Aurora Christian’s emergence as a championship football program is a story of baby steps and big-boy steps. The chance for another of the latter comes Friday.

Unless you’ve followed the Eagles closely during coach Don Beebe’s nine-year tenure, the significance of finally beating programs with modest profiles such as Chicago Christian and Walther Lutheran is easily lost. Beebe, though, refers to those milestones almost reverently when recalling the trajectory that led to last year’s IHSA Class 3A state championship season.

If those feats were subtle steps on the Eagles’ path to prominence, defeating Driscoll – a football dynasty before the school closed – in the 2008 Class 4A quarterfinals was a landmark moment in announcing Aurora Christian as an elite football program.