St. Francis uses team effort for 6th win
St. Edward did Friday night what no other football team has done to St. Francis this season: The Green Wave stopped senior running back Mark Kachmer.
It couldn't stop the rest of the Spartans.
St. Francis returned to its home field in Wheaton for senior night and got a handful of big plays to defeat the Green Wave 28-12 in a Suburban Catholic Conference game.
"Yeah, I guess if there's one thing we did well tonight, maybe that's it," St. Edward coach Mike Rolando said of holding Kachmer to 17 yards on 9 carries. "He's a big part of their offense, but they happen to have 10 other guys, and you have to know where they are as well."
"Most teams gun for Kachmer, but that opens up our passing game, and Stan (Bobowski) was running good up the middle," said the Spartans' Jason Lombardi, a senior center and defensive end.
The Spartans (6-1, 4-1) used Kachmer well as a decoy, giving him the ball, then having him hand off to a receiver on the reverse. First Tony Vargyas scored on a 49-yard run, then Ryan O'Donnell ran in from 55 yards.
"We saw it on the film, the linebackers flowing really strong," Lombardi said.
"They were just keyed up too much on Kachmer, and our backside guys think that they can make plays on the opposite side of the field, not staying home and respecting a cutback or a counter."
But it was Lombardi's blocked punt in the second quarter, recovered and run in for a touchdown by David Sufranski, that turned the momentum St. Francis' way and gave the Spartans the lead for good at 15-12.
"That's probably a momentum killer right there," Rolando said.
"We've just been practicing hard with that in practice. It's all good," Lombardi said.
The Spartans defense also forced 3 fumbles, one of which led to O'Donnell's touchdown run on the next play and gave St. Francis a 22-12 halftime lead.
"I thought we played our worst half of football and we were only down 10," Rolando said. "I thought we were running the ball pretty much at will. And then we come out and fumble the first series and more bad things happened after that."
Bruising Green Wave running back Moses Quiroga had 19 carries for 135 yards and a TD, and Jimmy Mathisen ran 14 times for 61 yards and a TD.
"They were good, they were hard hitters," Lombardi said. "All respect to them. They're a good team."
Even though it stopped Kachmer on offense, the Green Wave didn't stop him on defense. He got 2 sacks in the final minutes of the game to put the Green Wave (3-4, 1-4) away.