{"id":1607,"date":"2015-11-22T13:18:58","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T17:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2015-11-22T13:18:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T17:18:58","slug":"1607","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/?p=1607","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

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In Chicagoland for Thanksgiving on my final week of vacation this calendar year.\u00a0 I flew in on the first trip from LaGuardia to O\u2019Hare Saturday morning, arriving before the worst of a storm that dropped a lot of wet snow on the area.<\/p>\n

I went to the state high school football semi-final game between Glenbard West and Cary-Grove with my Dad and brother Chris on Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 Chris lives in Glen Ellyn and has become a big supporter of the Glenbard West football team.\u00a0 Not only is it a fun, inexpensive and accessible activity, I think it\u2019s a nice way for my brother to strengthen his bond with a community he and his family only joined three years ago.<\/p>\n

West is on a run of dominance in recent years:\u00a0 nine straight postseason appearances with trips to the semi\u2019s in six of those seasons and a state title in 2012.<\/p>\n

Undefeated this year, Glenbard West beat Cary-Grove 21-6 Saturday in a game that really boiled down to the persistence of West\u2019s star running back Sam Brodner.\u00a0 Listed at 5-11, 210, Brodner earns yards the hard way.\u00a0 He\u2019s a bull.\u00a0 Brodner doesn\u2019t have an explosively quick first step.\u00a0 Instead, he seems intent on surveying the landscape in front of him for a moment.\u00a0 He looks for a hole and then commits to exploit it.\u00a0 He fights off tacklers exceptionally well.\u00a0 Brodner got loose on a pitch-sweep right in the first quarter that tied the game and it was finally then you saw another gear in the open field.\u00a0 On the day, he carried 50 times for 292 yards with two TD\u2019s.\u00a0 He\u2019ll go to Vanderbilt next year but he has one more game left as an all-state high schooler and that\u2019ll come Saturday the 28th<\/sup> in the 7A state title game in DeKalb.<\/p>\n

Brodner was asked to carry the ball fifty times in part because the weather conditions made it difficult to pass the ball.\u00a0 The wind was out of the dead north at 25 plus and the snow was blinding for all of the first half.\u00a0 Because the field is laid out north-south, the side marching into the wind really had no choice but to run.<\/p>\n

The heaviest of the snow fell in the 90 minutes prior to kickoff and during the first half before tapering off as the teams came back to the field for the third quarter.\u00a0 A single plow cleared the field prior to the game\u2019s start but a good three or four inches \u2013 maybe more \u2013 covered it again as the game went on.\u00a0 Staffers with brooms tried to keep yard lines clean in ten yard increments.<\/p>\n

In the stands, an estimated crowd of 3500 braved a one-two punch of wet, soaking snow followed by a sharp decrease in temps in the second half.\u00a0 The P-A announcer repeatedly cautioned fans to take extra care on the very slippery snow-covered aluminum bleachers.<\/p>\n

This game was supposed to be played at Duchon Field, Glenbard West\u2019s picturesque home venue.\u00a0 But five days before the game, the school announced it was moving the contest to Glenbard South which is another Glen Ellyn, IL public high school three miles due south of West.\u00a0 No mention was made on the school\u2019s web site explaining the site change but when my brother went to purchase advance tickets at West on Thursday, he was told by the ticket-seller that it was being done in the name of player safety.<\/p>\n

Trib sportswriter Mike Clark said the game was moved because of the expected blizzard but it\u2019s more likely rain earlier in the week clinched the decision.\u00a0 After all, the forecast for Saturday was fluid up until about 24 hours before kickoff.<\/p>\n

I think given the intensity of wet snow before and during the game, it ended up being a very sound decision to play on the artificial stuff at South.\u00a0 Duchon\u2019s natural grass surface would have been a soft, gooey mess \u2013 and it would have been much more difficult to clean both the sideline boundaries and yard-line marks every ten as they did at South.<\/p>\n

The criteria for gaining home field in the Illinois state high school football playoffs is a little goofy.\u00a0 It\u2019s a spread-the-wealth mentality with home games awarded to the team that\u2019s played fewer home dates in the playoffs up to the time of the matchup at hand.\u00a0 Ties go to the higher seeded team but it still seems unfair to the higher rated, higher ranked team to go on the road in the postseason.\u00a0 In this instance, West had the home field nod but moved it down the road and still ended up having what felt like at least a little home cooking.<\/p>\n

The 11.2 inches of snow recorded at O\u2019Hare Friday night into Saturday makes it the biggest November snowstorm here since 1895.\u00a0 After the snow, the temps plummeted.\u00a0 The nearest official National Weather Service station to my brother\u2019s house (at DuPage Airport) registered 5 degrees F (above zero) on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

I go to my Mom and Dad\u2019s house in Huntley Sunday night and will spend the week with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Chicagoland for Thanksgiving on my final week of vacation this calendar year.\u00a0 I flew in on the first trip from LaGuardia to O\u2019Hare Saturday morning, arriving before the worst of a storm that dropped a lot of wet snow … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s28tEv-1607","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1608,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1607\/revisions\/1608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesauerbrunreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}