Torrid Grant as hot as the weather
Wearing black from head to toe on an 80-plus degree day is going to make the sweat beads multiply.
But there's a reason Grant wears its all black uniforms for home games.
"We look bad in these," Grant junior running back Izzy Rodriguez chuckled. "Actually, we were all close to passing out. You just had to stay hydrated with lots of water. It was a hot one out here."
The Bulldogs kept that theme running on an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon.
They were hot, hot, hot from start to finish in torching visiting Round Lake for a 49-18 North Suburban Conference Prairie Division victory on homecoming.
The win kept Grant perfect at 7-0 overall, 5-0 in the Prairie. Round Lake fell to 1-6, 0-4.
"The line did a great job blocking, the quarterback (Pavel Zurkowski) did his job. Everybody did and that's how we won," said Rodriguez, who rushed for 2 touchdowns and 90 yards on 13 carries. "We let them get into the game a little bit right away, but then we came back ready to play."
Round Lake scored on the first series of the game when quarterback Matt Ortiz connected with Dan Krause for a 55-yard touchdown pass.
But Grant then went on to score 49 straight unanswered points.
"I was hoping that (first touchdown) would bring us up a little bit and bring them down," said Ortiz, who completed 6 of 14 passes for 132 yards. "It's their homecoming and they're undefeated, so I was hoping for the upset after that. But they just started outworking us."
The Bulldogs definitely went to work.
They answered Round Lake's early score on the very next series by marching down the field and capping off their drive with a 7-yard Rodriguez touchdown run.
Grant added 2 more touchdowns in the quarter and then scored twice more in the second quarter to take a 35-6 lead into the halftime break.
Late in the third quarter, the Bulldogs enacted the running clock.
"Defensively, we never stopped them once," Round Lake coach Doug Moss said. "They dominated us on the offensive side of the ball. We would have liked to have been able to put together at least a few defensive stands, but unfortunately we just never got it done.
"We talked all week about how we had to stop Zurkowski and Rodriguez and they just ran at us at will."
Zurkowski had another rock solid game. He put twice the hurt on the Panthers _ through the air and on the ground.
He completed 4 of 6 passes for 78 yards, including a pretty, 36-yard touchdown pass to Tommy Bychowski in the second quarter.
On the ground, Zurkowski rolled up 129 yards on 14 carries and ran for 2 touchdowns (45 yards, 14 yards).
The Bulldogs also got rushing touchdowns from Jim Liles (28 yards) and Joe Loris (11 yards).
"We bounced back right after (Round Lake's opening touchdown) and pretty much controlled the clock from then on," Grant coach Kurt Rous said. "There's no secret to it. We're going to run the ball and control the clock. It's pretty boring to watch sometimes, but it produces victories."
Even thought it was obvious for quite some time that Grant was well on its way to another victory, Round Lake never gave up.
The Panthers ended the game with 2 touchdowns that involved Jerome Brown. The senior returned a kickoff 65 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter, and then caught a 35-yard touchdown pass from Ortiz in the fourth quarter.
"It's nice to see the kids didn't give up," said Moss, who also got 129 rushing yards out of Ray Bryant. "That's a plus we can go into the next game with."