accomplishments. It’s definitely a big thing.”