Fremd rallies to claim share of West title

The Hoffman Estates football team stayed on the field at Fremd late Friday night for 20 minutes looking at the scoreboard in disbelief.

Fremd had rallied to win 27-23 and in doing so had earned a share of its sixth straight Mid-Suburban West title with Palatine.

"It was a heartbreaker," Hoffman quarterback Frank Wadas said. "We could have used this win to end the season. But we are proud of our performance."

Wadas and the Hawks had taken a stunning 23-14 lead over Fremd (7-2, 4-1) with 11:14 left in the game on a 21-yard pass to Donovan Crawford.

Good teams, though, find ways to win.

Fremd's Mike Gyetvay (31 carries, 166 yards, 1 TD) pulled the Vikings to within 23-21 with 5:59 left in the game on a 2-yard run.

With 2:50 left in the game, quarterback Mike Tauchman engineered an 81-yard, 11-play drive to score the clincher with 33 seconds to play.

Tauchman (8-for-17, 108 yards, 2 touchdowns) spied Zenon Kolakowski down the right sideline and hit him with a picture perfect pass.

"I saw that the defensive back sort of stuttered step, and Zenon is fast and I hit him with the pass," Tauchman said.

Tauchman picked up a key first down on fourth-an- 4 from the 44 with a 7-yard run to give the Vikings new life.

"Six of our nine games saw the contest come down to the last two minutes," Fremd coach Mike Donatucci said. "Hoffman Estates really battled us. We played soft in the first half both on defense and on offense. When we scored just before halftime, that got us going."

Tauchman connected with Andrew Corso for a 29-yard touchdown pass with 35 seconds left in the first half to cut the Hawks (2-7, 0-5) lead to 9-7.

"We've played nail-biters all year," Gyetvay said. " We knew we could come back and win this game. Our offensive line just controlled their defensive line in the second half. It was our best running performance."