End of the line for Waubonsie Valley
Waubonsie Valley's glorious football playoff run finally met its match.
Marist quarterback Brendan Skalitzky ran for 191 yards, including a 71-yard touchdown run, and passed for 2 more scores as No. 23 seed Marist defeated the No. 30 Warriors 31-16 in a Class 8A semifinal in Chicago.
Advancing to its third championship game and second since a 2009 runner-up finish, Marist (9-4) was hardened just as Waubonsie (8-5) was, by a tough conference. In the Redhawks' case it's the East Suburban Catholic, which also sent Nazareth to DeKalb in Class 5A.
“We knew how good of a team we were,” Skalitzky said. “Our conference is unbelievable. It shows you, this run that we've made. They prepare us very well, so here we are, it's very exciting.”
Skalitzky staked Marist to a 10-0 lead early in the second quarter, but a 52-yard touchdown pass from Waubonsie quarterback Jack Connolly to Chuck Robinson, and a 27-yard Lee Bell field goal had the Warriors in decent position at halftime, down 17-9.
When Skalitzky broke off left guard Thomas O'Mara and ran 71 yards for a 24-9 score at 4:31 of the third quarter, that was a difference maker.
“We saw at halftime we were probably going to run more up the middle, spread them out and run up the middle,” Skalitzky said.
“We were feeling real good,” Warriors coach Paul Murphy said of the scenario at halftime. “The key was getting a stop there. They got it to 24 before we scored. We wanted to get the first score and that didn't happen.”
Waubonsie answered with a drive it patented in playoff wins over Edwardsville, Neuqua Valley and Naperville Central — 16 plays, 72 yards with Connolly and running back Max Ihry sharing the load.
On fourth-and-goal from Marist's 1-yard line Connolly faked the Ihry dive and sprinted outside extra tackle Dan Dominiak, an unbalanced line to the right.
“It was big,” said Connolly, who ran for 32 yards and completed 10 of 19 passes for 151 yards.
“They're up two scores so we really wanted to get it back to one,” he said. “Obviously getting that touchdown was huge. We just never wanted to give up. We had nothing to lose, we just wanted to keep fighting.”
Marist scored its final touchdown on Darshon McCullough's 18-yard, stutter-stepping run around left end.
“At the end we couldn't stop the run, and that's what beat us overall,” said Warriors safety Quaid Gill.
Ihry ran the ball 17 times for 119 yards, including a 52-yard scamper off an option pitch.
“It was a really wild ride,” the senior said after Waubonsie went from 5-4 out of the DuPage Valley Conference to be the lowest-seeded semifinalist ever in the eight-class system.
“I love every one of my teammates, we just had a lot of heart through the season, you know,” Ihry said. “We got this far. It would have been nicer to go farther, but Marist, they outplayed us, can't really say anything else. So good game by them, but still happy to have gotten this far.”