Hoffman happily pitches a shutout
It's been a while since the Hoffman Estates football team shut out an opponent. It hadn't happened in coach Bill Helzer's first two seasons, and when he asked his assistant coaches, they weren't too sure either.
"I don't know the last time that we had a shut out at Hoffman," Helzer said.
After the Hawks defeated the Woodstock Blue Streaks 7-0 on Friday night in front of a home crowd at Garber Stadium, all the coaches knew the last shutout for the program.
"It was just a great team effort," Helzer said of the Hawks' first shutot since they beat Prospect 24-0 in the 1997 finale. "Woodstock was relentless, they played tough, they pounded the ball. The difference was, this year, when we needed a stop on fourth down, the kids responded and stopped them on fourth down."
The stop Helzer is referring to came with 2:28 to play when Woodstock quarterback Derek Brown threw an incompletion on fourth-and-9. From there, the Hawks were able to run out the clock.
That stop at the end of the game might not have mattered so much if it weren't for another big defensive play earlier in the second half.
On its first possession of the second half Woodstock drove to the Hawks' 1, but a poor handoff exchange between Brown and running back Kevin Smith was pounced on by Hoffman linebacker Jose Flores.
Flores and fellow linebacker Greg Carroll were hearing their names called often by the public address announcer, as they seemed to be making a tackle on each Woodstock play.
"Bend but don't break," Carroll said of the defensive effort. "We gave up some big plays, but when it comes down to it, we've got to stop them."
The only score of the game came with 30 seconds left in the first quarter when Hoffman's Donovan Crawford found the end zone from 1 yard.
The Hoffman offense moved the ball well for most of the game, but struggled to score because of penalties.
"We've got to clean up our offense, obviously," Helzer said. "Just too many offsetting penalties, just a little sloppy."
The Hawks were penalized 9 times in the game.