'That's not supposed to happen': Freshmen making an impact in NIC-10 football
No freshman ever played varsity high school football for Vern Pottinger at Belvidere.
“As a matter of fact, in my first 18 years there, we only started two sophomores, and one of them is because we had an ineligibility,” said Pottinger, who took over a team that had only two winning seasons in its previous 14 years and built the Bucs into two-time state champions.
Those two sophomores — Michigan recruit Todd Martens and Aaron Latino, the leading rusher on Belvidere’s state championship teams in 1993 and 1994 — are among Belvidere’s greatest-ever players, and yet they didn’t play varsity as freshmen. Neither did any player at Boylan in two decades under two-time state champ Dan Appino.
“I never brought any freshmen up,” said Perry Giardini, who coached East to a state title in 1985. “It wasn’t just ability or maturity. I always felt the kids who had been there for three and four years deserved the first chance. It’s more than just winning games. It’s doing right by the kid. Once they were sophomores, I would bring somebody up, but never as a freshman. Never.”
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Playing varsity as a freshman in the NIC-10, Rockford’s large-school conference, was unheard of before Troy Vandenbroek took over at quarterback for Belvidere in 2009. And even sophomore starters were a rare breed.
That has changed dramatically in the last decade. Freeport will have 10 seniors this year who all played varsity as freshmen. Harlem, the school that has driven the star freshman storyline the most, has placed six freshmen on the JV level before practice even officially began this week.
“You are talking about 14-, 15-year-old kids playing against 18-, 19-year-old men,” Freeport coach Anthony Dedmond said. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
But it does, in part because the number of players trying out for football at many schools is half as many as they had 20, 30 and 40 years ago.
“It’s not just Freeport — it’s across the board. It’s everywhere,” Dedmond said. “Teams are becoming smaller.”
In size as well as numbers. Most of the impact freshmen have been skill-position players.
“Teams are becoming smaller with good skill players,” Dedmond said. “The skill players are dynamic, regardless of what size they are.”
Some of the brightest stars in Harlem history were four-year starters. The league’s all-time leading passer James Cooper. Linebacker Adrian Palos, a two-time NIC-10 defensive player of the year who also led the conference in rushing in 2021. And Jalen Benson, who began the trend by starting at wide receiver and defensive back for Harlem all four years.
Current coach Bob Moynihan, who led the Huskies to the third round of the playoffs for the first time in school history last year, isn’t shy about bringing up young players. In 2022, Jahmani Muhammad became the first sophomore to ever lead the NIC-10 in rushing. But freshmen? Moynihan resists that.
“The smaller schools have no choice,” Moynihan said. “Some don’t even have a freshman team. They have to play everybody.
“We like to have them play with the guys who are their classmates. We don’t want to rush them. Sometimes their head gets a little too big, so you have to do it with the right kids. That is a big concern. But if there are freshmen who can do it, I am all for it.”
Harlem’s six freshmen on JV, Moynihan said, will help him groom three different classes of freshmen for the future: one group on the freshman team, one on the sophomore team and one with the JV. And maybe, he said, some of the freshmen on JV will be ready to be promoted to varsity by midseason.
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Other notable freshman starters in recent years are Jefferson linebacker Bryson Thomas and East receiver Dominic McCarren, who later transferred. East has had several other freshmen stars. Aydin Guttridge was a four-year starter at offensive tackle and Javius Catlin, who could break the NIC-10’s all-time rushing record with a strong senior season, was second in the league in rushing as a freshman. East tight end Jaymere Williams, now a junior, became the first freshman in NIC-10 history to make first-team all-conference two years ago.
Many of these freshmen did not play out of necessity. Catlin, for instance, was the backup to CJ Berry, who led the league in rushing. But East found ways to get him carries for another reason: As a carrot to keep him wanting to be an E-Rab.
“The biggest dilemma in the city is everybody is mobile,” Griffin said, citing the amount of families who live in apartments and move frequently. “You might get 25 freshmen that play all year and you are lucky to keep 15 of them. It’s not like that in other places outside of Rockford.
“We are trying to retain people. Two things can happen when you play freshmen. One is good and one is bad. One thing is when they have a terrible experience and get their heads knocked around. But the other is they have a great experience and you retain them.”
Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com, @matttrowbridge or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: How Rockford freshmen high school football players have big impact
