South Elgin has renewed hope after upset of T.F. South

She had to have the score reversed.

Daily Herald sports writers call in the scores at halftime of every Friday night football game we cover to keep the new Football Focus Web site updated and to give the editors a feel for how the night is unfolding.

After calling in the score at halftime from the Woodstock-Dundee-Crown game in Carpentersville last Friday, I listened as veteran phone clerk Aimee relayed scores involving other area teams.

"Neuqua Valley is leading Larkin by 25," she said, barely audible over the D-C marching band playing a good Stevie Wonder medley. "Streamwood is up 26-13 on East Aurora, Elgin's losing by 17 at Waubonsie Valley, Burlington's up 21-0, Hampshire leads 14-0 and Cary-Grove is beating Jacobs 14-0."

That last score was spoken through gritted teeth. Aimee's a proud Jacobs grad.

"Anything else?"

"Oh, and South Elgin is winning 17-0 against T.F. South."

Talk about burying the lede.

"Are you sure that isn't the other way around?" I asked.

"No, South Elgin is winning."

I hung up confused. I had covered the Storm two weeks earlier at East Aurora when they lost 6-3 in a rainstorm to the Upstate Eight's least prolific program.

Sure, the South Elgin offense had gotten on track the next week at Elgin in a 42-28 victory, but Elgin hadn't won a game yet so it was hard to tell what kind of effect that victory might have. Had a big one, apparently.

T.F. South entered its homecoming game last Friday sporting a 4-0 record. Yes, the Rebels took the field without their injured starting quarterback, but surely one player doesn't make the difference for a program that has qualified for the state playoffs 13 of the previous 14 seasons, including the last 10 straight.

The D-C game finally ended around 11:05 p.m. Time for another round of updates from Aimee on the jog to the car.

"South Elgin won 20-19," she said. And there it was, the upset of the year to date.

South Elgin, the team that fell to 0-3 after losing to East Aurora, had risen from the depths and saved its season with a second straight victory in improbable fashion. The Storm defense that had allowed 200 yards rushing to East Aurora without injured linebacker Sean Kolber held T.F. South to 0 first downs in the first half and was able to survive a 19-point, fourth-quarter comeback when Kolber intercepted a 2-point conversion attempt with three minutes to play.

"Nobody expected us to win because we'd lost to East Aurora," senior center John Hull said after practice Wednesday. "But losing to East Aurora really helped us because it made us realize we had to get in gear and start hitting people."

Low points have a way of leading to high points. Darkest before the dawn ring a bell?

The Saturday morning after the East Aurora loss, the South Elgin players were gathered in the hallway outside their locker room early, waiting for the coaching staff to arrive.

In came head coach Dale Schabert, who had been unable to lead his team at East Aurora after he fell victim on the bus to a painful kidney stone that had him doubled over in pain.

"I walked in and I couldn't look at anybody because I felt so bad," Schabert said of missing the first game of his career. "And nobody would look at me. I find out later that it was because they felt bad they didn't win the game when I went down. They would have liked to have won it for me and the coaches wanted to win it.

"Then all of a sudden we had a really good week of practice. The kids picked it up a little bit and gave a little better effort. We studied film (of Elgin) like we always do, but the concentration was a little better."

Hits in practice that week were crisper, the sessions more physical than the coaching staff had seen at any point previously.

Against Elgin the next Friday, the Storm took the ball right down the field and scored on its first 2 possessions, shaking off the red-zone troubles that had plagued them through 3 losses. Confidence grew as the game progressed. The East Aurora debacle seemed a million years in the past. In fact, it was such a great night Schabert and his players consider the Elgin win bigger than the upset of T.F. South.

The Saturday morning after the Elgin game, Schabert told his team, "I think this might be a point that we talk about for years as to when things changed around here."

The more aggressive Storm found a way to carry their momentum to Lansing last Friday despite a nearly three-hour bus ride.

"We needed to go at their weaknesses and keep pushing," senior receiver Josh Smith said. "We needed to smack them in the mouth in the first half and that's what we did."

South Elgin won't catch any more teams napping after last week's upset. What they will do is play a more physical brand of football than they've demonstrated during the Storm's first two-and-a-half seasons of varsity football, which could come as a surprise in person even if opponents have recognized it on film.

The revived attitude came not a moment too soon.

"We pretty much need to win from here on out if we're still hoping to go to the playoffs, so the (St. Charles) North game this weekend is pretty important," quarterback Patrick Rae said. "We just need to do what we've done the past two weeks and keep going with it."

Beating the North Stars (3-2) would mean another upset, of course, but from this point forward no South Elgin score will hold the same shock value.