WW South runs out of magic
CHAMPAIGN Wheaton Warrenville South couldn't find that last rabbit to pull out of its helmet.
The Tigers' magical playoff run came to a disappointing end in the Class 7A championship football game with Saturday's 21-14 loss to Rockford Boylan at Memorial Stadium.
While WW South's reign as two-time defending 7A champion concludes, Rockford Boylan last year's 6A champ snags its second straight crown with its 28th straight win.
A blocked field goal gave the Tigers the ball at their own 32-yard line with 1:42 left in the game, but the last-chance drive quickly ended on downs, and Boylan ran out the clock.
"The Tigers did not play real well today at certain times in the game, at times we played extremely well," said WW South coach Ron Muhitch. "But we did have some mistakes that caused us to not keep us up to par with a team like Boylan that you saw could score on the very first play of the game with a lot of talent."
Big plays, something the Tigers (10-4) did a tremendous job preventing during their run to the final, devastated them against Boylan (14-0). After WW South opened the game with a 9-play drive that ended on downs, Titans quarterback Lamont Toney faked out everyone in the stadium with a 72-yard keeper for a touchdown on Boylan's first play from scrimmage.
Trailing 13-0 at the half following a pair of Sean Slattery field goals, WW South narrowed the gap to 13-7 midway through the third quarter on three straight Dan Vitale runs, capped by a 24-yarder, for 53 of his 121 yards in the game.
At the start of the fourth quarter, however, Boylan struck with another big play when Toney hit Jaxson Meister with a 79-yard scoring strike. Tyreis Thomas' 2-point run made it 21-7.
"That's been our goal all year, no 25-yard-plus plays," said Tigers linebacker Dan Roadman. "Each one of their scores today came off big plays. Those big plays really came back to bite us."
The two-touchdown deficit was especially frustrating considering the Tigers had a chance to take a lead minutes earlier when sophomore quarterback Jordan Davis making his first varsity start due to injuries to Thaddeus Armstrong and Ryan Graham ran 12 yards to the Titans' 1-yard line. The Tigers had gotten the ball back right after Vitale's touchdown when Greg Hohenstein recovered a fumble.
A holding penalty negated Davis' run, though, and Boylan's Ty Zimmerman wound up intercepting Davis, who threw for 58 yards and ran for 39, at the 2-yard line to thwart the scoring chance.
"We knew they were primarily a run team with Vitale coming out," said Titans defensive lineman Luke Riggs. "When you come out and stop the run like we did in the first half, obviously you've got to expect them to come out and try to pass it."
The 21-7 lead seemed safe when Boylan got the ball with 6:36 left in the game. Tigers linebacker Adam Dansdill, however, came up with a stunning play when he stripped Toney of the ball in a pile of players and returned it 17 yards for a touchdown and a 21-14 gap with 5:49 left in the game.
Boylan and Thomas, who rushed for 135 yards, churned a long drive that nearly resulted a clinching touchdown, but Dansdill forced an incompletion when he stripped Marquez Beeks in the end zone. Slattery attempted a 26-yard field goal, but Roadman, Dansdill and Zach Kyllonen combined on a block of the kick.
The Tigers' final drive ended with a sack of Davis and three incomplete passes.
Even though WW South's push for an eighth state championship didn't come to fruition, the program's 11th title-game appearance still offers pride. A 1-3 start and a brutal postseason path never caused the Tigers to doubt themselves.
"We've come a long, long way," Dansdill said. "We always knew we could do it, we just had a lot of doubters along the way. But deep down inside as a team we knew we could do it. We just had to work to get better each week."