Fridays Are For The Sages

By Johnathan Hettinger

I moved home to Central Illinois six months ago today.

I was motivated by a number of things, but largely by a desire to make this a better place.

I had been living in Montana, just outside Yellowstone National Park, for the last six years. I loved it. I loved the access to nature. I loved the rivers. I loved the wildlife. I loved my friends. I loved it all.

But I kept thinking about Monticello and the Sangamon River and corn and soybeans and pileated woodpeckers and my parents’ yard and my friends and the green trail at Allerton Park and fireflies and what they could all be if I spent some time thinking about them and caring about them.

What I didn’t expect was how much football would shape my experience of being back. I’ve always been a football fan, but largely from a distance. I had an unremarkable pee wee football career that was highlighted by one pass break up. I was a chest painter at Monticello, and a four-year Block I season ticket holder. I write the annual Illini football vibes check. It’s a thing I like to spend time thinking about, but I try not to let it affect my moods in any measurable way.

As a Monticello Sages, Illinois Fighting Illini and Detroit Lions fan, this season has been about as close to the pinnacle as I could ever experience. Illinois going 9-3 is the stuff of my NCAA Football 14 video game dreams. The Lions are the best team in football. But Monticello’s season especially stood out.

In Montana, football barely registered. Livingston, where I lived, is far from anywhere. The closest NFL team is the Denver Broncos, 10 hours away. The closest FBS college football team is a seven hour drive to Pullman, Washington or an eight hour drive to Cheyenne, Wyoming. For many years, the high school in Livingston didn’t even have a team. I hadn’t realized how much football would matter to me once I came home, or how much I’d need it to.

***

I wouldn’t say my return home has been particularly triumphant, not that I necessarily expected it to be. But I think my brain wasn’t quite ready for the heartbreak after heartbreak I’ve been hit with since moving back. I got one tomato off my plants in the garden. I see landowners try to lock up river access. The trees I bought for the pollinator garden died nearly immediately. I miss being able to process all of this in a vast wilderness out my backdoor. There’s been a lot of loss.

I think, right now, I’m sadder than I’ve ever been. Not like in this moment, but in my existence.

I’m having trouble eating. I’m having trouble sleeping. I cry a lot (sometimes during high school football games). There are more reasons for this that I don’t think you need to understand, but they provide important context for why I latched onto something as seemingly simple and perennial as a football season.

As a sports fan, I’ve rarely ended a season with a win — just the 2016 Cubs and the 2018 Monticello Sages high school football state championship (also technically the 2011 Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl but that doesn’t count) summited the peak. Losses at the end feel normal, especially as an Illini fan. They’re almost comforting. They’re the punctuation mark. We lost, so it’s over. Time to move on and argue about next year.

Monticello lost on Friday, and it felt like a solid ending. But it also hurt. More than anything, it wasn’t fair. They lost 49–8 to Lombard Montini, a school that was clearly out of their league from the first whistle. They had no chance of stopping Number 6. It wasn’t just Monticello — it was all the public schools all weekend, outmatched by private-school recruiting power. It wasn’t fair, and the kids deserved better.

***

One of the longest-running jokes I have with my friends is that Fridays are for the Sages. We’ve tweeted the hashtag (#FAFTS). We’ve printed the t-shirts.

#FAFTS started a few years ago when college football became even more money hungry. Illinois football sought relevance and kept scheduling Friday night games, so they could get on national TV, so they could get noticed, so they could get more recognition and money and profit. This is something that should benefit all Illini fans (even though most are also high school football fans).

But in Monticello we had no patience for this. They’re called Friday Night Lights for a reason. There’s an entire book/movie/tv show named after it!

The small Twitter following of Sages fans started a movement: Fridays Are For The Sages. An act of resistance against the greedy Big Ten and NCAA and University of Illinois Division of Intercollegiate Athletics.

***

Ironically, I’ve been to five Monticello Sages football games this year, and three have been on Saturday.

The first was against St. Joseph-Ogden, postponed because of heavy rain. I drove to my parents’ house on Friday night, crawling along I-72 in a downpour. When I arrived, I found out the game had been moved to Saturday. I stayed over and went with my mom the next day. The Sages lost badly. We left at halftime, driving around listening to the Sages on the radio as I told her about things in my life that I never would have told her about otherwise.

The last game I attended was the semifinal against Unity. It was one of the craziest games I’ve ever seen in real life. With 13 seconds left, Monticello scored a touchdown to take the lead. With one second left, fans thought the game was over and rushed the field prematurely. The refs called a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. Unity had one last play: a Hail Mary from the Monticello 38-yard line. They threw a touchdown as time expired.

Except there was a penalty. The refs blew off the touchdown and sprinted off the field. No one knew what was happening. Later, I learned the call was for an illegal man downfield. It was the right call, but also that’s a stupid rule. I felt sad for Unity and happy for Monticello.

***

This Sages team never felt inevitable. They started the season with a loss to St. Joseph and even big wins, like a 49–0 win over Pontiac on Homecoming, felt shaky (yes, winning by 49 points can look bad.)

But they just kept going. Even when they ended the season by getting blown out by Unity on the road. They entered the playoffs with a whimper, not a roar, but they kept going. In the quarterfinals, they won in overtime against Benton after blowing a large fourth-quarter lead. They avenged their season finale loss to Unity in the semifinals.

Their state championship opponent, Lombard Montini, was in a different universe. After the semifinal, Coach Cully Welter said Monticello was probably a 100-point underdog. It turns out, he wasn’t wrong.

The championship was on a Friday, not a Saturday, and I watched it from my friend’s apartment in Chicago. Coach Welter’s comments and a quick perusal of Montini’s results didn’t give me enough hope to go to Hancock Stadium in Normal and sit in the cold when I already had plans.

With about a minute left in the game, the Sages scored a touchdown and went for two and made it. The kid who scored always came into where I worked in high school, and I remember him being a very cute toddler. It made me smile that he got to score. It felt a lot better to lose 49-8 than 49-0.

The season was undeniably a success. High school football is messier and more unpredictable than any other sport I regularly follow. And it was fun.

But I think the thing that sticks out the most to me, though, is how football games help bring people together, and how the games helped create space in my brain to think about things, like my life and my home and my relationship with my family and friends. Sitting on the cold bleachers surrounded by old teachers, friends’ parents and classmates’ kids makes you feel like you’re a part of a place in a way that I have not really found replicated.

What I’ll remember most from the season is breaking down crying during the semifinal against Unity. I told my mom, “I’m having a hard time.” She touched my arm and told me that was OK.

I came back to Monticello to care for this place. But it turns out this place — its people, its football team, its messy, beautiful moments — cared for me just as much. Fridays are for the Sages. Saturdays, too.

But mostly, they’re for finding your way home.

You can follow Johnathan on Twitter here

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