Every story from Peoria High's run to the Class 5A football championship game

Wes Huett, Journal Star
·5 min read

The Peoria High Lions football team advanced to the Class 5A state championship on 2022, falling short of its second state championship since 2016.

Coach Tim Thornton and the high-octane offense led by running back Malachi Washington took the Memorial Stadium field against LaGrange Park Nazareth in Champaign, losing a heartbreaker 45-44.

Let's take a look back at their run through the 2022 regular season and playoffs. Below is every story we've written and tons of the photos from this season involving the No. 7-ranked Lions — including preseason prognostications, player profiles, playoff performances and more.

The playoffs

Peoria High won four playoff games to earn a trip to its first championship game since 2016. Here are links to each game story and accompanying previews and features along the way.

OFFSEASON

What's next for Peoria High? 4 reasons why the Lions will remain state title contenders

CHAMPIONSHIP

SEMIFINAL

QUARTERFINAL

SECOND ROUND

FIRST ROUND

The regular season

Peoria High has lost only once this season, a Week 8 game against Normal West — a loss that in hindsight was comparable to the Lions' loss to Galesburg in Week 9 of the 2016 campaign before winning the 5A state championship.

“As a program, we’ve been in this situation before,” Thornton said after the loss, “where we’re cruising along — everything’s going good — you listen to the news and everybody tells you how good you are … at some point, a situation like this can be good for you, reset you, get you back on track and show everybody that you’re not invincible. We got to keep getting better.

“We’ll dwell on (this loss) just long enough to go get things fixed.”

Peoria High rolled through most of the regular season, often landing its players on our weekly top performers lists or being spotlighted as part of our weekly takeaways story, which broke down the most important games of each week. Here is a link to each of those stories:

Running back Malachi Washington is the Peoria High player most know, so our Dave Eminian caught up with the rugged running back and profiled him during a September home game.

The Peoria High season began on a sour note when its highly anticipated game with Metamora was halted after a fight in the home grandstands.

The preseason

Expectations were high for Peoria High in August when we picked them among the six programs with the best shot at a state title — especially with its fall into the 5A field.

"We’re going to be bigger and stronger than, I think, we’ve ever been on offense," Peoria High coach Tim Thornton said in August. He was right.

We previewed all the Peoria teams, taking time to look at Peoria High quarterback Gino Tist's growth as a player and leader. We also included multiple Peoria High Lions on our preseason lists of top players.

On the first day of practice, we included Peoria High among teams that hoped to use their playoff disappointment as fuel to their fire in 2022. The Lions' portion of the story was focused on their improving defense.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: IHSA football championships: Peoria High Lions stories from 2022