MONTICELLO — Standing on the hot turf under a sun-splashed late Saturday afternoon in August, Ike Young and Chris Jones talked.

Young had just experienced his first game as the Monticello football team’s starting quarterback. Jones, the Sages’ quarterback coach, wondered how Young felt after visiting St. Joseph-Ogden left with a 40-28 win in the season opener in which Monticello trailed 34-0 late in the second quarter and faced the very real possibility of playing the second half with a running clock if the Spartans had gone up by at least 40 points.

The speed of the game is the first item Young brought up in his postgame chat with Jones. Young admitted it was fast. Maybe faster than what he expected going into the game.

But Jones, who also doubles as the Monticello baseball coach of a program Young is such a vital part of, too, made sure Young left Monticello’s home field with confidence that day despite the loss.

“I told him how he did a lot of good things that game, and he had a good place to start from,” Jones said three months later, standing inside the Sievers Center on Monday afternoon before the Sages began their last week of football practice. “I was confident that he was going to be able to get the job done.”

Has he ever. Because Monticello (11-2) is playing for a Class 3A state championship at 4 p.m. on Friday against Montini (11-2) at Hancock Stadium on the Illinois State University campus in Normal.

“You wouldn’t have thought this would happen if you were here for the first game of the season,” Monticello coach Cully Welter said.

Impressive numbers

The progress and play-making, though, of Young is a main reason why the Sages are one win away from their second state championship. The 6-foot-3, 180-pound senior never comes off the field. When he’s not in the shotgun taking the snap to start Monticello’s spread offense, he roams the secondary as the Sages’ free safety, where he’s made 51 tackles.

But it’s his offensive prowess that garners the most attention. The numbers back it up. Young has completed 252 of 363 passing attempts for 3,184 yards, 27 touchdowns and seven interceptions. Channeling his skills used last season when he was a running back for the Sages, Young leads Monticello with 1,106 rushing yards on 205 carries and 22 touchdowns. That’s 4,290 yards of total offense and 49 total touchdowns.

And football isn’t even the sport he’ll play at the Division I level in college. Young signed in mid-November to play baseball at Illinois, where he’ll pitch for the Illini.

“That’s what having a Division I athlete looks like,” Unity coach Scott Hamilton said after Young threw for 335 yards and two touchdowns during last Saturday’s 23-20 state semifinal win against his Rockets. “I know he’s not a Division I football player, but he’s a Division I athlete. He was just in complete control out there and so poised.”

Words from a Hall of Fame coach in Hamilton that Jones and Welter have seen play out in person for some time.

“We will watch film on Mondays,” Jones said. “I basically give him quarterback notes on the previous game. We’ll go over some of those. We have a script that I’ll hand off to him. He’ll go through it. Typically, it’s just to remind him of some things going on, like some of the new twists and so forth that we’ve put in for that game. If there is any questions, we may tweak some things during practice, but he’s very sharp, so he picks up on things very well.”

Learning in the past

Young started playing baseball when he was 6 years old and began playing football in fifth grade. He played quarterback for the Sages when he was a freshman and a bit as a sophomore before making the move to running back in 2023. Monticello had another D-I talent to man the quarterback position last season, with Luke Teschke under center. Teschke, now a freshman pitcher on the Illinois State baseball team, threw for 2,329 yards and rushed for 744 yards last season with 35 total touchdowns as the Sages finished 5-5 with a first-round playoff loss.

Given all the success Young has put together this fall, has Welter ever given thought about what Young could have done starting multiple seasons at quarterback for Monticello?

“To be honest with you, this is not what you would have gotten last year,” Welter said. “Any coach will tell you they’d rather have two to three years with a quarterback. We talk all the time as coaches, ‘Man, we’ve got another one-year quarterback,’ but they’ve been good for us. If you look back at last year, Ike was not physically the kid he is now. He grew a couple inches. He got stronger. Early last summer, it looked like he might take it, but Luke dominated from there.”

Building by baseball

Young, who rushed for 471 yards and three touchdowns to go along with 30 receptions for 409 yards and one touchdown catch a season ago, said he enjoyed playing running back as a junior. But he has thrived at quarterback this fall.

Giving him even more confidence on not just the stage of playing for a state championship on Friday evening, but in the spring when the successful Monticello baseball program starts its season under Jones’ watch. The Sages finished 31-5 last season, winning a 2A regional title and advancing to a sectional championship game. Young was a big reason why, with the right-hander sporting a 5-1 record with a 2.16 earned run average and 60 strikeouts in 48 2/3 innings.

Forming a tight bond

The conversations and hours both Young and Jones have spent together in the past year is too many to count. Whether it’s tied to football, baseball or other life matters.

“Coming in freshman year, I really didn’t know who he was at all. He’s very nit-picky, which is a good thing, but it can be kind of annoying,” Young said with a smile. “I know he’s just doing it to make me better. Our relationship is strong. I put my full trust in him, and I appreciate everything he’s done.”

Jones echoes the same sentiment for Young, who will trade in his football cleats for basketball shoes and suit up for coach Kevin Roy’s program at Monticello soon.

“We, as a coaching staff at Monticello, all want our kids to play different sports,” Jones said. “For Ike to be out there on that football field knowing his responsibility and what he has to do under those Friday night lights and in the postseason, it just makes him better. When he’s on the mound in the bottom of the seventh with two outs and he’s got to get that last guy out or he’s at the plate in that situation, I just don’t know if you can replicate that by not being a part of it.”

Growth is evident

Young trying to get past a Montini defense that has only yielded an average of 10.1 points during the Broncos’ current nine-game win streak is his next task.

But one he can use to apply on the mound this spring when he unleashes either a four-seam fastball that has been clocked at 93 mph, a two-seam fastball, a slider, a changeup or a curveball.

Lessons he’s learned in great detail the past three months since Monticello football’s season-opening setback.

“It’s been so much fun to see how far we’ve come from Week 1 against St. Joe to now who we are,” Young said. “It’s a drastic change. We are not the same team as we were then. The dedication with this group of seniors and this varsity team has been amazing to see.”