State of Scouts Football: What Went Wrong in 2022 and What the Future Looks Like
This weekend is the opening round of the 2022 Illinois High School Association football playoffs.
Across the state, 256 teams will participate in eight classes for the right to compete for a state championship.
One team, Lake Forest, is sitting out this postseason tournament. For the first time since 2009, the Scouts are on the sidelines, having not qualified.
In this “State of the Scouts” article, publisher Jon Kerr examines the reasons that led to a disappointing 2022 season and how the program is positioned for the future
When the Lake Forest Scouts walked off the field at Cary Grove High School in November 2021, the moment marked the conclusion of an historical run.
The Class 6A semifinal loss capped a remarkable stretch of football that began in September 2019. Over a 26-game period, the Scouts went 21-5.
During that stretch, the Scouts fielded talented players in Rylie Mills, Charlie Aberle, Mac Uihlein, Richie Hoskins, Leo Scheidler, Jahari Scott, Nick Flynn, Watson Allen, Brock Uihlein and Max Terlap; all of whom are now collegiate rosters.
When players of that quality graduate, replacing them is never a certainty. It’s fair to expect a drop off.
But in 2022, the drop off was extreme, more than anyone could have predicted.
Lake Forest finished 3-6, the program’s least amount of wins since 2009.
The offense, so prolific during that 26-game stretch in averaging over 30 points per game, nosedived. The Scouts tied with Mundelein for the third-least amount of points in the conference and over a stretch of 12 quarters of football, managed one touchdown.
The varsity roster, so heavy with upperclassmen from 2019-2021, at its peak featured 13 seniors in 2022. That forced the call up of a slew of sophomores. Some played very well and proved worthy of the spotlight. Others struggled with the physicality of varsity play at the North Suburban Conference level, leading to inconsistent play and a number of injuries.
The trickle down effect impacted the JV and freshman programs – no level finished with a winning record. While success at the under levels should not be measured solely by wins and losses – maximizing experience and minimizing attrition matters more – it’s fair to question why the results were often one-sided against conference rivals Warren, Stevenson and Lake Zurich.
It all leads to the question: is this season’s non-playoff year a one-off or the start of a program slide?
Let’s examine in the State of the Scouts 2022.
THE SENIOR PROBLEM
Regardless of geography or class, there is a common thread amongst state- championship caliber football teams.
They feature a roster full of seniors, many of whom are varsity contributors as early as sophomore year. But there’s another shared characteristic.
Teams that go on long postseason runs have key junior starters. And a few sophomores sprinkled in.
The 2019 and 2021 Lake Forest teams won a combined five playoff games (2020 had no postseason). There were a number of factors, but none more important than senior representation.
In 2019, seniors Mills, Aberle, Kai Kroger, Connor Morrison and Jai Williams were augmented by juniors like Hoskins, Mac Uihlein, Jack Shea and Frank Pinn. And sophomores Jake Milliman, Cade Nowik, Brock Uihlein, Scheidler, Allen and Terlap were key contributors. In the undefeated six-game spring season of 2021, the Scouts were very senior-heavy but had key junior starters in Scheidler, Scott, Nowik, Terlap, Allen and Brock Uihlein.
Last fall, the Scouts again boasted a large senior group yet received significant production from junior starters and contributors Harry Capstick, Robert Pasinato, Mick Graham, Andrew Lyon, Brady Goodman and Shep Graf. And there was Tommie Aberle, a sophomore starter at linebacker.
It’s no surprise those two squads won a combined five playoff games. If there had been a full 2020 fall season, it’s likely that team would have made a deep November postseason run.
Of the teams that make it to the Round of 8 or farther in this year’s postseason tournament, you’ll likely see the same formula – heavy senior production, supplemented by junior starters and some sophomore representation.
In 2022, Lake Forest’s roster completely turned over. It went from a mostly veteran one with minimal reliance on underclassman to one with an overabundance of first-year varsity players. At each positional group, the team either had sophomores starting or playing a lot. Most of the 20 juniors contributed on the field in some form. The class of 2024 fit the mold of team’s that have successful seasons. But the glaring weakness was in the senior and sophomore classes creating an uncomfortable co-habitation; not necessarily always in performance, but in dependency.
A clear-eyed truth emerged after the Week 6 Stevenson shutout loss – there were simply not enough seniors and too many sophomores. The collective production of the senior class and lack of seasoning from the sophomore group was simply not good enough to win games in the uber-competitive North Suburban Conference. It wasn’t going to work.
We know why the roster contained a large number of sophomores – a function of necessity, not design.
Now that the 2022 season is over, it’s fair to ask the question: why was it necessary?
The answer is part result of a universal problem, part function of localized neglect.
HEAD INJURY PANIC
In late 2015, the film “Concussion” was released in theaters. The movie was based on a book by the same name, the story of the discovery of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) and its linkage to a cause of death in retired football players.
“CTE” became a daily buzzword in mainstream culture and kicked off a years-long media storm around the topic of football and safety.
Politicians seized on the subject and held public hearings on the viability of youth football. In 2018, state representative Carol Sente, a Democrat from Vernon Hills, sponsored the “Dave Duerson Act to Prevent CTE.” The legislation proposed banning youth tackle football for kids under the age of 12.
(A retired NFL player and former Chicago Bear, Duerson committed suicide in 2011. In a suicide note, Duerson requested his family donate his brain for research. Later that year, doctors found evidence of CTE.)
The whole episode involving politicians and town halls was nothing more than a charade to leverage a manufactured panic – head injuries in kids – to gin up votes during an election cycle.
Although the proposed bill from Rep. Sente never left the house floor, the damage had been done.
Younger parents got scared. They fell for the emotion-driven panic and kept their kids from enrolling in football.
A National High School Federation study released in 2019 showed that participation in football had decreased by close to 25 percent in just over a decade. A national survey featured similar declines and a troubling trend line – youth football was no longer growing as a sport.
The reduction in participation had begun well before concussion concerns. But the swirl of negative publicity accelerated the downturn and by 2019, the sport had a full blown panic on its hands.
I saw the diminishment first hand. As a coach at the youth level with the Lake Forest Jr. Scouts program, we went from five teams my first year in 2015, to two teams in 2018. That year, we had six 8th-graders in the entire program.
Six. That’s all.
Those 2018 8th-graders are now high school seniors in 2022.
Anecdotally, its reasonable to conclude the lack of seniors on this year’s LFHS team came partly as a result of the Great Head Injury Panic of 2015-2019.
(None of the propaganda turned out to be legitimate. No studies emerged that definitively connected youth football to chronic brain trauma. The politicians got bored with the issue and moved on.)
Other than corporate media and knee-jerk politicians, the head-swirling dizziness (pun intended) caused by the CTE-fueled information dump is no one’s fault. Certainly not the LFHS coaches.
But here is where some blame lies within the program – inertia. Especially on the offensive side of the ball.
LACK OF OFFENSIVE CULTURE
In early summer, right when pre-season practices were beginning, I ran into a Scouts senior football player at the gym.
I asked him what position he was going for. He had played a defensive position in 2021 and I assumed he would be trying out for the same.
“I’m looking at receiver,” he said.
I followed up with a question on the timeline when he made this decision.
He said he wasn’t sure but that he talked to the coaches in camp and they were supportive. I can’t remember if he said who had initiated the position switch, him or the coaches.
That anecdote provides an example of the nonchalant indifference the Scouts program takes towards offense.
It’s more of “we’ll get to camp and see what we got” rather than a “this is what we are going to do and let’s go make it happen” approach. Passive vs. forcible. I’m not talking about scheme. Lake Forest has a pretty clear identity schematically (run the football with inside/outside zone and speed option; play action passing off the run game). I’m talking about player evaluation and communication.
Let’s look at recent examples at the most important position at the high school level – quarterback. Coaches cannot misevaluate the position in this era of football, otherwise season’s can go south very quickly.
In 2018, Lake Forest started the season with James Swartout at quarterback. The Scouts lost their first two games that season and Swartout, a very smart and intuitive quarterback, struggled. In Week 4, he got injured against Lake Zurich. Tommy Hanson, who had competed with Swartout for the starting job in camp, took over. Lake Forest proceeded to win the Lake Zurich game and three of their next five, making the playoffs that season. Hanson also played safety for the Scouts and managed both positions quite well.
I don’t recall much discernible difference between Swartout and Hanson in camp (there was another player, Ryan Cekay, who also took reps at quarterback that summer. He was the team’s leading receiver but had been the freshman quarterback. He ended up staying at receiver and is now a collegiate player at Colgate). But I do think the decision to go with Swartout over Hanson was more about roster mechanics than who was better. Hanson was already a defensive starter. To start him over Swartout would be riskier and wasting a body in Swartout, who did not play another position. But when Swartout got hurt, the team had to turn to Hanson anyway. And they were better with Hanson.
To me, that’s a miscalculation. Sure, coaches have to evaluate rosters and make decisions for the better of the football team. Sometimes it works, sometimes they misfire. It’s easy to second guess in hindsight. That’s fair.
But after the mistake in 2018, they repeated it again the following year.
That year, 2019, two juniors – Jackson Pearre and Richie Hoskins – tried out for the starting quarterback job in camp (there was a senior as well who got reps, Michael Clarke). As freshman, in 2017, Pearre and Hoskins shared the quarterback job and split time at the position as sophomores until Hoskins got called up to the varsity to play defensive back.
Heading into 2019, clearly Hoskins had earned a starting job on defense based on 2018 performance. In camp, much like with Swartout/Hanson, I don’t recall a wide separation between Hoskins/Pearre as far as overall quarterback play, although Hoskins was the better athlete and runner. It’s hard to know for sure until the games start. The coaches decided to go with Pearre for Week 1 vs. Antioch with Hoskins starting in the secondary.
Similarly to Swartout/Hanson the year before, roster logistics had to have an impact on decision-making that pre-season. Hoskins could pretty much play any skill position on offense and was an excellent defensive player. Pearre was a one-trick pony: a quarterback.
After five games in 2019, the offense averaged seven points per game. When Warren shellacked the Scouts 37-0 in Week 5, the record sat at 2-3 and postseason chances were rapidly collapsing.
The coaches made a switch to Hoskins at QB and the Scouts finished the season 5-2 with a trip to the Class 6A quarters.
No one could have predicted the future in August of that year when the decisions were made. Coaches will tell you they make the best choices they can with the information in hand at that particular time. Solutions aren’t always linear – ‘who’s the better quarterback?’ – but expansive ‘what gives us the most complete use of our roster?’ Those are reasonable dilemmas all coaches must debate before every season.
But in the cases of 2018/2019 and the quarterbacks, we have multiple years of evidence that these particular conclusions were examples of poor foresight and reactionary decision-making from the coaching staff on the offensive side of the ball. Both seasons, 2018 and 2019, the Scouts had to win their final game to make the postseason (in 2018, they had to sweep their last two on the road at Libertyville and Stevenson). They did slide into the playoffs in 2018, but at 5-4, they got pushed down in the bracket and as a No. 13 seed, drew Phillips Academy in the first round and lost in a close contest.
In all levels of football, every game matters. The difference between 7-2, 6-3 or 5-4 is a big deal when it comes to postseason seeding.
In 2018 and 2019, the Scouts were bailed out by better talent and strength in numbers. In 2021, there were no questions about quarterback as Hoskins and Scheidler were transformative talents. Coach Spagnoli and offensive coordinator Phil DeWald deserve credit for not overthinking the scheme and designing the offense around the two future Power 5 college players. Lake Forest went 21-5 with Hoskins/Scheidler at QB, the best two-and-a-half season program stretch on record.
This year, they must have felt they could catch lightning in a bottle again. When things deteriorated, they couldn’t lean on the talent and strength in numbers of the 2018 and 2019 squads.
How do they avoid the same pitfalls in 2023 and beyond? By starting the off-season early (they will) but also through hard self-evaluation and adapting their approach to outside influences (less certain they will).
ACCEPT PRIVATE TRAINING IS GOOD FOR PLAYERS AND FOR PROGRAM
The fitness/training industry is big business. A billion-dollar industry.
Around Chicagoland alone, there are thousands of facilities devoted to helping young athletes get stronger/leaner/healthier.
Lake Forest’s strength and conditioning program is terrific, one of the best around. But kids today need more. They want more.
The coaches at LFHS often don’t see it that way, though. They see private industry as a threat to their culture.
In the year 2022, that’s the wrong approach.
(It’s not just Lake Forest. It’s everywhere. I could write 10,000 words on the general distrust of public school coaches of private trainers and vice versa, but we’ll stay on topic and not get too far into the weeds.)
The correct stance moving forward is an acceptance that private training is here to stay and rather than be dismissive, view outside influences as healthy for kids and an augmentation of their own well-proven system (just as football coaches have come to accept multi-sport participation…the data is unequivocal in how playing more than one sport is healthier for young athletes).
A more-voices-are-better-than-one attitude is especially true with offensive skill players and offensive lineman, positions the Scouts have particularly struggled to develop. Kids want to play offense, catch the football and score touchdowns. The sport is tilted in favor of offense and teams all over Chicagoland are putting up points. Four teams in the Mid-Suburban League scored over 300 points this season (one, Prospect, averaged 44 points per game). The four playoff teams in the Northern Lake County Conference scored at a 35 points per game clip.
It’s not that hard to score points in high school football.
Consider this – of the 28 teams that make up the largest Chicagoland conferences, the NLCC, MSL and NSC, Lake Forest’s 148 total points put them in a three-way tie for sixth-worst. Twenty teams scored more points, only five teams scored less.
Offensive football should never, ever look as hard to play as it did for the Scouts in 2022.
(Take it back to the anecdote I shared earlier in this article about the wide receiver I ran into at the gym. Imagine if there had been a conversation over the winter between the young man and an LFHS coach about his position for the upcoming year. Maybe that conversation would be a catalyst for specialized training on footwork/routes in January/February. If so, he probably would have been better positioned to help the team in August and September.)
HONEST SELF-EVALUATION
Lake Forest has a head coach as defensive coordinator in Chuck Spagnoli. It’s understandable he would be protective of his side of the football (and the results don’t lie. The Scouts are consistently one of the better defensive units in the conference). But as the head coach, Spagnoli is also responsible for developing the entire roster. After woeful offensive production levels in 2022, an honest assessment cannot be ‘status quo. We’ll just roll the ball out again in June and hope for the best.’ That would be committing program malpractice.
I’m not talking about cosmetic changes with the off-season program or tweaking the coaching staff (although I think considering the addition of a younger coach with new ideas on the offensive side of the ball wouldn’t hurt). I’m talking about a deeper dive in how they look at offense as a sum of the whole. What are other successful programs doing? Are there any ideas we can take from them? Are we better off remaining a program that gets stops and scores enough points to win games? Can we be an offensive-minded program that also plays great defense? Do we have the personnel for it? Can we teach/coach it? If not, who can?
Be OK if the answer is ‘no’ and with your players training outside of West Campus in the off-season. Parents in this community want to invest in their children’s athletic futures and need advice on how to do it. Trust they will come back and be better in-season Scouts because of it.
The strongest organizations are clear-eyed about what makes their culture unique while also possessing an acceptance of their own limitations and desire for correction. All concepts can be true at the same time and must co-exist if Lake Forest is to repeat its 2019-2021 run or start another long streak of postseason qualification.
In totality, football is a sport about numbers. It takes helmets to win games.
There were 70-plus players combined on the JV/freshman levels this season. At the Jr. Scouts level, we had well over 100 athletes in our tackle program, and five total teams.
Those are positive developments. I see large numbers of participants everywhere I go this fall. Football as a sport has moved past the head injury panic of 2015-19.
As it pertains to numbers, safety, parental/community involvement/support, Lake Forest as a program has never been healthier. The culture is strong.
But in order for 2022 to be only a one-off season, changes must happen.
Because like the rest of you, I miss playoff football.
For story ideas, article comments/feedback, drop note to jonjkerr@gmail.com, or @scoutsfootball1 on Twitter.