Grant puts finishing touches on Simeon

About 650 gallons of paint and a lot of elbow grease went into dressing up Grant's field for the playoffs.

The school's maintenance staff, led by Lee Pearce and Curt Sheets, spent all day Thursday making a neat red and white checkerboard pattern in both end zones.

No one in the press box could remember the last time Grant had ever had a painted end zone of any kind.

So it's no wonder that before Saturday's Class 6A first round game against Simeon, head coach Kurt Rous was out with his camera taking pictures of the field.

This was a sight he wanted to capture forever.

"It's not every day that we host a playoff game," Rous said. "And the maintenance staff did an excellent job. I wanted to get some shots of the end zone."

The Bulldogs wound up getting plenty of shots at the end zone against Simeon. Not all of them yielded something, but enough did to give Grant a 24-13 victory -- its first playoff win since 1999.

The third-seeded Bulldogs also stayed spotless at 10-0 for the first 10-win season in school history.

Grant will host Lemont next week in the second round. No. 14 Simeon closes out the season with a 5-5 record.

"This feels great," said Grant quarterback Pavel Zurkowski, who ran for 109 yards and a touchdown, and passed for 97 yards and a touchdown. "It feels good to be the team that went out there and did it."

Zurkowski and the offense put an exclamation point on their victory when they scored a touchdown -- on a 7-yard run by Jim Liles -- on fourth down with just 21.9 seconds remaining in the game.

The Bulldogs were going to go for a field goal to go up by a touchdown (20-13), but decided instead that even if they didn't get into the end zone on fourth down, Simeon would still have to go 93 yards in about 20 seconds just to tie the game.

Plus, the Bulldogs felt like they really needed to get into that snazzy-looking end zone again.

Over the course of the game, Grant had had five opportunities in the red zone, but scored only twice. On the three misfires, the Bulldogs fumbled the ball away, ran out of time before halftime and took a sack on fourth down.

"Usually, our red zone offense has been exceptional, but man, we sputtered a little bit," Rous said. "Good thing it didn't come back to haunt us."

It could have.

Grant was up 17-7 at halftime -- thanks to a 35-yard field goal by Kevin Katchmar, a 36-yard run by Zurkowski and a 39-yard pass from Zurkowski to Dan Goodwin -- and seemed firmly in control for the majority of the game. But Simeon just wouldn't go away.

The Wolverines, who scored just four minutes into the game when quarterback Jack Ramsey scrambled his way 29 yards for a touchdown, rallied within four points near the end of the third quarter.

Ramsey, who has committed to Illinois, scored again -- this time on a 9-yard run. That made the score 17-13.

"We stayed in there," Simeon coach Jessie Chick said. "But (Grant) just did what they do. They ran the ball well. They were tough to stop for the whole game."

The Bulldogs were even without four of their starters -- wide receiver/cornerback Tom Bychowski, cornerback Brandon Bushing, linebacker Bud Staton and wingback Gunther Rosentreter, who were sidelined for disciplinary reasons. Rous said it is likely the players will be back for the Lemont game.

"I was impressed that we won as a team," Rous said. "We had some major issues this week that put us kind of in a hole and our kids stepped up. We will win as a team. Everyone contributed. It was a total team effort."