Ask Fenwick strong safety Aiden Williams to describe in one word, and one word only, what the last year-plus has been like for him, and you’ll get an apt response.
“A battle,” said Williams, who tore the ACL in his left knee during the 2024 football season. But he bounced back in a big way. Perhaps the biggest possible way, depending on your point of view.
After months of rehabilitating his knee multiple times a week, Williams took sixth in the 110-meter high hurdles at the 2025 IHSA Class 2A state meet, earning All-State honors.
But the River Forest resident was just getting started.
This fall, he helped lead the Friars football team to the Class 6A state championship over heavily favored East St. Louis 38-28. In that game, he had four tackles, but that belied his season-long efforts, according to Fenwick coach Matt Battaglia.
“He was a bell cow for us,” Battaglia said. “He had over 100 tackles and played through some other injuries and always put the team first.”
Winning state is the pinnacle, but getting there was full of hurdles. While he wasn’t all that worried about reinjuring his knee during the season, he had to deal with something even more unexpected.
“My brace would always break,” he said. “It would just snap, from getting hit or hitting people. I’d have to get a new one. We broke three and then got another one and it worked better.”
That might sound a little funny, but when you consider that one brace costs about $150, you might change your tune.
“We would always try to fix the ones that broke, fixing it with tape and bolts and stuff,” he said. “It worked a little bit, but not well enough.”
That’s the downside. The upshot was a laser-focus by Williams and his teammates on the biggest prize of all, from well before Day One of practice.
“In late November 2024, we were talking about it,” he said of himself and teammates Tommy Thies, Jake Thies and Jamen Williams, among many others who eventually got the job done on Dec. 2 at Illinois State’s Hancock Stadium.
That game had a bit of an edge for Williams. As a youngster living in St. Louis, he watched his cousin, who played for Edwardsville, lose to East St. Louis in a playoff game.
Thus, Fenwick’s title game was quasi-personal.
“I would say so,” he said. “Everyone knows that East St. Louis is among the best of the best and nationally ranked. No one thought we would come out on top.”
But the Friars did. What was the difference?
“I would say we wanted it more, and we were more prepared,” Williams said, “thanks to coach Battaglia, and the other coaches. The way we came into the game, we watched a lot of film. Coach Battaglia pointed out their tendencies; the coaches would spend hours making Google slides of all their formations and their percentages.
“When we got there, we could tell we wanted it more than them.”
Now ask Williams what was more satisfying: finishing sixth in state in the high hurdles or winning state in football.
You might be surprised by his response.
“Both were very special, but I’d have to say getting sixth in state in the hurdles,” he said after a long pause to think it through. “Most people don’t come back on the track or any sport until nine months later. I was able to get back in six months.”
Battaglia was impressed.
“It’s a huge credit to him how tough he is, the family he was raised in,” he said. “He had a difficult non-contact injury, but he never pouted, never complained. He just went to work.”
That’s the hallmark of the advice Williams would give athletes in any sport, at any school, facing a major injury.
“I would say just keep going and working hard and trusting God, and if you believe you can do something, you can do it,” he said. “Don’t let anything hold you back.
“Keep on grinding.”