Lake Zurich rushes past Jacobs

Injuries are never good.

But on Saturday at Lake Zurich, something good actually came from one.

Senior John Mularz finally got to play some football.

Actually, while filling in for injured fullback Mike Shield, Mularz got to play a whole lot of football, and he was a big reason the host Bears rolled to a 41-7 victory in their Class 7A playoff opener against Jacobs.

Mularz was Lake Zurich's starter at fullback at the beginning of the season, but suffered a torn ligament in his right knee in Week 4. He sat out the next four weeks while Shield started in his place.

Sadly, Mularz was all too used to watching from the sidelines. He missed about half of last season with a sprained Achilles tendon.

To top it off, when he attempted to return from his knee injury two weeks ago in Week 8, Mularz tweaked his hamstring. So, it was back to the sidelines and back to the trainer's room for more rehab.

Then, in Lake Zurich's regular season finale against Lake Forest last week, Shield wound up getting hurt. He suffered a badly sprained ankle.

Shield tried to practice this past week in preparation for Jacobs, but just couldn't make it happen.

Meanwhile, Mularz had completed his rehab from the hamstring injury and was pretty much ready to return to action for the Jacobs game. How's this for irony? He would now be needed to fill in for the guy who had been filling in for him.

“Mentally, with all the injuries, it's so tough to go through what Johnny's been through,” Lake Zurich coach Bryan Stortz said. “But we just kind of pulled him aside this week and said, ‘We need you. You're the guy this week. We need you to step up.'

“He really responded well and without him tonight, we probably wouldn't have had the success we did running the ball.”

The fifth-seeded Bears, who move to 9-1 and will travel to host Prospect in the second round, had success all right. They ran over Jacobs for a whopping 428 rushing yards.

Mularz looked as if he had never missed beat, let alone more than half the season. No rust for him.

He rang up 142 yards on just 10 carries and scored 2 touchdowns on runs of 10 and 36 yards. Mularz got the tough yards when the Bears needed them and ultimately turned the lemon of Shield's untimely injury into gallons worth of sweet lemonade.

“It feels good to be back. It's been awhile,” Mularz said. “I've been a wreck, but I've been working really hard in rehab and I'm good now.

“It's been killing me to miss all that I've missed. This is my senior year and I just want to be out there with the team. Tonight, I had to fill a spot and it just worked out. I'm really glad I made it back to do that.”

The second touchdown Mularz scored came with 7:32 left in the second quarter and gave Lake Zurich a 28-7 lead. Thanks to a 55-yard touchdown run by running back Jacob Brinlee just two minutes later, the Bears took a comfy 34-7 advantage into the locker room at halftime.

Brinlee also had a big run to start the game, an 86-yard return for a touchdown that came off the opening kickoff

Quarterback Zach Till's 3-yard touchdown run in the first quarter also added to the onslaught.

“They've got some good kids who can really run. I've known that from seeing them in track, too. They're just a really good team,” said Jacobs coach Bill Mitz, the former Stevenson coach who has revitalized the program at Jacobs in his first season there. The Golden Eagles wrap up just their third playoff season since 1999 with a 6-4 record.

“But we can't start off the game giving up a touchdown like that (on the kickoff return),” Mitz added. “Against a good team, you can't do that. That's just a mindset. You get behind, you put your head down. You don't have that same type of drive.”

Jacobs struggled to ever get any traction, and mustered only 127 yards of total offense. The Golden Eagles got their only touchdown on a 1-yard run by Kyle Wright in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the Bears' motor never slowed.

Till finished with 111 rushing yards and Brinlee had 85 yards, in addition to his kickoff yardage.

During the third quarter, Brinlee received even more applause than usual after one of his runs. It was announced that he had broken the school's all-time rushing record of 2,915 yards set by former great Mike Stumpp.

Brinlee now has 3,000 career rushing yards.

“It means a lot,” Brinlee said of the record. “It's an honor, but I'm just happy to get the win.

“I'm real happy for Johnny (Mularz). It's nice to see him out here. He did great today. We knew coming into this year that teams would be keying on me, so our other backs knew they had a big responsibility to keep teams honest and they did that today.”

Brinlee could have even more support next week. Stortz said that Shield should be ready to play against Prospect.