South Elgin keeps growing with win at VH

Football practices at South Elgin used to take place on dirt. Or pavement.

The one grass practice field that was occasionally available was a bus ride away and it had no lines or goalposts.

"I didn't realize how much work it is to start a new school," South Elgin coach Dale Schabert said. "We started up five years ago with a lot of trials and tribulations. Our first year, we played in four homecoming games. That tells you something."

The message is that the South Elgin football team came from very humble beginnings.

Junior Derek Hurschman might be too young to remember them, but he'll never forget his own beginning.

The genesis of his varsity career with the Storm has been anything but humble.

On Friday in Vernon Hills, Hurschman scored the first two touchdowns of his career, including an improbable fumble recovery that he ran in from 67 yards out, to help lift South Elgin to a 21-6 victory over the host Cougars.

South Elgin is now 2-0 for the first time in its history and needs just one more victory to tie its season high in wins.

Vernon Hills, which was crippled by turnovers, particularly fumbles, drops to 1-1. The Cougars lost five fumbles on the night, the worst being the one that Hurschman turned into the final score of the game with 6:55 remaining.

"I've never done anything like that. I'm sure the crowd was going crazy, but I didn't hear a thing," Hurschman said. "It was silent. I was just running.

"We wanted to make sure we forced turnovers and capitalized off that. We did some damage."

Hurschman's first lethal blow came about three minutes earlier at the start of the fourth quarter when he caught a 7-yard pass from quarterback John Menken, who completed 7-of-16 passes for 82 yards and 2 touchdowns.

That gave South Elgin a 14-6 lead that almost seemed commanding, given how much the Vernon Hills offense was spinning its wheels.

"We just couldn't get anything accomplished," said Vernon Hills standout junior DaVaris Daniels, who played both quarterback and wide receiver. "Fumbles killed us and we made mental mistakes that put the game in their hands and we couldn't bounce back. The light switch just didn't come on at the right time.

"You're going to have nights like this, but it should never be this bad where the other team is going to capitalize and get good field position every time."

The light switch never fully flipped to the on position for Daniels, one of the most highly-skilled and widely-recruited juniors in the country.

He completed 6-of-13 passes for 60 yards, ran for just 23 yards and caught only 2 passes for 18 yards. His first reception didn't even occur until the fourth quarter.

Daniels finished the game on the bench in pain from various bumps and bruises.

"We wanted to get him out of his game," Hurschman said of Daniels. "In practice, we had one of our players in a blue jersey and we keyed on him. We wanted to shut (Daniels) down. We knew that if we did that, we'd have a good chance to win the game."

South Elgin struck first with a 3-yard touchdown pass from Menken to Sean Kolber with 7:41 left in the second quarter.

Vernon Hills responded about five minutes later with a score just before the halftime break. Evan Spencer (7 receptions, 102 yards) caught a pass from Steve Nelson (11-for-22, 143 yards) and made some pretty moves to shed defenders before sprinting 57 yards down the sideline for the touchdown.

The momentum didn't carry over, though. Of Vernon Hills' six turnovers, five occurred in the second half.

"The issue was that we had a very poor week of practice," said Vernon Hills linebacker EJ Lannan, a three-year varsity starter and team captain. "I think the mistakes we made showed that."