Friendships and a fantastic finish at Batavia
Bulldogs 1st boys winner of CS Sportsmanship Award
By Chris Walker
BATAVIA – On numerous occasions Mark Gianfrancesco recalls giving a gander to the action that was taking place at Engstrom Park, near Batavia High School.
That was about six years ago.
“I would see these kids out there all the time playing soccer,” the Batavia coach said. “They would ride their bikes over there and bring their balls and be out there playing in the summer and after school. They didn’t care about the venue, only about hanging out and playing.”
Many of those same kids played soccer as seniors at Batavia this fall.
The team struggled for success in the win column but more than made up for it with the friendships that were fostered during the journey. That kinship contributed to an unpredicted crescendo: a regional championship on the Bulldogs' home turf.
And though they lost their last game, they went out in style. The Bulldogs fell to the best team in the state, Naperville North, in a Geneva Sectional semifinal. That forced Batavia to turn in Cinderella’s glass slipper, but there's no shame in losing to team that went on to win its third-straight state title and did it in record-setting fashion as the first team in state history to finish unbeaten and untied.
“To have this opportunity this year to coach those guys was pretty cool, and you don’t always get that,” Gianfrancesco said. “And we only had six returning (varsity) guys this year so these other guys stayed down at JV and were committed to playing there knowing they’d have the opportunity as seniors to come up and play at the varsity level. They were willing to do that and most guys wouldn’t be willing to, but that’s the connection we had between all those seniors.”
All 16 of them.
For their perseverance throughout their high school journey, their commitment to each other as teammates, their respect of the game and their opponents and their desire to put their best effort forward from the beginning of the season until the very end, Batavia has been recognized as the Chicagoland Soccer Sportsmanship Award winner for the 2018 boys season.
“It was always fun being with these guys,” senior Eddie Torres said. “They’re all like my best friends, and we have a lot of fun playing and hanging out. We had a lot of losses this season, but our morale was never down, and we played our hardest in every game.”
Instilling the right attitude in his players while recognizing that he’s dealing with the differing feelings and emotions of a roster of teenagers can’t be easy, but with a significant number of years as both the head coach of boys and girls soccer at Batavia, Gianfrancesco has mastered it, or at the very least, he aced it this fall.
“It sounds cliché, but we’re old enough where we get it, and I try to convey to the girls and guys that this isn’t the end game,” he said. “The games aren’t what you remember most. You might remember a few games here and there, but it’s the connections you make with your teammates.
“We only had six returning players, but we had that connection going already. Our season didn’t necessarily go the way we wanted record-wise, but it’s not just about the score sheet, because you could see us play or practice and we didn’t look like a below .500 team.”
On Nov. 14, Bulldogs girls team star Anna Holcombe signed her national letter of intent to play soccer at Indiana State, the school known mostly for the basketball prowess of Larry Bird in the late 70s. She said there is a strong camaraderie amongst the soccer teams which interact with each other and support each other.
“We went to a lot of games this year and supported them, and they went pretty far,” she said. “I’m excited for this coming year with the new conference, which should be harder and more competitive. So we’ll see what we can accomplish, and I’m sure the guys will come out this spring and support us.”
From the view from the field or the stands, it was obvious the Bulldogs boys side truly cared for one another.
“I think we basically all have the same personalities,” senior Carter Craney said. “We knew when we had to take things seriously at practice and in games, but we also really love to joke around and hang out with each other. We didn’t take things too seriously. We really were able to bond.”
Senior Gunner Knox acknowledged that they may have been a team of soccer players, but they were just as much of a group of friends who happened to love playing soccer.
“We all enjoyed being together and playing together as a whole,” he said. “And I think that’s why we’ve stuck around with each other for so long. We have such a good time together, and I think that’s what led to our success at the end of the season.”
And even if that dream postseason run to the finals didn’t happen, it doesn’t take away from the memories that were created along the way, whether it was joshing with each other about something that happened in class, overeating carbs at pasta parties or doing celebratory dances while ousting each other in video game marathons.
“We all care for each other and want everybody to succeed to their best potential and other stuff,” senior Ian Wood said. “We hang out in each other’s basements playing games like Super Smash Bros. and having pasta parties and just hanging out playing for a few hours. We just love having everyone’s company around.”
Sometimes close proximity and the intensity of the season can lead to friction and fracturing of the group. The Bulldogs never got to that point this season despite spending so much together. That’s not to stay that they were always on the same page. As teenagers dealing with peer pressure, hormones, homework, part-time jobs, parents and preparing for college and the real world, it’s not always easy.
In that sense though, having teammates as friends helped balanced being a student-athlete on a team that put 16-of-20 players on the honor roll. The group celebrated the good moments and provided shoulders to lean on during the rough days.
“It was important to us that whatever happened on the field stayed there,” senior Adler Palos said. “Whatever clashes we had in the game, once it ended, we shook hands, and it was all over. We always made sure we left it there.”
That doesn’t mean the emotions didn’t spill over occasionally after games, especially on road trips back to Batavia, but even then the Bulldogs were mature enough to regroup by the time they were walking down the steps of the bus and heading for home for the night.
“I remember going on some bus rides, and we’d be really, really mad at each other because we lost to some terrible team, or some team we thought we were going to kill,” Craney said. “But whenever that happened we all would try to pick each other up. Some of us would be super mad and sad we lost, and others not as much, but as a team we knew we had to come together and push each other to do our best, and we did that in our last week.”
Batavia finished 5-11-4 and only had three wins in the regular season, but the Bulldogs were more than ready once the postseason arrived. They upset Oswego East and Lockport to win a regional title. Their wonderful run came to an end against Naperville North, one of six teams the Bulldogs played that won a regional title this autumn. That did nothing to erase the magic of that week of wins against the Wolves and Porters at home in Batavia.
“If you look at the seeds, it was the 1, 2, 3 and 16 (in the sectional) so nobody expected anything more from us,” Wood said. “Just being seniors we just wanted to keep winning for each other, and I don’t think we could’ve ended it any other way.
“We really were riding on the fact that we had nothing more to prove. Other teams were supposed to come in and run us over, but we were ready. We were there and gave everything we had.”
The Batavia football team is one victory away of advancing to the state finals and school spirit is high right now. The soccer team also deservedly got to experience some of that in October.
“Our ‘Don’t Sleep on Batavia’ (motto) started to get around the school then so that everyone knew that it tied into soccer,” Palos said. “Before that I don’t think anyone knew much about the soccer team.
“When I was in the school halls there were guys from the football team who I had never talked to before who were coming up and congratulating me. They knew more about us than I thought because for awhile I think they all thought that we were just the soccer team that isn’t doing very well.”
Said Knox: “After the first playoff game I think the school started to catch on to us. No one really paid attention during the season, and then we started hearing a lot more in the hallways. It feels good to be a part of that and have people supporting that.”
When asked if they’d rather have gone 18-2-0 in the regular season and won conference but lost the regional semifinal game, or finish like they did at 5-11-4 and won a regional semifinal, the half dozen players on-hand unanimously agreed without hesitation that they’d take the regional title. Gianfrancesco is on the same page.
“We had so many games that could’ve gone either way in the regular season,” he said. “For me, I’m fine with winning conference titles and both the Upstate Eight and now the DuKane have tough opponents that get you battle-tested for the end. I love to win those conference games, but overall it’s always been about winning plaques and doing well in the playoffs.”
With success also comes heartbreak for one team. When the Bulldogs nicked Oswego East, 1-0, in a regional semifinal, they ended the season of a super-talented Wolves team that won 14 games and sent nine seniors home for good. Obviously, tears were shed on that bench afterward.
“We respect all our opponents,” senior Joe Grendzinski said. “Playing with club, we know a lot of the kids we play against anyway so it’s going to be extra competitive, but we also respect them at the same time. When you respect your opponents, you feel more obligated to being good sports.”
Keeping those emotions in check can be difficult in the pursuit of winning. While fighting adversity, the Bulldogs showed maturity in being able to tackle the difficult moments and turn them into positives.
“During the game it’s not uncommon for it to get out of hand sometimes,” Craney said. “During pregame and postgame we work on trying to keep things civil. We never try to do anything wrong to people. We just try to be as sportsmanlike as we can when it’s game time.”
Knox said it helps having the support of great teammates during those difficult moments.
“We’ve always there to pick each other up when things get heated and to cool each other off when someone needs to get their head right,” he said. “Sometimes it can be difficult or get out of hand. It happens, but having everyone on the team there to keep you calm, to settle you down, is a big help.”
Looking ahead to next year, the Bulldogs will rely on younger players and newcomers to maintain the team spirit and respect of the game while also trying to achieve more success in the win column during the regular season.
The Bulldogs haven’t had a winning season since they went 19-3-3 in 2014, but they’ve won three regionals in the past five seasons. They certainly are finishing strong and finding a way to put the regular season behind them once regionals roll around.
“These seniors were like my second family,” junior Austin Saenz said. “I loved playing with them and want to continue to make a new family here with these new kids coming in. We’ll have a bunch of freshmen and sophomores next year that are pretty good so we’ll see what happens.”
Bulldogs 1st boys winner of CS Sportsmanship Award
By Chris Walker
BATAVIA – On numerous occasions Mark Gianfrancesco recalls giving a gander to the action that was taking place at Engstrom Park, near Batavia High School.
That was about six years ago.
“I would see these kids out there all the time playing soccer,” the Batavia coach said. “They would ride their bikes over there and bring their balls and be out there playing in the summer and after school. They didn’t care about the venue, only about hanging out and playing.”
Many of those same kids played soccer as seniors at Batavia this fall.
The team struggled for success in the win column but more than made up for it with the friendships that were fostered during the journey. That kinship contributed to an unpredicted crescendo: a regional championship on the Bulldogs' home turf.
And though they lost their last game, they went out in style. The Bulldogs fell to the best team in the state, Naperville North, in a Geneva Sectional semifinal. That forced Batavia to turn in Cinderella’s glass slipper, but there's no shame in losing to team that went on to win its third-straight state title and did it in record-setting fashion as the first team in state history to finish unbeaten and untied.
“To have this opportunity this year to coach those guys was pretty cool, and you don’t always get that,” Gianfrancesco said. “And we only had six returning (varsity) guys this year so these other guys stayed down at JV and were committed to playing there knowing they’d have the opportunity as seniors to come up and play at the varsity level. They were willing to do that and most guys wouldn’t be willing to, but that’s the connection we had between all those seniors.”
All 16 of them.
For their perseverance throughout their high school journey, their commitment to each other as teammates, their respect of the game and their opponents and their desire to put their best effort forward from the beginning of the season until the very end, Batavia has been recognized as the Chicagoland Soccer Sportsmanship Award winner for the 2018 boys season.
“It was always fun being with these guys,” senior Eddie Torres said. “They’re all like my best friends, and we have a lot of fun playing and hanging out. We had a lot of losses this season, but our morale was never down, and we played our hardest in every game.”
Instilling the right attitude in his players while recognizing that he’s dealing with the differing feelings and emotions of a roster of teenagers can’t be easy, but with a significant number of years as both the head coach of boys and girls soccer at Batavia, Gianfrancesco has mastered it, or at the very least, he aced it this fall.
“It sounds cliché, but we’re old enough where we get it, and I try to convey to the girls and guys that this isn’t the end game,” he said. “The games aren’t what you remember most. You might remember a few games here and there, but it’s the connections you make with your teammates.
“We only had six returning players, but we had that connection going already. Our season didn’t necessarily go the way we wanted record-wise, but it’s not just about the score sheet, because you could see us play or practice and we didn’t look like a below .500 team.”
On Nov. 14, Bulldogs girls team star Anna Holcombe signed her national letter of intent to play soccer at Indiana State, the school known mostly for the basketball prowess of Larry Bird in the late 70s. She said there is a strong camaraderie amongst the soccer teams which interact with each other and support each other.
“We went to a lot of games this year and supported them, and they went pretty far,” she said. “I’m excited for this coming year with the new conference, which should be harder and more competitive. So we’ll see what we can accomplish, and I’m sure the guys will come out this spring and support us.”
From the view from the field or the stands, it was obvious the Bulldogs boys side truly cared for one another.
“I think we basically all have the same personalities,” senior Carter Craney said. “We knew when we had to take things seriously at practice and in games, but we also really love to joke around and hang out with each other. We didn’t take things too seriously. We really were able to bond.”
Senior Gunner Knox acknowledged that they may have been a team of soccer players, but they were just as much of a group of friends who happened to love playing soccer.
“We all enjoyed being together and playing together as a whole,” he said. “And I think that’s why we’ve stuck around with each other for so long. We have such a good time together, and I think that’s what led to our success at the end of the season.”
And even if that dream postseason run to the finals didn’t happen, it doesn’t take away from the memories that were created along the way, whether it was joshing with each other about something that happened in class, overeating carbs at pasta parties or doing celebratory dances while ousting each other in video game marathons.
“We all care for each other and want everybody to succeed to their best potential and other stuff,” senior Ian Wood said. “We hang out in each other’s basements playing games like Super Smash Bros. and having pasta parties and just hanging out playing for a few hours. We just love having everyone’s company around.”
Sometimes close proximity and the intensity of the season can lead to friction and fracturing of the group. The Bulldogs never got to that point this season despite spending so much together. That’s not to stay that they were always on the same page. As teenagers dealing with peer pressure, hormones, homework, part-time jobs, parents and preparing for college and the real world, it’s not always easy.
In that sense though, having teammates as friends helped balanced being a student-athlete on a team that put 16-of-20 players on the honor roll. The group celebrated the good moments and provided shoulders to lean on during the rough days.
“It was important to us that whatever happened on the field stayed there,” senior Adler Palos said. “Whatever clashes we had in the game, once it ended, we shook hands, and it was all over. We always made sure we left it there.”
That doesn’t mean the emotions didn’t spill over occasionally after games, especially on road trips back to Batavia, but even then the Bulldogs were mature enough to regroup by the time they were walking down the steps of the bus and heading for home for the night.
“I remember going on some bus rides, and we’d be really, really mad at each other because we lost to some terrible team, or some team we thought we were going to kill,” Craney said. “But whenever that happened we all would try to pick each other up. Some of us would be super mad and sad we lost, and others not as much, but as a team we knew we had to come together and push each other to do our best, and we did that in our last week.”
Batavia finished 5-11-4 and only had three wins in the regular season, but the Bulldogs were more than ready once the postseason arrived. They upset Oswego East and Lockport to win a regional title. Their wonderful run came to an end against Naperville North, one of six teams the Bulldogs played that won a regional title this autumn. That did nothing to erase the magic of that week of wins against the Wolves and Porters at home in Batavia.
“If you look at the seeds, it was the 1, 2, 3 and 16 (in the sectional) so nobody expected anything more from us,” Wood said. “Just being seniors we just wanted to keep winning for each other, and I don’t think we could’ve ended it any other way.
“We really were riding on the fact that we had nothing more to prove. Other teams were supposed to come in and run us over, but we were ready. We were there and gave everything we had.”
The Batavia football team is one victory away of advancing to the state finals and school spirit is high right now. The soccer team also deservedly got to experience some of that in October.
“Our ‘Don’t Sleep on Batavia’ (motto) started to get around the school then so that everyone knew that it tied into soccer,” Palos said. “Before that I don’t think anyone knew much about the soccer team.
“When I was in the school halls there were guys from the football team who I had never talked to before who were coming up and congratulating me. They knew more about us than I thought because for awhile I think they all thought that we were just the soccer team that isn’t doing very well.”
Said Knox: “After the first playoff game I think the school started to catch on to us. No one really paid attention during the season, and then we started hearing a lot more in the hallways. It feels good to be a part of that and have people supporting that.”
When asked if they’d rather have gone 18-2-0 in the regular season and won conference but lost the regional semifinal game, or finish like they did at 5-11-4 and won a regional semifinal, the half dozen players on-hand unanimously agreed without hesitation that they’d take the regional title. Gianfrancesco is on the same page.
“We had so many games that could’ve gone either way in the regular season,” he said. “For me, I’m fine with winning conference titles and both the Upstate Eight and now the DuKane have tough opponents that get you battle-tested for the end. I love to win those conference games, but overall it’s always been about winning plaques and doing well in the playoffs.”
With success also comes heartbreak for one team. When the Bulldogs nicked Oswego East, 1-0, in a regional semifinal, they ended the season of a super-talented Wolves team that won 14 games and sent nine seniors home for good. Obviously, tears were shed on that bench afterward.
“We respect all our opponents,” senior Joe Grendzinski said. “Playing with club, we know a lot of the kids we play against anyway so it’s going to be extra competitive, but we also respect them at the same time. When you respect your opponents, you feel more obligated to being good sports.”
Keeping those emotions in check can be difficult in the pursuit of winning. While fighting adversity, the Bulldogs showed maturity in being able to tackle the difficult moments and turn them into positives.
“During the game it’s not uncommon for it to get out of hand sometimes,” Craney said. “During pregame and postgame we work on trying to keep things civil. We never try to do anything wrong to people. We just try to be as sportsmanlike as we can when it’s game time.”
Knox said it helps having the support of great teammates during those difficult moments.
“We’ve always there to pick each other up when things get heated and to cool each other off when someone needs to get their head right,” he said. “Sometimes it can be difficult or get out of hand. It happens, but having everyone on the team there to keep you calm, to settle you down, is a big help.”
Looking ahead to next year, the Bulldogs will rely on younger players and newcomers to maintain the team spirit and respect of the game while also trying to achieve more success in the win column during the regular season.
The Bulldogs haven’t had a winning season since they went 19-3-3 in 2014, but they’ve won three regionals in the past five seasons. They certainly are finishing strong and finding a way to put the regular season behind them once regionals roll around.
“These seniors were like my second family,” junior Austin Saenz said. “I loved playing with them and want to continue to make a new family here with these new kids coming in. We’ll have a bunch of freshmen and sophomores next year that are pretty good so we’ll see what happens.”