Bartlett 37, St. Charles North 6
The St. Charles North and Bartlett football teams met for the first time ever Friday night in St. Charles and it was also homecoming for the North Stars so the place was packed and there was excitement in the air. The Hawks felt it as well and knew they needed something to take the crowd out of the game.
They found it in a heavy dose of senior running back Vinnie Libreri. Libreri did most of the heavy lifting on a game opening 15 play drive that used over seven minutes of game clock and was capped by a 9 yard TD run by quarterback Josh Hasenberg.
The Hawks executed a similar drive on their first possession of the second half that Libreri punctuated with a 20 yard TD run. For the game, Libreri had three TD runs and ran for 214 yards in leading Bartlett (3-2, 2-1) to the 37-6 Upstate Eight Conference victory.
"It was their homecoming, they were expecting to win," said Libreri. "We've never played them and we came out and we wanted it. My linemen were doing great and getting me to that second level and them I was just trying to move around."
"He has moves that everything is down except his knee but he bounces back up," said Bartlett head coach Tom Meaney of Libreri. "He's an athlete, he's not really big but he's the toughest 160 pound kid I've ever seen, he just doesn't go down."
St. Charles North (2-3, 1-1) actually had quite a bit of success moving the ball on the Hawk's defense but had three turnovers and some costly penalties that killed the momentum of a couple drives in Bartlett territory that they just could not recover from to keep the drive alive.
"Our defense was out there a long time," said North Stars head coach Mark Gould. "We got down 21 points and felt we had to throw the ball and just didn't have any continuity with it, we had a penalty or something that broke up the continuity of the drive and we have to work on that."
The North Stars did get on the board in the fourth quarter when Nic Higgins caught a screen pass on a fourth and 14 play that turned into six points cutting the lead to 24-6 but Libreri and the Hawks answered with a quick strike right back on a 29 yard TD run that pushed the lead back to a comfortable margin.
"I thought the way we defense played toward the end of the second quarter that is how we would play all night," said Gould. "We stiffened up and did a nice job but they stayed with their game plan and started opening up some holes and we didn't make tackles and our offense didn't keep the defense off the field. They were bigger and stronger, that's what it came down to."