We dug back 15 years on an old hard drive to bring this week's Memory Monday feature. On the left, St.Joseph-Ogden's Traesha Worley makes solid contact with the ball for a kill against Mt. Pulaski on November 6, 2004. The Hilltoppers beat the Spartans 25-15, 25-21 to win the Hoopeston Supersectional title Saturday night. SJO, playing an independent schedule this season, finished a marvelous, memorable season with 28 wins and 6 losses. See more photos from this match almost 15 years ago here: Spartans vs Hilltoppers.
#MemoryMonday
In the photo above, From the bench, Stacy Buck and coaches [left to right] Megan Blair, head coach Lydia Gard, and Erica Weber keep their attention on different facets of the St. Joseph-Ogden volleyball team's effort to advance to the IHSA state tournament against a powerful Mt. Pulaski team. On the left, Sarah Thompson passes the ball forward during a heated rally. Mt. Pulaski went on finish the season as the Class 1A runner-up at the IHSA State Volleyball Finals. (All photos: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Crayton Burnett looks to make a pass during the St. Joseph-Ogden football team's scrimmage on Friday. Burnett, who saw varsity action toward the end of the season as sophomore last fall, will be the starting signal caller for SJO. The Spartans' passing game is a potential threat with Burnett's arm and this year's stable of receivers. Below: More than 60 or so parents and fans were on hand to watch the varsity squad and scout players run live plays against each other. (All photos on this page by PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
"We don't have one or two leaders. We have a team of leaders right now."
St.Joseph-Ogden head coach Shawn Skinner pointed out while talking about the upcoming season before the team introduction later in the gym. The Spartans have 22 seniors on the roster ready to prove themselves and continue to build the program back to its former level of success. Here, Skinner gives instructions to players early on during the scrimmage session.
Ramsey Primmer takes a drink between plays. Skinner said the veteran cornerback has been instrumental in getting a lot of the "young guys" up to speed and ready to play nine weeks under Friday night lights. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Above, left: Spartan cheerleaders perform on the sideline of the practice field. This year's scrimmage session could not be held under the newly installed lights on the field due to track resurfacing. Above, right:Chance Izard moves with the flow of the play while on defense. Izard may well be a strong catalyst for the program to improve on last year's 5-5 finish. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
(Left to right) Max Shonkwiler, Jesse Schluter and Tyler Jones take a moment to smile while waiting for the next stage of the Spartan scrimmage to start. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Twelve St. Joseph-Ogden High School students were name among 6,394 Illinois residents who earned degrees from the University of Illinois this past spring. Three of the 12 former Spartans who received bachelor degrees obtained their diplomas with exceptional academic laurels.
Former SJO cheerleader LaRyssa Randall smiles during a photo shoot with fellow cheerleaders in 2011. Randall, from St. Joseph, graduated this past spring from the University of Illinois with Highest Honors with a Bachelor of Science in Community Health. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
LaRyssa Randall, from St. Joseph, was bestowed Highest Honors recognition after completing coursework for her Bachelor of Science in Community Health from the College of Applied Health Sciences.
Students at the University of Illinois who are awarded Highest Honors have achieved outstanding performance in their courses as well as participated in supplementary activities of an academic or professional nature. This honor generally requires completion of an undergraduate thesis or a special project of superior quality within most university departments. Highest honors are also awarded to students upon recommendation of his or her department.
Randall, from the Class of 2012, was a Spartan cheerleader at SJO.
Danielle Kaiser and Whitney Setterdahl also earned high academic recognition for their undergraduate studies.
Kaiser, from St. Joseph, earned High Honors recognition after with her degree in Speech and Hearing Science from the College of Applied Health Sciences. High honors students must have a cumulative grade point average at least 3.80 at graduation.
Setterdahl, from Ogden, graduated with Honors with a degree in Finance from the Gies College of Business. To receive a honors designation students must possess a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.50.
Two graduates in our area earned advanced degrees from University of Illinois.
Former Spartan distance runner and Ogden native Beau Barber, who has been active in plant research at the university since 2014, received his Master of Science in Agricultural and Biological Engineering in Agricultural and Biological Engineering.
Angela Mock earned a Master of Social Work from Illinois' School of Social Work. Mock did her internship at Urbana School District #116 and prior to that spent two years as a teacher at Robeson Elementary and editor at the university.
The remaining area students earning bachelor degrees from the University of Illinois include:
Ryan Allen, St. Joseph, Major: Molecular and Cellular Biology / Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts and Sciences
Amie Bott, Ogden, Major: Molecular and Cellular Biology / Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts and Sciences
Jessica Kassuelke, Ogden, Major: Food Science and Human Nutrition / Bachelor of Science in Food Science and Human Nutrition
Kimberly Newman, St. Joseph, Major: Communication / Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences
Matthew Rabb, St. Joseph, Major: Agricultural and Consumer Economics / Bachelor of Science in Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Hailee Robbins, St. Joseph, Major: Elementary Education / Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education
Hannah Zalaker, St. Joseph, Major: Kinesiology / Applied Health Sciences
Update
(8/28/19)
It has come to our attention that several area SJO graduates were omitted from this article at the time of publication. Names that did not appear in this story were not included due to those students providing a campus address as their home address to the university. Our logic in compiling this list was apparently flawed in assuming that graduates in a list provided by the university News Bureau with a 61859, 61871 or 61873 zip code attended SJO. We will address that in future graduation stories. In certain instances, graduates may not have been appeared in this story because graduates were added to the official campus list after June 24.
The original headline to this story, 12 SJO alumni earn UofI degrees, was changed to 12 area students earn UofI degrees and certain instances of SJO alumni has been changed to area students or removed from the story.
Are there other omissions? Click here to submit information for corrections.
Matthew Raab sprints the remaining yards to the finish line and a 22nd place finish in the Men's 14 - 18 division at the 2014 SJO 5K. Raab was one of 16 area students named to University of Illinois spring 2019 Dean's List. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Sixteen area St. Joseph-Ogden graduates now attending the University of Illinois earned recognition for their outstanding academic performance during the spring 2019 semester. Three of the academic achievers hail from Ogden and the remaining 13 listed are from St. Joseph.
Students named to the Dean's List are in the top 20% of a student’s college class or curriculum. To be eligible, students must complete at least 14 academic semester hours taken for a letter grade at Illinois. This semester, 7,025 U of I students earned that recognition. Among them, 5,048 of the awardees are from Illinois.
Members of this semesters Dean's List from Ogden include Nicholas Cagle, who is a freshman currently in General Curriculum studies, Carly Frerichs, a senior in Kinesiology and Jessica Kassuelke, who is a senior in Food Science and Human Nutrition in the College of ACES.
Freshman Camryn McKee (Political Science) and Emily Bluhm (Agricultural and Consumer Economics) along with sophomores Allison Place (Crop Sciences), Claire Smith (Agricultural Communications), Evan Hawkins (Advertising) and Mason Housenga (Physics) make up the group of underclass scholars from St. Joseph.
Juniors Casey Modglin (Agricultural and Consumer Economics), Hailey Collum (Architectural Studies), Lauren Gherna (English), Matthew Weyer (Information Systems) and Mira McLain (Integrative Biology) and two seniors, former three-sport athlete Jake Pence (Finance) and Matthew Raab (Agricultural and Consumer Economics), who was a distance runner for the Spartan cross-country and track program, round out the list of area recipients this semester.
After 26 years of operation, the Illinois Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program will receive $2,885,000.00 in State funding.
CASA is not-for-profit organization which recruits, trains, and monitors volunteers who serve as advocates for abused and neglected children. Their services are also used in Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) cases and sometimes in adoption proceedings. Trained volunteers work to ensure the welfare of the children under their care is closely monitored and make independent recommendations to the court system advocating in their best interest.
In Illinois there are 31 CASA programs with nearly 2,500 volunteers who in 2018 advocated for the best interests of 4,184 child victims of abuse and neglect.
"This funding means that more children across Illinois do not have to go through the court process alone," said Mari Christopherson, Executive Director for CASA. "We applaud the Governor in supporting a program that works."
According to the statement issued this week, the funding will distributed to the current local programs with the goal of expanding their ability to protect the interest of minor children who have experienced abuse or neglect with a Court Appointed Special Advocate. The funds will also be used to expand CASA into other communities to help an estimated 2,000 or more children who do not have access to volunteers and service in their area.
The local branch, Champaign County CASA, is located at 301 S. Vine, Suite 210, in the Lincoln Square Mall in Urbana.
On May 11, 2007, back when IHSA track & field was a two-class system, the St. Joseph-Ogden girls track team competed for a chance to advance to the state meet the following week held at O'Brien Stadium at Eastern Illinois University.
The Spartans, led by alum Andy Derks, failed to place in the top six in the team standings at the meet. Junior Hannah Hogan was the only Spartan to advance state.
Since then SJO's running program has blossomed into a perennial small school track powerhouse. In the past decade, the Spartans have brought home state hardware on five occasions. The bounty includes one state title, one runner-up title and three third place IHSA trophies joining the second place trophy won in 1978 and a 2000 state championship award.
Here are three of our favorite PhotoNews photos from that meet. View the entire collection here . . .
Hannah Hogan runs to a second place finish in the 3,200 meter run. She finished her eight loops in 12 minutes, 22.75 seconds. Hogan was a three-time state finalist in cross-country for the Spartans. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Hoping to qualify for state, Melissa Studinarz explodes out of the blocks in the 400m dash. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Senior Dayna Long runs the one-mile race on Friday. See more photos of Long in the PhotoNews Spartan archives here . . .
The 2019 football season just weeks away from kicking off and there is a great discussion on the St. Joseph-Ogden Football Fan Page on Facebook listing the hardest hitting linemen who put on the Spartan uniform.
Brandon Cheek put his shoulder to Lions' Dallas Gustafson on his way into the backfield during their playoff game on November 6, 2004. Cheek was mentioned as one of the many linemen mentioned in a post on Facebook about SJO's hardest hitting linemen. St. Joseph-Ogden beat Marshall in the muddiest games in program history of a field 7-3 advancing to face former conference rival. Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks
With 20 comments so far, several former players and fans have responded mentioning more than 15 players dating back as far as 1992 who could put a hurtin' on gridiron opponents.
Current head coach Shawn Skinner, who was a member of the 1989 football team that made the program's first state title game appearance and enters his fifth year at the Spartan helm, received a nod in the comments section.
Still members of the Illini Prairie Conference, Skinner and the SJO football program open their 2019 season against St. Thomas More at home on August 31. In their previous meeting, the Spartans held STM scoreless in the second half of their road confrontation to win, 30-9.
Below is a screen capture of a portion of the conversation about some of the Spartans' most memorable linemen over the years. See the complete thread here . . .
Viewpoints
Terrorists proved on September 11, 2001 that guns are not necessary to kill 2,753 people.
Timothy McVeigh proved that a truck load of explosives can kill 168 people and injure 680 more as well as destroy one-third of building and damaging many others in Oklahoma City.
A man with a knife killed four people and wounded two others in Los Angeles last week.
A weapon of mass destruction can be a plane, an automobile, a knife, a gun or whatever an evil person chooses to utilize at a certain moment.
By and large the weapon of choice has been an automatic weapon capable of holding a high-capacity magazine.
Whether it was Las Vegas, Columbine, Charleston, El Paso, Dayton or sadly too many other locations to name, the weapon of choice has been an automatic rifle with high-capacity bullet magazines.
A truck can kill people but normally you can hear and see a truck coming. A knife can kill people but not as many as a rifle with a magazine clip holding 70 or more bullets.
An evil person can walk into a church, theatre, Walmart or school and immediately have a couple of hundred people huddled together as a target. He doesn’t have to aim. He just points the weapon and pulls the trigger. The gun acts like a sprayer of bullets hitting people so fast that running or dodging is almost impossible.
The shooter looks for scenarios where people are trapped with limited escape door opportunities. Thus a shooter with a bullet clip of 50, 70 or more has a potential of killing many people in just a minute or less.
This is why Congress must enact background checks, strict licensing for high-powered rifles and limit the number of bullets a clip can hold at one time.
However, here is the problem: What is the magic number? My ordinary pistols hold six shells and my automatic ones hold more, so what is the magic number of bullets that Americans will be limited to in one clip?
Will it be 10 or 15 or 20? Honestly, there is no right number because a skilled marksman will still be able to kill.
The hope is that maybe the ending of one clip or emptying of one pistol would give someone a chance to tackle the monster if anyone is still alive. Hopefully, someone in the room will have a gun and be able to stop the shooter.
I’m for limiting magazine capacity but it won’t eliminate terrorism and mass shootings. It’s a Hail Mary and our Congress has to do something but we have to do more.
Hollywood and network television has to change.
Universal Studios/NBC television is the biggest hypocrite of all. They constantly bark gun control and are negative toward the National Rifle Association yet coming out with a movie titled "The Hunt", which is supposedly about liberals hunting deplorables and killing them. This kind of junk is a huge part of the problem.
Hollywood, the music industry and video games makers must dramatically change their tone. Barney Fife in the Andy Griffith show carried a gun but he never made any of us want to kill anyone or hate people.
Guns, knives, trucks and airplanes can all kill. There are many other weapons that will kill massive numbers of people. We can’t eliminate them all. Our greatest need is a culture change.
Dr. Glenn Mollette is a syndicated American columnist and author of American Issues, Every American Has An Opinion and ten other books. He is read in all 50 states. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization.
Twenty-three days shy of decade ago, the Spartans scored a touchdown in all four quarters with four different players making their way into the end zone. The energetic SJO squad defeated Robinson 28-12 in the 2009 season home opener. Below are four images of some of our favorite athletes from that season and the game. If you want to see more photos from this game, follow the link to the gallery republished today here in the PhotoNews Media archives.
Above: St. Joseph-Ogden players head to their postgame meeting on the field after singing the school fight song and their victory over the Maroons on August 29. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Left: Dylan Grove explodes off the line of scrimmage on a pass play for the Spartans. Right: Blake Hoveln rolls out looking for an open receiver on a first quarter pass play. (Photos: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Robinson's Jimmy Stevens is brought down by a pair of St. Joseph-Ogden defensive backs after a big fourth quarter gain. The last quarter effort fell short with the Spartan defense holding the Maroons to just two scores the entire contest. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
If you commute to work in Urbana or Champaign, you will want leave a little earlier for work starting this Monday. The Illinois Department of Transportation announced on Friday that pavement and guardrail repairs will begin starting this Monday on Interstate 74. Drivers should expect routine delays and drive through the work area at lower speeds.
With IDOT expecting the work to last around seven weeks from start to completion and students returning to the University campus later this month, Sentinel area drivers may want to plan alternative routes on trips into CU to avoid congestion in the construction area starting near High Cross Road just east of Cunningham Avenue in Urbana heading west to Prospect Avenue in Champaign.
Nighttime lane closures will be in effect from 8 pm to 6 am Sunday through Thursday, with at least one lane open in each direction at all times.
IDOT urges drivers to pay close attention to signs in the work zones and obey the posted speed limits to avoid accidents. Motorists should be be on high alert for rapidly changing traffic flow.
Last week, on August 1 near a construction zone on westbound Interstate 74 between Fithian and Oakwood, a semi driver was lost his life while another motorist was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries in two separate accidents. Ronald C. Schaer of Danville, who was hospitalized life-threatening injuries, was ticketed for failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident.
Drivers are asked not use mobile devices and be prepared to avoid workers and construction equipment.
St. Joseph-Ogden alumnus Brennan Guido holds two trophies after winning the overall champion title and Hometown Pride award at the 2019 SJO 5K. He finished in first place overall with a time of 16:07.80. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Terry Hill waves to the camera as he starts our on his run and eventual fifth place finish in the Male 60 and Over division. He finished in 118th place overall with a time of 30:05.70. Click here to see more photos from this year's race. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Chelsea Blaase photographs her father receiving his award at the SJO 5K. After at least a decade of having a parent photograph her on a podium, the former SJO standout returns the effort. Just under 200 runners competed at this year's race. Proceeds are donated to the St. Joseph Middle School and St. Joseph-Ogden cross country and track programs. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Kristi Sabo steps up to receive her award for her third place finish in the Female 45 to 49 division during the awards ceremony at 2019 SJO 5K. She finished in 72nd place overall with a time of 25:25.30. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Hamming it up for the camera, Paul Byron runs the last 40 yards of his race on his way to a seventh place finish in the Male 45 to 49 division. He finished in 76th place overall with a time of 25:53.40. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Sara Myers runs to fourth place and 82nd overall finish in the Female 45 to 49 division. She clocked in at 26:22.70 to finish her race on Saturday. Click here to see more photos from this year's race. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
See 140 more PhotoNews photos from this year's 5K race and fun run here: 07-27-19 SJO 5K
Terrorists proved on September 11, 2001 that guns are not necessary to kill 2,753 people.
St. Joseph-Ogden alumnus Brennan Guido holds two trophies after winning the overall champion title and Hometown Pride award at the 2019 SJO 5K. He finished in first place overall with a time of 16:07.80. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Terry Hill waves to the camera as he starts our on his run and eventual fifth place finish in the Male 60 and Over division. He finished in 118th place overall with a time of 30:05.70. Click here to see more photos from this year's race. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Chelsea Blaase photographs her father receiving his award at the SJO 5K. After at least a decade of having a parent photograph her on a podium, the former SJO standout returns the effort. Just under 200 runners competed at this year's race. Proceeds are donated to the St. Joseph Middle School and St. Joseph-Ogden cross country and track programs. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Kristi Sabo steps up to receive her award for her third place finish in the Female 45 to 49 division during the awards ceremony at 2019 SJO 5K. She finished in 72nd place overall with a time of 25:25.30. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Hamming it up for the camera, Paul Byron runs the last 40 yards of his race on his way to a seventh place finish in the Male 45 to 49 division. He finished in 76th place overall with a time of 25:53.40. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
Sara Myers runs to fourth place and 82nd overall finish in the Female 45 to 49 division. She clocked in at 26:22.70 to finish her race on Saturday. Click here to see more photos from this year's race. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)
