Girls flag football: Carmel downs Wauconda to win Fremd invite title
Saturday's second day of Fremd High School's 8-team girls flag football invite ran into a combination of some inclement weather and mounting injuries to one of its finalists.
That forced the Group A final bout between Carmel and Wauconda into becoming the de facto title game when Group B winner Maine South had to forfeit what would have been that title match due to numerous injuries to its team leaving them with only 10 players dressed and ready for the final.
"We had a few girls get hurt," Maine South coach Carlos Panizo said after his squad swept through group play with wins over last year's state runner-up Rockford Guilford and Chicago Public Schools Lane Tech and Taft to improve their overall record to 14-3.
"For me as much I would like to say that (we're) the Fremd Invite champion and earn that, it's much more important that I keep these kids healthy for the state playoffs in a couple of weeks,“ Panizo said. ”I feel really proud for the three wins we pulled out this weekend."
With that in the rearview mirror the championship game would see the Corsairs take advantage early and hold on to earn a 20-6 victory at Hale Hildebrandt Field to move their mark to 14-1 on the season.
"We were definitely ready to come out and play," Carmel senior QB Josie Hartman said.
And it would be under Hartman's direction things went to script as she helmed all three scoring drives in the first half that gave them a 20-0 lead.
First, she took it in from 2 yards out for a 7-0 lead with 4:46 left in the first.
Next, she gained her second TD jaunt from 37 yards out at the 9:46 mark of the second quarter for a 14-0 advantage.
She closed out the half with a 10-yard TD toss to junior wide out Grace Booher for a 20-0 lead with just 62 ticks remaining in the half.
Wauconda (5-5) would get its lone score on sophomore Lyla Richmond's 20-yard TD run with 3:58 left in the third.
The Bulldogs would see their last scoring threat squelched on their next possession when Carmel junior Anna Chilcutt picked off a Zithaly Duran pass in the end zone just inside the 10-minute mark in the final stanza.
Despite the setback, Wauconda coach Emily Ellison took the weekend's results for her young squad with nothing but a positive outlook with postseason play starting less than three weeks from now.
"We went into this weekend looking at it as an opportunity to prepare ourselves for the playoffs," Ellison said. "Win or lose, we're not going to play a lot of teams better than this in the playoffs. So the fact that we were able to hang with some of the best teams in the state...I'm pretty happy with that."
Meanwhile, on the other end of the field, the Corsairs paid a phone call to their coach Ben Berg who was away visiting his daughter at college parent's weekend to give him the good news.
"He's always supporting us even when he's not here," Hartman said. "We definitely wanted to play (this weekend) for him and show him what he's taught us."