MSL Football: Witnessing Memorable Endings to Two Long Football Losing Streaks
Wheeling 35-Gamer in 2004; Peoria Heights 22-Gamer in 1988
The recent run at history by the South Side Skid Men, aka the 2024 White Sox, and the start of another high school football season brought back memories of covering the end of a pair of long losing streaks.
Twenty years ago Wheeling finally ended nearly four full seasons of frustration when it snapped a 35-game losing streak in the 2004 season opener with a 15-6 victory over Niles North. And near the end of the 1988 season Peoria Heights emphatically ended a 22-game skid 34-19 against Eureka.
Both victories were filled with excitement and emotion and turned out to be building blocks for bigger and better days ahead. We’ll see if the same can be said about a White Sox organization’s’ 21-game skid that tied the American League record was just two short of matching the modern big league record (since 1900) of 23 by the 1961 Phillies.
Wheeling started the 2000 season with a victory but lost its last eight games and head coach Tom Harold lost his job. Dave Dunbar moved into the top spot after 13 years as an assistant but it would be a long and agonizing road to the winner’s circle for a man who was one of the classiest, and personally one of my favorite coaches I’ve come across.
Numbers were low when it came to players and points on the board in his first two winless seasons as the Wildcats were outscored 694-75. They were 0-9 again in his third season but were much more competitive and went into 2004 optimistic and confident with their returning talent and depth. Dunbar had a solid coaching staff that included offensive coordinator Matt Mishler, who became one of the MSL’s most successful head coaches at Rolling Meadows, future Wheeling head coach Brian Hauck, Jim Golden and Ron Paveglio.
“Our guys aren’t afraid of anybody,” Dunbar said when we talked before the season. “They’re ready and prepared to play anybody and everybody on the schedule.”
That started with the opener against Niles North. It looked like a great opportunity to finally return to the win column. Since I had the first choice of games to cover I figured this could be a neat story - probably since I had witnessed it once before in 1988.
Wheeling never trailed but was up only 7-6 late into the third quarter and projected starting quarterback Chris Antol had to come in on a badly sprained right ankle after junior Kyle Barton got injured. Barton rushed for the first touchdown and Ryan Manning also ran for 144 yards and a TD. Senior linebacker Ross Hazeltine and junior safety Ken Kamentsev were big parts of a defense that allowed only 110 yards.
After a safety on a bad punt snap gave Wheeling a two-score lead it was only 4:18 of game time until fans stormed the field to celebrate the end of the state’s longest active losing streak.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Hazeltine said. “I’ve been visualizing every day winning that one game and breaking that streak. I’ve been dreaming about it. I know all of us have.”
Dunbar, who was inducted into the Wheeling Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018, could finally celebrate his first head coaching win with hugs with his assistant coaches and congratulations from long-time cross country and track coach and friend Mark Saylor.
“That’s what it’s all about right there. I’m so proud of these guys,” an emotional Dunbar said as he pointed to his players celebrating in the north end zone. “It’s just a great feeling to come out there, for the guys and coaches who have worked so hard, to get the payoff. The players have worked so hard.”
That hard work would result in a steady progression with another win that season, three in 2005 and four in 2006. Finally in 2007, the home-field celebration in the final regular-season game was for winning a share of a Mid-Suburban East title and ending an 11-year playoff drought.
And Dunbar didn’t forget those who helped make it happen and the perseverance it took to get there.
“You guys back here helped set that foundation for us and you guys are a part of it,” said Dunbar, whose 2008 team would also win 6 games and return to the playoffs. “These guys kept following the success of the leaders from behind.
“At times I had to sell myself on doing the right things and moving forward. We had to keep hammering away in the offseason.”
In 1988, I was working at the Peoria Journal Star when Peoria Heights was mired in a 22-game losing streak. Ending it seemed unlikely on a Saturday afternoon when the Patriots hosted a Eureka team that had just suffered its first loss after a 6-0 start.
Peoria Heights is a small school (currently around 200 students) in a community of about 6,000 on the northern edge of Peoria. Coach Tom Atwell, who was in his fifth season, wore what he called his lucky shirt from his days as a college assistant at Central Missouri State and tried to change his luck by coaching from the press box and sending instructions to assistant Steve Hatfield on the sideline.
The Patriots’ luck looked as if it might run out again when a 7-point halftime lead was cut to 14-13. They had seen similar situations take a turn for the worse in the weeks leading up to the game.’
That didn’t happen this time. Peoria Heights scored 3 consecutive touchdowns in a 10-minute span and led 34-13 when Steve Reed threw a 46-yard touchdown pass to Brad Galyean with 6:06 left.
“We felt they couldn’t stop us,” Reed said. “(Losing) was the furthest thing from my mind. Nobody thought we’d lose.”
Peoria Heights won its first game since September 1986 and also ended a 25-game conference losing streak that dated to 1982. The celebration reduced Atwell to tears.
“Who would have thought that would have happened. Some of these kids have been here four years and suffered,” an emotional Atwell said. “It was time they got it.
“The kids are the ones who deserve the credit. They were playing to win instead of playing to lose.”
Peoria Heights was also in its first year of a co-op with players from Brimfield, a school about 20 miles away. One of them, senior defensive lineman John Thompson, was in his first year of playing high school football.
“We’d only lost 7 games but they’d lost 22 in a row,” Thompson said. “It meant a lot to us to win. But you could tell it was different for them and coach (Atwell).”
Senior defensive back Ken Barber echoed those sentiments when he said, ‘When we went in the locker room, some of us congratulated each other, some of us cried. For a win it was really emotional.”
Peoria Heights would lose its season finale to Class 1A state-ranked and unbeaten Annawan. But the next year it finished 5-4 (when you needed 6 wins to make the playoffs) and in 1990 it qualified for the playoffs.
Unfortunately for Peoria Heights, there were also long losing streaks that followed of 27 (1999-2002), 26 (2017-19) and 25 games (2009-12). The school has been part of the state’s growing number of teams playing 8-man football since 2021.