ALTON, ILL. High school team learns off-field lesson hard way

Underage drinking just may have cost this team the state title.
ALTON, Ill. (AP) -- This was going to be the year the Marquette Explorers went all the way.
"It was the kind of team coaches get once in a lifetime," said Mike Slaughter, who has coached football at the small Illinois high school for 25 years.
But two weeks ago, as the team prepared for the playoffs, 16 starters were arrested at a house party and charged with underage drinking.
Maybe even worse for a teenage athlete, the penalty at Marquette for drinking is suspension from football, with no exceptions for playoff games.
So a week ago Saturday, each of the suspended players from the best football team this small Catholic school has ever produced stood on the sidelines, cheering as the second string went out and lost 63-0.
Reaction
The 1,300 people who watched the game, twice the size of regular-season crowds, gave the Marquette players a standing ovation at the end of the rout. The vanquished raised their helmets in a salute usually reserved for victories.
The parents and fans who packed the stadium seemed to agree that a hard lesson was learned, and applauded school officials who insisted on teaching it -- throwing away Marquette's first real chance at a championship in the process.
"We were so proud of the second- and third-string players who gave it everything they had," said Anna Haine, whose son was one of only four regular starters to play. "In the end, what they got was far more important than just another win."
Marquette has never been a sports powerhouse. The best the football team had done before this year was win a second-place state trophy in 1982. The school is among the smallest in its conference, with 360 students, and typically plays teams from much bigger schools.
But this year, a cluster of unusually talented seniors led the Explorers to a 10-0 record. Two starters are considered Division I prospects, Slaughter said. The team was a top seed, and a strong contender for the state title.
"We allowed ourselves the dream this was going to be the year we'd go all the way," Slaughter said.
Then came the party at the home of a classmate whose parents were away.
There was no debate, Slaughter said, no talk of letting the starters slide through the playoffs and pay for their mistakes another way. His own son, in fact, was one of the suspended players.
Principal John Rogers briefly suggested forfeiting the game, out of concern for the safety of the second- and third-string players going against the brawny first-stringers from downstate Anna-Jonesboro High School.
"They were going up against a team that was much bigger and stronger," said Haine, whose husband heads the office that will prosecute the suspended players. But no one wanted to forfeit, least of all the guys who would take the field.
"We didn't want to just hand it to them without making them earn it," said David Kasten, 17, whose right arm was in a sling this week because of a sprain he sustained against Anna-Jonesboro. "We wanted to play."
Not simple
But throwing key football players off a team during a critical time in a season isn't simple, as school officials from the neighboring town of Bethalto discovered in 1998.
There, parents hired a lawyer when the school suspended nine players for allegedly attending a party where alcohol was served, a violation of the high school's code of conduct.
A judge ordered the players back on the field, ruling school officials didn't have the right to keep them from trying to earn football scholarships.
But to the Marquette coach and principal, who made the decision together, the issue was simple.
"At first, some parents called and said things like, 'Surely, you'll find a way to let these boys play,'" Slaughter said.
"But we stand for certain things. Kids have to be responsible for their actions."