O’FALLON, Ill. (BVM) — Most kids say goodbye to their parents for the first time when they leave for college. But not Ian Wagner. He said goodbye before his senior year of high school and was separated from his parents all in an effort to reach his goals of playing college football. 

Always a great athlete growing up, Wagner was challenged with being forced to decide where to play his senior year of high school football. He grew up in O’Fallon, Ill., a town of nearly 30,000 people that sits about 20 minutes east of downtown St. Louis. 

Growing up, he had success playing baseball, soccer, football, basketball and track and field. Really, anything that provided him an opportunity to run around and compete Ian did, but he excelled at one thing more than anything: kicking a football. 

So when colleges started recruiting him as a sophomore and junior in high school, he knew where his future was likely to be made, but he wanted to capitalize on the recruiting process in an effort to generate as much interest as possible from schools around the country. When Wagner’s family moved to Arizona, he thought he might receive some new recruiting interest. 

“I had been around here for most of my high school career and I had gotten a couple of offers, but not as many as I felt I could so I moved out to Arizona thinking I could get some West Coast looks or solid offers,” Wagner said. “I just thought it would be better for me to explore my offers.” 

Little did Wagner — or his family — know how difficult the months after the move were going to be. Illinois was one of the last states in the Midwest to announce high school sports plans amid the pandemic, and when they did, they announced the football season was slated for a spring season. Arizona meanwhile, didn’t announce its plans until early August, so the Wagner family was faced with a tough decision. 

“So my season got canceled twice, so my mental state, I thought I was done,” Wagner said, “I had one offer from Illinois State and I thought that was going to be the last thing on my mind was only going to Illinois State. I ended up going there anyway and then I had to cope with coming back and leaving my parents. I had to decide what was best for me.” 

Wagner was forced to make a decision. He could stay in Arizona and not know what his high school football future held, or move back to O’Fallon — and live by himself — to play a shortened spring football season. 

He decided to move back to O’Fallon despite knowing that he was going to go nearly seven months without seeing his parents. 

“My parents stayed in Arizona for my entire senior year and I checked into college without them too,” Wagner said. “Not a lot of people know, but I was in a hotel for seven months or something like that. I really had to learn to cook for myself, do laundry and live for myself. It was really difficult at first, but I worked my way through it.” 

When Wagner returned to O’Fallon, he quickly began preparations toward his senior season. With the NCAA instituting an emergency recruiting dead period, all recruiting visits were paused. 

“I knew that the dead period was still going on and I wanted to make my parents happy so I went right to camp and got right on the grind and got started,” Wagner said of his return and preparation to O’Fallon. 

When the season started, Wagner quickly realized the mental challenges of living on his own. He saw his teammates going home with family members or saw the home–cooked meals that his friends had made for them, but it was easy because O’Fallon was putting together one of its best seasons until they weren’t. 

O’Fallon started the season 1-0 after beating Belleville East, 25-0. But on March 24, the Panthers’ season was put on pause, due to a player testing positive for COVID-19. For two weeks, O’Fallon football didn’t practice or play any games. All they did was quarantine. 

“We had two weeks where one of our teammates had Covid, he didn’t know and got tested,” Wagner said. “Everyone thought we’ve already ended this twice and now it’s going to be a third time, but me and a couple of my teammates weren’t going to come back a fourth time. My coaches said that we were going to play East St. Louis, that’s what brought us back.

“Yeah I mean, we were on a roll and we were going to be unstoppable. To be stopped again by something that you can’t control, I feel like I had it more difficult and I had that stoppage. I feel like I had so much to go through and I was putting a lot in and not getting a lot out of it. It was really difficult.” 

East St. Louis is one of the premier high school football programs in Illinois, and one of O’Fallon’s biggest rivals. The Flyers had beaten O’Fallon six consecutive seasons, and East St. Louis came into the game with a 27–game Southwestern Conference win streak. The reigning state champions surely wouldn’t lose to an O’Fallon team that finished in last place in 2019 and had just missed two weeks due to a positive Covid test. 

But O’Fallon took a 21-0 lead into halftime, which included a six-yard touchdown run by Wagner. Despite not scoring in the second half, the O’Fallon defense was able to hold the big-play Flyer offense to just 19 points. 

“Beating East Side was a huge deal,” Wagner said. “The preparation was a little awkward not being able to go to team meetings or team meals, which I had done the last three years. That was kind of an O’Fallon tradition. We had to go to meetings with masks on and it was harder. It ended up being the best season I’ve ever had in my life.” 

Wagner’s parents hadn’t traveled to any games during the season, but he said they were able to watch live streams of the game on the internet. However, on senior night he was able to see his father for the first time in a few months and still take a picture together on the field. 

“My mom got to watch them all on TV as well as my dad,” Wagner said. “My dad only got to come to senior night, that’s the only game my parents came to. It was my first time seeing my dad in a couple of months, probably three to four months, it really hit me. My sister came down from Illinois State too. My mom couldn’t come so I had a little picture to have on the field with. It was a surreal moment.”

The last year hasn’t been easy for Wagner. He was forced to make a lot of difficult decisions. He was forced to grow up a year before he was ready to be on his own. But it all became worth it when he decided to accept his first scholarship from Illinois State. 

“I would say my big takeaway is that everyone grows up at their own times,” Wagner said. “I found out that if you are with your parents or not, they still love you. Everyone grows up at their own time. I think it hit me earlier than a lot of kids my age. I learned that family is a real thing and that when you move away it’s not the end of the world, they are still there for you.” 

Wagner is all moved into his Illinois State dorm and has started to adjust to the landscape of being a Division I football player, but he knows he is in the right place. 

“Everyone thinks that if you are a big–time athlete you have to go to a big–time school, but Illinois State was the right place for me and I couldn’t be more happy.”

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