This team is on a roll.
Eight games into The Season, the Jr. Billikens are 5-3 and have won four in a row, including the Oct. 14 pasting of Mehlville.
The game was over one minute, 32 seconds in, when Terek Hawkins (left) barreled in from the 3-yard line for his first of what would be four touchdowns this night. TK was all over the place in the first half, running up, down and through the line of scrimmage at will.
His opening touchdown was set up after a 70-plus yard connection from Trevor McDonagh to Mitch Klug on the first play from scrimmage, a Hello, Mehlville! pass that set the tone in what would become a lopsided 38-0 Jr. Billiken victory.
But the win did not come without a cost. Early in the 1st quarter, on Mehlville’s first possession, team captain and offensive tackle Bryan Mathews recovered a fumble and tore his ACL in the process (right). It’s the second key Jr. Billiken player to go down with a torn ACL, after linebacker Sean Rammaha tore his in the Chaminade game Sept. 30. This team is no stranger to adversity; tough losses to Parkway North, Webster Groves and CBC have seasoned them and with two games remaining — two “district” games agains DeSmet and Lindbergh — the time to make a run to the playoffs is now.
But before making the trip to DeSmet Oct. 21, the players have quarter exams and for at least two of them, they must first tackle Virgil.
That’s Virgil, the classical Roman poet. Two SLUH players are in their fourth year of Latin, which means the curriculum calls for reading Virgil’s The Aeneid in its original Latin. One of them is No. 45 (left), whose jersey finds its way to my wash machine every Saturday morning. He’s finding it a bit of a struggle to line up agains Aeneas every night.
“If only they would have honored Virgil’s deathbed wishes and not published it,” Matt says, and I’m pretty sure he means it. With football, college apps and a full SLUH course-load, he’s not fully appreciating translating the epic story of the Trojan Aeneas and his journey to Italy that would result, ultimately, in the founding of Rome.
But I’m hoping he will someday, and I try to tell him there are parallels between a football team’s quest for a title and an ancient hero’s epic journey. He’s not buying. But he’s doing the homework.
The Season continues next Friday night, with, to this point, the biggest game of the year and one this team must get through without two of its best players. Adversity is a powerful teacher. Before then, these players must first get through quarter exams — a unique SLUH experience — in Latin and Calculus and Physics and History, among other courses.
Someday, they’ll appreciate this week. Maybe not now, with most of them hunkered up with books, notes and papers to complete before lining up against the Spartans. But someday.
Virgil wrote:
Audacibus annue coeptis.
Look with favor upon a bold beginning.
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