Going to expand on this, holistically.
It’s possible to have both a consistently mediocre-to-respectable football program and the pedigree of success elsewhere for the student body to channel, for the school to promote and the school-community to take pride in. Expecting to have the 1:1 “football is really good, just like everything else we have” on the private side requires enrollment. Enrollment to support the depth necessary to be competitive (good) at football. Which St Charles historically has not had.
How much of this is school mores, how much of it is the history of the school being the traditionally more expensive and academically rigorous player in the Catholic HS marketplace, how much of it is the fact it doesn’t have a dedicated feeder school via the Diocesan attendance zoning, it probably is an even spread. It’s a big principal put together, accruing significant interest overtime. Creates a hard loan to overcome when the program has zero playoff wins.
The 2010’s is when we saw a big divergence between the football prowess of the two eastside Catholic schools. It’s hard not to see a root of this being Hartley getting the far higher yields of boys (with the talent to follow) from St. Catherine and SPX (the two parish schools on the eastside with the realistic opportunity to meaningfully supplement and enhance SC’s northerly enrollment.) Hartley isn’t the school after all that permeates the “yeah our freshman classes annually have ~20% attrition by January, so what?” notion. SC is. Not making a judgment as to whether it’s entirely good or bad, but it definitely isn’t helpful for football purposes. Have families that are reluctant to pull the trigger on a more-expensive option with higher rigor, because they don’t know if it’s the best school fit for their son (and this can be for other reasons outside of academics) or the finances*logistics of their family if they have boys&girls bunched together closely can happen (or is worth the trade-off), the neighborhood co-ed that is less expensive with closer-to-normal academic standards will win the student game with more rewards in certain places to follow.