Warren sports winning profile
Sure, Aaron Montgomery looked like a football player, with his helmet and uniform on.
But at times on Friday night, it almost seemed like the Warren senior was doing impressions of athletes from other sports.
Early in the first quarter of Warren's North Suburban Conference Lake Division showdown against Lake Zurich, Montgomery looked like a soccer player making a header when he tried to field a punt and the ball bonked squarely off the front of his helmet.
Lake Zurich junior Aaron Lewandowski caught it and six plays later, the visiting Bears scored their first touchdown of the game.
After stewing the entire game about his costly error, Montgomery redeemed himself when he did a dead-on imitation of a volleyball player going up for a monster spike.
With Lake Zurich driving late in the fourth quarter and Warren clinging to a three-point lead, Montgomery picked off quarterback Tanner Witt's pass by rising high above a pack of players and plucking the ball out of the air with one hand.
The change of possession allowed Warren to eat up just about the rest of the clock en route to a 17-14 homecoming victory in Gurnee.
The win keeps Warren (3-0, 4-1 overall) undefeated and tied for first place (with Stevenson) in the Lake Division and makes up for last year's 32-point loss to the Bears, who went on to win the Class 7A state championship.
Lake Zurich, which was playing without its best running back, Andrew Maloney (high ankle sprain) and one of its best defenders, lineman Tony Pecho (knee), drops to 2-3 (1-2 NSC Lake) and loses two games in a row for the first time since 2005.
"I just read the ball wrong on that punt (return)," Montgomery said. "I knew I had to go up and get that (interception) somehow. I knew I had to make a big play after that punt return and that was a big play right there."
Interestingly, some of the other big plays of the game were also special teams miscues.
Lake Zurich allowed a field goal attempt to be blocked just before halftime.
And Warren scored the winning touchdown - on a 2-yard run by Tom Lindal (17 carries, 81 yards, 2 touchdowns) - after a muffed punt by the Bears.
Pecho, also Lake Zurich's long snapper, tore his anterior cruciate ligament against Stevenson last week and is out for the season. With a new long snapper suddenly in the lineup, the Bears had some trouble.
With three minutes to play in the third quarter, Witt, who is also Lake Zurich's punter, could barely reel in the snap for his punt and he managed to get off just a 14-yarder.
That put the Blue Devils at the Lake Zurich 35-yard line, and six plays later Lindal scored his winning touchdown.
"That was a great opportunity for us. We needed to make something happen after that (bad Lake Zurich punt)," Warren coach Dave Mohapp said. "That was our chance. This was a game of momentum and you knew this would be a close game and it would come down to some of those little things.
"And I'm glad a good thing happened for Aaron. He's a good athlete for us, a good player."
After Montgomery's interception and a series of five drawn-out plays by Warren to run as much clock as possible, Lake Zurich had only 41.4 seconds left to work with.
The Bears moved the ball 35 yards on their first play to get into Warren territory, but weren't able to string anything else together before time expired.
"We're not consistent enough yet to win games like this," Lake Zurich coach Bryan Stortz said. "We just have to find a way to finish and we're not doing a very good job of that."
One bright spot for the Bears was the connection between Witt and Jacob Brinlee. They hooked up six times for 118 yards.
Warren also had a nice aerial assault, courtesy of Ryan Maguire and Zach Shaw. Shaw completed 6-of-12 passes for 111 yards and Maguire caught 4 passes for 101 yards.