Former East St. Louis football stars Julyon Brown and Dana Howard will again present four exciting match-ups for this year’s City of Champions Classic on the campus of East St. Louis Senior High School.
If you have never been to historic Clyde C. Jordan Memorial Stadium in East St. Louis, you are in for a treat. There is no other football atmosphere in the metro- east or maybe in the state like it.
The City of Champions will be held on September 2. Host East Side will take on Tennessee state power Whitehaven High. Kirkwood will take on Hazelwood East in a battle of Missouri Class 5 state powerhouse programs. McCluer South-Berkeley will face University City while Illinois teams Peoria High and Chicago Simeon will square off.
Brown and Howard have done a great job of putting this event together. Both former Flyers played for legendary coach Bob Shannon. Both men have been successful in there own private lives while continuing to support and promote the Flyers football program throughout the years.
Brown enjoyed a great career at East Side in the late 1970s before moving on to the University of Illinois, where he played for the Illini. Julyon is the brother of Juan Brown, who played on the Flyers’ first state championship team in 1975. They both still have a ongoing brotherly argument about who’s teams were better every holiday season that I have to referee.
Julyon reminds his brother that he may have played on the first state championship team, but he was a member of a mythical national championship team in 1979. Brown played for John Mackovic for the Illini, and also played for Lou Tepper after Tepper took over as head coach during the Hancock Bowl when Mackovic was named head coach at Texas at the end of Illinois final regular season game.
In the Hancock Bowl against UCLA, it was Julyon Brown who came away with a key fumble recovery to secure the Illinois victory.
Howard, an Illinois linebacker from 1991-94, earned consensus All American honors at linebacker for the Illini in 1993 and 1994. He finished his career at Illinois with 595 tackles, at earned the nickname “Butkus” by his Illini teammates.
I remember watching Howard record 25 tackles in front of an national televised audience against Earl Austin Jr.’s Ohio State Buckeyes one Saturday afternoon. ABC sportscaster Brett Musberger was in awe of the kid from East St. Louis, where nobody gives our kids a chance to make it in life.
But the city is proud of men like Howard and Brown, who give back and demonstrate you can come back home or live here and give back to show our youth to be proud of were you are from.
So, here it is three years later with a lot of hard work and dedication that these two gentleman have overcome hurdles along the way with there volunteer staff, to give back to the football heritage in East St Louis.
“It’s a lot of work,” says Brown who’s a lieutenant with the East St. Louis Fire Department. “But the goal is to keep it going for the long run, and we need the people to come out and support our efforts.”
And this years match-ups will be well worth the price of admission.
Game #1 will have a St. Louis flavor with rivals Berkeley playing University City at 11 am, followed by a Illinois match up between Peoria High vs Chicago Simeon at 2 pm.
In the evening sessions beginning at 5 pm its Missouri powers the Kirkwood Pioneers vs Hazelwood East Spartans. These two teams met in the Class 5 state semifinals a year ago.
And the nightcap will feature Darren Sunkett’s East St. Louis Flyers against Tennessee power Whitehaven High School out of Memphis, which features three top 50 players in the country coming to play in the City of Champions Classic. In last year’s classic, Whitehaven defeated Chicago Catholic power St. Rita in a exciting game in front of 5,000 fans.
Come out and support these gentleman in there efforts to provide one of the nation’s premiere football events. Tickets are $15.
