William Howard Taft High School has existed in Chicago Illinois since September of 1939. Their football program however didn’t start until 21 years later, in 1960. According to MaxPreps, that team, captained by Al MacFarlane, went 7-3 overall and 6-0 in their conference. They would later go on to play in Soldier Field with an attendance of 100,000 people.
Around the 60’s, Alumni Jim Grabowski was picked 9th in the 1966 NFL Draft and 1st in the AFL draft, a running back who played for the Packers & Bears, and won 2 superbowls, he went on to play 6 years, being plagued with injury.
Ryan Glowacz, Taft Principal, played on Taft’s football team between 2002 and 2005 as a Quarterback and Free Safety. “During my time, we fluctuated between the highest conference, which Taft is currently in, and getting rotated down to the Chicago conference, which is the second tier Chicago Public League Conference.”
In 2004, Taft had a record of 1-7, and 0-5 in conference play. The Eagles scored 34 total points, whilst having 2 games against Morgan Park and Dunbar where Taft gave up 40-point shutouts. In the 8 games played that season, 5 of them were games that Taft scored 0 points.
The 2015-2016 seasons were unexpected. In the 2015 season, the Eagles were 2-7, 0-5 in conference, but in the 2016 season, Taft were 8-2 and undefeated 7-0 in conference. Defeated to Undefeated.
Zachary Elder, the Head Coach of the football team, talked about his first year being head coach, “It was my first opportunity to be head coach, it was a great achievement and a great time and then that year we had a pretty good team.”
Adding onto that, Elder said, “[We] played Palatine in the first round state playoffs, they beat the team that finished second in the state in 8A. They beat them in the regular season and we had Palatine. Played Palatine first round here, first ever playoff game at Taft. We were up 17-14 in the third quarter, ended up losing that game.”
After the 2017 season, Taft has had a winning record in Conference, even the 2023 season, which ended 4-7, the conference record was 4-3. An 8-year streak that is yet to be broken.
Dean Parker, a junior who is currently on the Taft Football team and plays Running Back and Corner-Back, explained his thoughts about his successes this year, “Our team building was overall awesome this year, it put a milestone on where we should be as a team.”
During the 2024 season, The Eagles were able to get a record of 7-4. Being 6-2 in their conference, they also proclaimed a win of Lane Tech while being the away team. The season started off cold with an 0-3 record, but were able to win six in a row and finish with a record of 7-4.
Taft has had incredible highs to very lows. Seeing things back then and having many things that now are unfathomable. But Taft is growing and is on the rise. With many better facilities, the sky’s the limit.
