North Shore Football Ends Memorable Season

senior Steve Smith didn’t know what to expect when he and the Raider football team took the field for their first-round game against Flanagan on Oct. 29.

Despite North Shore’s loss in the season finale to Mooseheart, the Raiders’ 8-1 record was good enough to earn a No. 6 seed in the Class 1A playoffs and get a home game in the postseason for the first time since 2002.  

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“It was awesome, the atmosphere was incredible,” North Shore QB Steve Smith said. “A lot of the student body came out, a lot of people around town came outIt was nice because we had no idea what to expect.”

The Raiders played well enough to win 28-24, their first playoff victory since 1999.

North Shore’s season came to an end the following week, however. The Raiders met their match in the second round with a 53-15 loss to Forreston on the road.

“They are very fast and very disciplined; they execute well,” Jim Deuble, football coach, said. “They beat us with about four plays, but all equally effective. I think they’ve got the coaches and the talent to go a long way.”

A lot of things came together to produce one of the best seasons in Deuble’s career at North Shore. But it started with the work that the team put in after last season in the winter and coming into the summer.

A large group of them worked out at EFT Sports Performance in Highland Park over the offseason. Smith says some players were watching film as early as February, more than six months before the season started.

“We had a good core of kids that really dedicated themselves to improving on the 5-4 mark we had last year and took it upon themselves to do that,” Deuble said.

North Shore may be turning the corner for a school whose football team was down as recently as five years ago. In the past two years, North Shore has defeated every team in its conference. There are no more long losing streaks to conference rivals, no sense of an upper boundary.

“We’re going to lose six seniors, all good hard-working kids,” Deuble said. “They’re going to be hard to replace, all of them. But we’ve got a good core of sophomores and juniors coming up. I think we’ll be able to stay fairly strong.” 

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