By Michael Wojtychiw

For many city football programs, when players show up at practice for the first practice of their freshman year, it’ll be the first time that they’re not only playing together, but also meeting each other. Some schools, on the other hand, have the luxury of seeing their players have some kind of camaraderie before they even step onto the same high school field.

That’s the case with this year’s Amundsen senior class.

A football team based out of Welles Park, North Side Youth Football, is a member of The Chicagoland Youth Football League (TCYFL), an age- and weight-based football league for kids between the ages of 6 and 14.  TCYFL is the largest independent youth football league in the U.S. and is considered a national leader in youth football safety. The league has 52 organizations in it, teams throughout the north, northwest and west suburbs.

The program is one of only three city programs in the league and was a big help in the development of many of Amundsen’s players.

One of those players is Reggie Mitchell, who spoke to that fact after the team’s first practice last month.

“This senior class, we’ve been playing together since before we got to Amundsen, I think this is the time for some of the players that haven’t gotten a chance to shine to do so,” Mitchell said. “If we gel together, we’ll be good.

“I’d say more than half of our seniors played together for Northside football.”

It’s that level of togetherness that has helped Amundsen become a team on the rise, especially on the North Side.

The Vikings, entering their third season in the Red Division (this year named the Metro), are looking for their seventh consecutive state playoff berth

The team got off to a fast start last season, but had a rough stretch in the middle portion of the schedule, dropping four in a row. Two of the four losses, however, were one-possession losses, as was the team’s epic two-overtime battle with Young in the CPL semifinals.

“That game against Young was one of the most fun I’ve been a part of in the last 10 years,” coach Nick Olson, who enters his 11th season as coach, said. “Everything really has happened because of the offseason work. We train year-round in the weight room, we go four days a week in the offseason. I’m here early in the morning and tell these guys ‘If you’re in another sport, you can come and lift with me at 6 a.m.,’ but then I stay after school too for the other guys who don’t play another sport.

“If you want to play another sport, that’s fine. But we don’t want them just sitting around and waiting for football season. I think the biggest thing here is establishing the hard-nosed work ethic. It’s not something we have to do, the guys get to do it. They’re excited to do it. The excitement in the offseason, building the brotherhood, that has been what’s really been a game-changer for our program.”

“Knowing we can play with those other teams makes me confident, but it’s still a team game,” senior Wyatt Kelly, who is entering his fourth year on varsity, said. “You’ve still got to rely on everybody and make sure everybody is doing their job.

“I’m confident in our abilities, but you have to truly put it together to beat those suburban and private school teams. I know we can do it, I know we have the talent, the skill, but we just have to put it all together.”

In previous seasons, the Vikings had been more of a team that liked to throw the ball around the field, taking advantage of their skill players and quarterback’s strengths.

That changed last season, however, when Amundsen leaned more on Mitchell and running back Elmir Gjeka. Gjeka has graduated and is now playing at Concordia University-Wisconsin.

But, according to Olson, the team is looking like it’ll be leaning back to its passing ways.

That means Mitchell, as well as Kelly, will get some opportunities getting the ball.

“This year in the summer, we’ve been running an Air Raid offense and the fact that teams won’t be able to stack the box against us is huge,” Olsen said. “Anytime you’ve got a guy like Reggie though, where you can give the ball to and take the pressure off the quarterback, you’re going to be successful and it’s going to make it easier on that next guy.”

“It’s definitely exciting, especially coming from the tight end position,” Kelly, who doubles as a linebacker, said. “Last year, I would get the ball on screens and bubble routes, but expanding the offense more is exciting.

“Honestly, my responsibilities will probably be to still block a lot, but knowing I might get more routes and opportunities is real exciting.”

“I actually don’t think my role will change a lot because I blocked a lot last year,” Mitchell said. “But now, it’s ramping up to where I’m blocking more.

“I’m excited. I love blocking. It’s fun to get in the trenches. We’ve got a couple of plays with me catching the ball out of the backfield and going through 7-on-7s in the summer really helped.”

Smith Beeson was slated to take over as quarterback but was injured in a non-football activity before fall camp started, but Olson expects him to only miss the first two weeks of the season.

“We’re excited for him, because he played quarterback on JV his first two years and because of the way we ran our offense last year, we moved him to wide receiver, but he could have been back there for us and we would have been very happy,” he said. “It’s kind of nice though, because when we start seeing those CPS teams in Week 3, they won’t be prepared for the Air Raid.”

The defense might be a little young because graduation hit the line and secondary hard.

That just means that linebackers like Kelly, who plays the MIKE, might be relied on a little more at the beginning of the season.

“I think our linebackers, myself and the WILL, I’ve been starting since my freshman year and he started last year, so we have some experience,” Kelly said. “We’ve got to help the guys around step up, because we’re going to have new d-linemen, safeties, we I’ve got to learn their jobs and make sure they’re doing everything right too.”

Photos by Amundsen Sports Media Club