North Stars avenge loss, on to 2nd round of playoffs
By DENNIS JACOBS – editorial@kcchronicle.com
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| St. Charles North's Justin Miller intercepts a pass in front of South Elgin's Domico Failla on Saturday at Millennium Field in Streamwood. (Tyler Stoeffel – For The Chronicle) |
STREAMWOOD – Halloween is a good time to exorcise demons, which is what the St. Charles North football team did Saturday at Millennium Field.
The North Stars opened the Class 7A playoffs with a 28-16 victory against South Elgin on Saturday, avenging a 10-7 overtime loss to the Storm suffered two weeks earlier on the same field.
“There aren’t many chances in your lifetime to get revenge or vengeance like this,” North junior quarterback Jake Bergren said. “It’s a good feeling. We came out hard two weeks ago against these guys and just didn’t get it done. Today, we came out focused and we did our jobs.”
Bergren did his job particularly well. He completed seven of 10 passes without an interception for 135 yards, including a 49-yard touchdown pass to Josh Mikes with one second left in the second quarter that gave the North Stars a 14-7 lead.
“That touchdown pass right before the first half ended was a big, big confidence boost for us,” North coach Mark Gould said.
The other key play of the game was Justin Miller’s 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown that wiped out South Elgin’s early 7-0 lead.
“It’s about time,” Miller said. “I’ve had so many this year that were really close.”
Miller broke one tackle, then made good use of downfield blocking as he sprinted down the right sideline to the end zone.
“The blocks were just perfect from Jeff Stolzenburg and Conner Mohs,” he said.
Miller almost put the North Stars (7-3) ahead moments later when he intercepted a pass and returned it 42 yards to the South Elgin 15. North was unable to convert the turnover into any points, however, and also lost running back Jordan Huxtable for the rest of the game on the series when he sustained a left knee injury.
Huxtable had just returned last week after being sidelined much of the season with an ankle injury. His loss forced Gould to severely change his game plan.
“We finally kind of have Jordan back and it was pretty much we were going to give him the ball a lot this week,” Gould acknowledged. “It altered it a lot. We were kind of scrambling a little bit there, but the kids did a great job of responding.”
As he has all season, junior fullback Dirk Schmitt picked up some of the slack left by Huxtable’s absence. His 3-yard touchdown run gave the North Stars a 21-10 lead late in the third quarter, capping a 12-play, 80-yard drive.
“They wanted it more,” South Elgin senior linebacker Sean Kolber said. “We tried our hardest, but we just couldn’t stop it. We had a couple mistakes, a couple big runs, big passes, and that kick return touchdown. We just made little mistakes that led to their scores.”
The back-breaker came when Bergren faked a handoff to Benjamin Hodges and slipped through a hole to race 66 yards for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter.
“I had [right tackle Ryan] Brown and [right guard Samuel] Reese coming across and I knew they were going be there because we’d done it a couple of times before and they just put good blocks down,” Bergren explained. “Ben made a great, great fake... He acted like he had the ball and was fumbling it.”
Bergren wound up with 125 yards rushing on 12 carries, 121 of them coming after halftime.
The Storm (7-3) came out throwing to open the game. Their first five plays were all passes, and junior quarterback John Menken connected on all of them, finishing a 79-yard drive with an 18-yard toss to Domico Failla.
Early in the third quarter, Robbie Green recovered a fumble to set up a 29-yard field goal by David Reisner. It was Reisner’s field goal in overtime that won the first game between the two squads this year, sending the North Stars into a two-game, two-overtime losing skid to close the regular season. But any demons left by those losses are now gone for North.
“It’s a new season, a time for redemption,” Gould said. “The state [association] gave us a chance to try to get back at one of those teams that gave us a heartbreaking loss. So it was a good thing.”
The North Stars will try to keep that good thing going against Elk Grove Village (7-3) in a second round playoff game at North next week. Game time will be announced on Monday.
ST. CHARLES NORTH 28, SOUTH ELGIN 16
St. Charles North 7 7 7 7 - 28
South Elgin 7 0 3 6 - 16
How they scored
First quarter
SE-Failla 18 pass from Menken (Reisner kick), 10:27
SCN-Miller 98 kickoff return (Harmon kick), 10:11
Second quarter
SCN-Mikes 49 pass from Bergren (Harmon kick), :01
Third quarter
SE-Reisner 29 FG, 7:24
SCN-Schmitt 3 run (Harmon kick), 1:49
Fourth quarter
SCN-Bergren 66 run (Harmon kick), 11:04
SE-Birchfield 1 run (pass failed), 7:04
Individual statistics
Rushing: SCN-Huxtable 3-8, McShane 1-minus 2, Schmitt 17-40, Bergren 10-126, Hodges 3-8, Ghanem 2-16; Totals: 36-196. SE-Birchfield 12-20, Menken 11-34, Hansley 2-7; Totals: 25-61.
Passing: SCN-Bergren 7-10-0-135. SE-Menken 17-32-2-217.
Receiving: SCN-Stolzenburg 3-27, Mikes 3-80, Elliott 1-28. SE-Kumerow 8-87, Burchfield 2-51, Failla 3-57, McGinn 4-22
Total yards: SCN 331, SE 278
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