Loyola Academy football fans eager to catch senior wideout’s Act II on varsity
The double burger at Culver’s tasted great, hit the spot. Loyola Academy senior-to-be and Glenview resident Rory Boos had consumed it, the meaty trophy he earned by beating three friends in a round of miniature golf earlier this month.
Boos used a pink ball to finish in the red. “I also like to play regular golf,” Boos, a fine chipper, says.
Boos enjoys bowling, too, competing against friends at least once a week in the summertime. His recent pinfall of 140 meant he wouldn’t get to eat for free later that night.
Come fall, though, nobody in Ramblers Nation will care if Boos continues to solve that tricky windmill hole in mini golf. Or holes in from a sand trap or the rough. Or rolls a 300 game in bowling.
Boos, a 6-foot, 165-pound wide receiver with 4.53 speed in the 40, catches footballs. Very well. A first-year starter last fall for the Class 8A state runner-up, Boos paced a 12-2 Ramblers squad in receiving yards with 827 and in touchdown receptions with 11, including an 80-yarder in a 49-7 defeat of Leo in Week 7. He caught a pair of TD pass in a game twice.
“Great competitor,” Ramblers senior safety and University of Penn recruit Jake Gonzalez says of one of LA’s four captains this fall. “Great hands, great speed, explosive off the line. And Rory runs outstanding routes, precise ones.
“I love,” the Wilmette resident adds, “going against him in practice.”
A 30-yard grab from Boos — his first varsity snare — set up LA’s first TD of the season last fall in a 20-14 loss to eventual 5A state champ Phillips in Chicago. Boos came down with the pigskin inside Phillips’ five-yard line.
“It was an amazing feeling, watching the pass, hanging on to the pass,” Boos recalls. “Seniors came up to me on the field and on the sideline and shouted, ‘That’s the way to step up right away!’
Gonzalez remembers feeling reassured more than anything else following the reception.
“With that catch,” Gonzalez says, “Rory established himself as a deep threat for us.”
Boos will be forever grateful for getting the opportunities to secure spirals from quarterback Quinn Boyle (Class of 2018). Boos, on former teammate QB, the quarterback: “The best quarterback I’d ever seen.
“I had high expectations for our team last year; we all did,” adds Boos, who is bigger and faster and determined to become a better blocker and downfield threat in ’18. “We believed we were the best team in the state. That was tough, losing that final (23-14 to Lincoln-Way East). I like this year’s team, too, on both sides of the ball. We’re going to be balanced on offense with our run and passing games, and we return a lot of starters, especially at the skill positions. I’m excited about getting to be a leader for our receivers.”
One of LA’s receivers is a varsity rookie named Owen Boos, a sophomore and one of Rory’s brothers. He stands 6-1 and weighs 150. Owen threw passes to Rory in the Boos’ back yard back in the day, when older brother/defensive back Patrick Boos (now a Marquette sophomore-to-be) covered Rory on the home turf in Glenview until it either got too dark or until the trio got summoned to appear, pronto, at the dinner table. Patrick, who no longer plays organized football, made the Ramblers’ varsity as a senior cornerback in ’15, the year LA capped its 14-0 season with a 41-0 rout of Marist in the 8A state title game in DeKalb.
“Patrick taught me a lot; I considered him a mentor,” Rory says. “My little brother, I’m mentoring him now. He has longer arms than I do. He’ll be good.”
Rory Boos did not start at a wideout slot in organized ball until his eight-grade season at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Glenview. He’d been listed as a wideout/cornerback in the seventh grade. The highlight of his grid years at OLPH? Easy. The 50-yard TD catch he made for the eighth-grade squad in the league title game, the play that helped OLPH capture a championship in ’14.
His hands got better, more reliable, in his freshman and sophomore seasons at LA. He has improved, each year, as a route-runner, perhaps the most underappreciated skill in a receiver’s cupboard of skills. Many consider Boos’ route-running ability his top asset. He’s interested in hitting the books and burning defensive backs at Villanova or at Lehigh or at Colgate.
But first things first. Boos has one more football season at Loyola Academy. Ramblers coaches conducted the program’s first official practice of ’18 on Aug. 6. Ah, the soundtrack of preseason football — coaches blowing whistles, pads clashing, players grunting — is blaring, is teasing rabid fans.
Can you hear it?
LA head football coach John Holecek, for one, can’t wait to watch Boos do what Boos does in games that count.
“Rory’s quickness, his body control, his mental aptitude … they all give him that edge,” Holecek, in his 13th season at LA, says. “Rory is that smart competitor, that player who’s as determined on the field as he is off the field. He fights for every play, and he’s a true leader, a leader by example.”
A scary-good player indeed, this young man named Boos.
Notable: Loyola Academy opens its football season at Rockford (Michigan) High School on Aug. 24 and visits New Trier in Northfield one week later for a rematch of a 2017 Class 8A playoff opener. LA edged visiting NT 35-32 en route to its third straight state championship game appearance last fall. … LA football coach John Holecek’s record in 12 seasons with the Ramblers: 135-27 (.833). Five of his teams reached a state championship game, with his ’15 club winning the second state title in program history; John Hoerster coached LA’s gridders to the program’s first, in 1993.
BOOS BURNS ‘BACK: Loyola Academy senior wideout Rory Boos, seen here in action last fall, beats a Mount Carmel defensive back in a 31-7 victory. He led the Class 8A state runner-up in receiving yardage (827) and touchdown reception (11). PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL LERNER