Woodstock North eager for 1st varsity season

Students of the Woodstock North High School football team run drills during Friday Mornings practice. Woodstock North has no senior class and this will be the Thunder's first season competing at varsity level. (Nick Dentamaro - ndentamaro@nwherald.com)

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WOODSTOCK – The new high school is like a showpiece, quietly stretching across fields on Raffel Road just off Route 120.

Woodstock North High School already had its first year of classes, but the school still has the feel of being brand new, despite one year’s worth of wear on the desks. The gymnasiums and fields have yet to be christened by varsity athletic events, leaving the school seeking that last piece of validity.

So the athletes trickled in slowly this summer, leaving cleat marks on the practice fields and scuff marks in the gym. They know their teams’ first varsity season, in the Fox Valley Conference, will not intimidate many of their opponents, so Thunder athletes are working even more diligently in the months leading up to the fall season to ensure their entrance does not go unheralded.

“We know that we won’t be the absolute best team out there,” junior linebacker Alex Petersen said, “but we certainly know we won’t be the worst. We’ve got talent, and we’re really looking forward to the challenge this year is going to bring.”

The first hurdle is the absence of a senior class. Those students tend to be natural leaders on their teams, so the North juniors will have the opportunity to lead the Thunder this season and next.

It also means that class of athletes will have to step into a leadership role quickly. The Thunder teams will be the youngest in the FVC.

“They know, of course, that there will be bumps in the road,” North athletic director Nicolas Kearfott said.

“But they also know that they all have an opportunity to play a varsity sport as juniors and make a tremendous impact, and I know that excites them,” Kearfott said.

The number of student athletes interested in establishing tradition for the Thunder has been astounding, Kearfott said. North expects an enrollment of just more than 900 students this fall, and all levels of its athletic teams have experienced swelling numbers.

For a new school in a community in which the athletic talent is divided into two high schools, the amount of interest in encouraging.

Football coach Jeff Schroeder said he feels as though his program already is gelling, since North fielded sophomore level teams last year and the athletes had a chance to play under Schroeder and understand what he and the assistant coaches expect.

“They’re all pretty keyed in to how we do things here,” Schroeder said. “It’s becoming second nature to these kids, what we expect from them and how we handle things. Wood-stock as a community has some strong football tradition, and our kids really want to be a part of that as well.”

McHenry County also is home to several talented girls volleyball teams, but North coach Greg Bruns is confident his team, too, will compete on its new varsity stage.

“We have some very good athletes who have that mentality that they just want to go out and play,” Bruns said. “These girls understand that this year it’s not going to be just about winning matches, but about building a nice program. We know what we want to do as a varsity team, and these girls seem very motivated to do that.”

Football, volleyball, boys soccer, girls tennis and cross country each have a unique opportunity this fall to establish North as a strong FVC contender in its first varsity sports season, and that is not something the student athletes are taking lightly, Petersen said.

“If there are teams that think we’re going to be bad just because it’s our first year, it doesn’t bother us,” Petersen said, “it only gives us more reason to want to compete.”