Scouts Football: 2024 Schedule Analysis
The IHSA officially announces schedule; let's break down all nine regular season games
The Scouts are deep into summer practices, the 2024 season starting to take shape.
What does the number 10 mean? As of the date of publication of this article, August 20, we are 10 days until the week one game. Let’s go!!!
In July, the Illinois High School Association officially published the schedule for all games in Illinois. Lake Forest plays nine regular season games—two non-conference, seven North Suburban Conference—and opens the schedule at home vs Lakes.
The Scouts Football Newsletter breaks down the nine regular season games (and Week 0 match up).
Week 0 –– Aug. 24 vs Glenbrook South
After a decades-long sleep, the Illinois High School Association awakens the pre-season scrimmage. The Scouts host the Titans at Varsity Field and bring their unique navy blue and gold colors to the house of Blue and Gold. The Titans are big up front and run a double wing style offense not seen in the North Suburban. Other than the novelty of the match up, the best outcome of scrimmages is decidedly colorless: live reps for the 1’s and 2’s, extra film for coaches to analyze, get out of there with good health and enjoy the BBQ afterwards.
Week 1 — Aug. 30 vs Lakes
A repeat of last season’s Week 1 match up won decidedly by the Scouts. Lakes plays its 20th season in 2024 and is in the midst of a multi-year rebuild. The Eagles are long removed from their glory years of the 2010’s when it made the playoffs every season that decade. Lakes has missed the postseason the last two seasons and won five total games in 2022 & 2023. It will feature one of the better offensive lineman in Lake County in senior center Andy Mlyniec (6-foot-5, 280 pounds). Mlyniec is coming off an all-conference season and pursing a college football career. The Eagles return seven other starters on offense and seven starters on defense. Six of those starters on offense and four on defense are juniors, so the Eagles are young and appear to be building towards 2025. Lakes will be play hard and to the whistle but will not be able to counter the Scouts’ physicality. Mistakes will happen opening night but with such an experienced team, I’d expect those errors from Lake Forest to be diminished. Winning the game matters most but how the Scouts play—not down to the opponent but setting a standard for the season—is critical.
Week 2 — Sept. 6 at Carmel Catholic
This is the fourth year in a row the Scouts and Corsairs have faced off in a non-conference Week 2 game. Carmel has won all three, including a 20-10 victory in 2023. The Corsairs are coming off their best season in over a decade, finishing 2023 with 10 wins and a Class 5A quarterfinal appearance (Carmel led eventual state champion Nazareth late in the fourth quarter in their quarters match up). The rebuild is complete at Carmel as former Bear Jason McKie enters his fifth season as coach. There will be a lot of new faces this season as the Corsairs turn over a number of starters on both sides of the ball. Most notably, sophomore quarterback Trae Taylor takes over as triggerman. Chicagoland has not seen a recruit quite like Taylor since recent NFL first round draft choice J.J. McCarthy came out of Nazareth four years ago. Taylor has accumulated 20 Power 4 offers and has yet to start a varsity game. Plan on getting to Mundelein early for this one as the parking lot and stands will be filled with college scouts and other interested parties to watch the 6-2, 175-pound quarterback throw. Taylor’s top target is likely to be junior wide receiver Kai Owens who has accumulated a handful of MAC offers. Senior running back Donovan Dey (5-11, 195) has burned the Scouts two years in a row on long runs and returns for his senior season. Week 2 games usually feature great match ups and this season is no different with Glenbrook South hosting Lake Zurich, Maine South traveling to Warren along with Carmel-Lake Forest.
Week 3 — Sept. 13 vs Warren
A departure of sorts as it pertains to scheduling. Lake Forest hasn’t played Warren this early in the season since dropping a 34-28 contest to the Blue Devils in a 2015 Week 3 match up. The Scouts have lost nine straight to the Blue Devils so why not mix things up and play them in the conference opener? It will be a physical test as always against Warren, returning 19 starters from a 9-3 campaign in 2023. One of those starters is junior running back Aaron Stewart, a national champion wrestler who moonlights as a football player. Warren will be coming off two tough non-conference opponents—Hersey and Maine South—and could be in an 0-2 hole by this date. A year ago, the Blue Devils lost their first two games only to turn around and win eight in a row. This might be the game I’m most looking forward to on the 2024 schedule, mostly for when it’s being played. A true marker for how good this Scouts team can be this season.
Week 4 — Sept. 20 at Zion
For most programs, regardless of talent disparity, there’s a regular opponent they match up poorly against. Zion is that program for the Scouts. Although they’ve won almost every recent meeting (the exception being a 30-28 defeat in 2018) Lake Forest almost always struggles when playing the Zee-Bees, a program with one postseason appearance in 20 years. In 2023, the Scouts gave up 26 points to a Zion team that averaged nine points in its other eight games. The Zee-Bees will have a few fast players the Scouts will have to contend with and often have a quarterback who can run and throw. But if this game isn’t anything other than a get well, rest the starters after halftime match up after back-to-back physical games vs Carmel and Warren, I’ll be surprised.
Week 5 — Sept. 27 vs Lake Zurich
The second on the Scouts 2024 Retribution Tour. When the Bears intercepted a deflected pass near the goal line last year, preventing a Lake Forest opening drive touchdown, the wheels quickly came off on the 2023 season. The Bears went on to win 43-0 and the Scouts essentially never recovered the rest of the way. Lake Zurich should be good up front with four returning starters along the offensive line, including Jacob Wilk, a 290-pound Western Michigan commit. The Bears will break in several new starters on defense and at quarterback, but that never seems to be an issue with them. They are the definition of a reload program that consistently wins 8-10 games a year. The Bears have won the last two but this series is historically even with Lake Zurich holding a 6-4 edge in the last 10 meetings.
Week 6 — Oct. 4 at Stevenson
By the time this game rolls around in early October, it will be the third in four weeks against NSC rivals. There are moments in every season when a team’s identity reveals itself. We’ll have a pretty good idea of this year’s version of the Scouts after the Stevenson game. The Patriots are coming off an 6-4 season that saw them lose in the first round of the Class 8A state playoffs. This is a series that was once one-sided—it took 15 years for Coach Spagnoli to finally beat the Patriots in 2018—and after Lake Forest won four in a row, Stevenson has swung back to take the last two match ups. Stevenson likes to the throw the ball deep, stretch teams horizontally but are often not as physical up front as Warren or Lake Zurich. Stevenson could easily be 5-0 heading into this game with an easy early part of the schedule that excludes Warren and Lake Zurich. How healthy will both teams be? Lake Forest last won in Lincolnshire in 2018.
Week 7 — Oct. 10 vs Waukegan
A shrewd piece of scheduling as the Scouts host always-bad Waukegan on short rest. Coming off a meat-grinder five week stretch of Carmel, Warren, Lake Zurich and Stevenson, this game serves essentially as a bye, an opportunity for the 2’s and 3’s to see game reps. Waukegan is arguably the worst program in suburban Chicago, winless in conference games since joining the NSC in 2016 and are 2-58 since 2017. It’s sad to see what’s happened there as the Bulldogs were a good program in the 80’s and 90’s and made regular postseason trips. Waukegan’s move to the NSC from the Central Suburban League in 2016 has effectively killed any chance of it playing competitive football.
Week 8 — Oct. 18 vs Libertyville
Much like Lake Zurich, this annual match up ping balls back and forth almost every year. Last year’s 31-28 triple OT thriller won by the Scouts was the most exciting regular season game in years. An oddity: road teams have won every game since 2018, including the 2023 game at Libertyville. The Wildcats will feature one of the area’s best baseball prospects playing quarterback (Quinn Schambow), a Division 1 caliber wide receiver (Blaise LaVista), an Army-commit offensive lineman (Rhett VanBoening) and a hybrid DE/LB getting college looks (Caleb Baczek). There’s talent on the roster, it’s always a question of collective performance with the Wildcats. Libertyville plays the Scouts after Waukegan and Zion back-to-back and should be rested and healthy. Based on recent history, the Wildcats will likely need this game to reach the five-win postseason threshold. The Scouts haven’t beaten the Wildcats at home since 2016 and no time better to break that negative trend than this year.
Week 9 — Oct. 25 at Mundelein
A program in a perpetual state of build, Mundelein welcomes a new head coach in 2024. Johnny Cowhey takes over, the Mustangs’ sixth head coach in 20 years. He inherits a roster that returns close to a dozen starters from a season ago. Dylan Cole (6-4, 260) is a two-way lineman to watch and Brody Paluch is a solid running back (6-3, 195). If the Mustangs can get through their non-conference schedule unscathed, there’s a good chance they will enter the season finale like last year—needing a win to reach five. If the Scouts hold the same record in late October, 4-4, its safe to say 2024 would not have gone as anyone would have hoped.
PREDICTION
If we could get over/under odds on the win total for the season, I’d put that number at 5.5. That’s basically how it should be before every Scouts football season.
The case for over: The strength of this team becomes the defensive line. The Scouts are able to stop the run, pressure the quarterback and force turnovers. The offense runs the football at a five-yards-per-carry clip and Van Camp plays like a three-year varsity starter. The offensive line stays healthy and comes together. Red zone efficiency increases. Inexperienced juniors at key starting spots group up quickly. This large senior class leads the team to a consistent level of performance.
The case for under: Demons of 2023 rear their heads. The Scouts struggle to stop the run and the second and third levels of the defense, where younger players are in new roles, take time to develop. Takeaways are hard to come by. The offense moves the ball between the 20’s but can’t finish drives. Bad luck, which can derail a season.
I mentioned earlier how much I like the schedule. It’s more balanced than in previous seasons. Playing Warren in Week 3 is great for the players and fans. The guys are tired of losing the Carmel and they get another crack at the Corsairs. It’s been a number of years since all four NSC rival teams—Libertyville, Lake Zurich, Stevenson, Warren—along with the Scouts, were all this good at the same time. There is a ton of talent in the conference this season which should make for entertaining and competitive games.
That being said, I lean towards the over win total. I see six wins as a reasonable floor expectation. A 7-2 record is a fair ceiling if this team can get through the non-conference unscathed.
It’s going to be fun ride with this group. Let’s go!