Cooke, Glenbard South hit paydirt

Entering Saturday's Metro Suburban West football game at Wheaton Academy, Glenbard South coach Ryan Crissey said he'd planned on "more of the same offensively."

That meant sending running back Sean Cooke between the tackles. The 5-foot-9, 185-pound junior delivered the same - and more - in a 55-14 win in West Chicago.

On 20 carries Cooke gained 321 yards with touchdown runs of 38, 12, 50, 7, 4, 1 and 63 yards. Glenbard South coach Ryan Crissey believed Cooke's yardage total and 7 touchdown runs set program records.

Joining 24 others tied for third place in Illinois High School records with 7 touchdown runs in a game, Cooke eclipsed Mike Oratowski's mark of 6 in a 2007 win over Kaneland.

Cooke listed some big reasons why.

"We had (offensive linemen) Mitch Pohlman, Nick Puleo, Jordan Drake, Zach Price and Mike Ashe. They all played great today. I mean just from beginning to end they all just were punching them in the mouth and driving them into the ground. It was great," Cooke said.

The one touchdown Glenbard South (4-2, 2-0) scored by someone other than Cooke was sophomore quarterback Jack Crouch on a 5-yard run. Understandable. It was a counter play where Crouch went left while linemen pulled right as if paving Cooke's way yet again.

"Their O-line is good, the best O-line we've seen all year," said Wheaton Academy coach Brad Thornton. "We weren't quite ready for the speed of the game as much as I would have liked us to have been. We need to fight off blocks and make plays."

Wheaton Academy (4-2, 0-2) made one right away, recovering a fumble on the Raiders' first play from scrimmage. The Warriors capitalized on quarterback David Thrasher's 1-yard touchdown run for a 6-0 lead at 10:46 of the first quarter.

Glenbard South's defense recorded 2 interceptions by Jimmy Ebbole and another by Talha Ayhan off a tip from lineman Josh Jackson. The Raiders didn't allow another score until Thrasher's 41-yard touchdown pass to Steven Sellers with 7:39 left to play. Sellers caught 7 passes for 94 yards.

"This game was mostly, like, keeping containment," said Jackson, who occupied blockers so the Raiders could sack Thrasher 4 times, 2 from Dillon Valdez. "That's mostly what we had to do and we got that job done."

Hustling Wheaton Academy receiver-defensive back Harrison Taylor, who dove from the flank to block two extra-point kicks, knows the job ahead for the Warriors.

"We'll definitely learn from this and we'll come out next week," he said. "We're going to fix our mistakes."