Antioch elects to beat Grant in NSC Prairie

Washington politicians are often accused of being wasteful and inefficient.

Perhaps they should take a few lessons from the Antioch offense.

No waste there on Thursday night, or as those on Capitol Hill might say, no pork.

Just an uber-efficient, lean and mean scoring machine.

The host Sequoits scored pretty much at will, and practically at record pace, in drop-kicking Grant for a 49-30 victory in North Suburban Prairie Division action.

Antioch stays perfect on the season at 4-0 overall and 2-0 in the Prairie. Grant drops to 1-3 and 1-1.

"I've never played in a game like this before," Antioch running back Vinnie Holm said.

Then again, few players have.

In the first half, Antioch's offense couldn't have been much more in sync.

The Sequoits scored four touchdowns and had the ball for a total of 4:45.

You read that right.

Total time of possession for Antioch over the first two quarters was less than five total minutes. And in that time, the offense slapped 28 points on the board.

Total number of offensive plays: just 14.

"To do that against Grant-no, I didn't expect that," Antioch coach Brian Glashagel said. "I definitely did not expect that. But you know the guys we have. We've got some pretty good backs."

Against Grant, Antioch's runners, like Holm and Sam Green and Dan Arden and Josh Guadarrama, were better than pretty good.

They looked all-world as they ran wild. And far. And quickly. Make that very quickly.

On the opening possession of the game, Holm scored on a 22-yard run to cap a 7-play drive that took just 2:11 off the clock.

Shockingly, it wound up being the Sequoits' longest drive, time-wise, of the first half.

Later in the first quarter, Green scored a 72-yard touchdown on the first play of Antioch's next possession. That took just 10 seconds off the clock.

With 4:38 in the second quarter, Antioch got the ball back after a Grant field goal made the score 14-10. The first play for the Sequoits? A 61-yard touchdown run by Holm that lasted just eight seconds.

After Grant punted on its next possession, the Antioch offense turned up the productivity meter again.

This time, it took the Sequoits two plays to score. Guadarrama ran in a touchdown from 51 yards out.

That put Antioch up 28-10 at halftime.

"All of us together, we just did our jobs and it worked out," said Holm, who rolled up 175 yards on just 9 carries. He led an offense that rolled up 374 rushing yards on 26 carries. "I give our offensive line all the credit. It begins with them. When they get their blocks, we get big yards.

"It also seemed like their secondary wasn't as good as we thought. That was a weak point in their defense and once we got past that-It was just our night."

Even the defense scored in a hurry for Antioch.

On the first possession of the third quarter, Grant was forced to punt the ball from deep in its own territory.

But Antioch junior George Gonzalez blocked the punt and recovered the ball at the 1-yard line and ran in for a touchdown.

"They're a good team and we're not," Grant coach Kurt Rous said. "We're giving up way too many points on defense. Too many big plays. Our offense did OK, but our defense didn't help us out any."

Grant quarterback Leo Minne had 2 touchdowns and 118 rushing yards on 29 carries. His 1-yard run with 6:22 left in the third quarter cut the deficit to 35-17 and gave the Bulldogs some life.

But Antioch then went on to score twice more to put the game away.

"I tried to get on the guys about being relentless," Minne said. "It was tough out there and we're just going to have to forget about this."