Lincoln-Way East eventually overwhelms Kenwood

CHICAGO – Through the first quarter of play at Gately Stadium on Saturday Lincoln-Way East had managed no first downs, no points and negative offensive yardage in its matchup with Chicago Kenwood.

Those facts may have rattled lesser teams.

But the Griffins did what they almost seem to do, wear down an opponent before eventually steamrolling them as Lincoln-Way East breezed to an eventual 52-12 victory.

“I’m thinking, well, don’t flinch,” Lincoln-Way East coach Rob Zvonar said. “I guess sometimes when you have adversity, you can lean on tradition a little bit and nobody panicked. Offense was six plays first two series, man, we were going nowhere. But the defense got the pick and put is in scoring position. We broke through and it seems like once we did that the offense settled down and started playing football.”

And while Lincoln-Way East wasn’t playing its best football over the first 12 minutes, Kenwood seemed determined not to capitalize on what appeared to be the malaise of the Griffins (1-0).

Lincoln-Way East’s Connor Durkin picked off a Kenwood pass and ran it all the way back to the 23-yard line on the third play of the second quarter. One play later Braden Tischer connected with DJ Richardson for a 23-yard score.

Kenwood (0-1) continued to be in a giving mood on its next possession, botching a punt attempt which set up the Griffins with great field position that inevitably led to a 15-yard jaunt around end by Nuri Muhammad, the first of three rushing touchdowns he’d score in the contest.

The Broncos regrouped after that error with Nacari McFarland finding Patrick Clacks III for an 80-yard touchdown score, but as quickly as Kenwood appeared to be back in the game it gave up another gift, a huge kickoff return that set Lincoln-Way East up inside the Kenwood 20 and moments later Muhammad was back in the endzone.

Lincoln-Way East led 21-6 at that point, scoring three offensive touchdowns despite having gained less than 50 yards of total offense to that point.

“A lot of times we just wanted to be the team that makes the least mistakes,” Zvonar said.

Lincoln-Way East flexed its muscles in the third quarter, scoring quickly on a Ryan Usher 28-yard reception from Tischer that took advantage of a broken Kenwood coverage then chewed away most of third quarter clock with a drive that culminated in a 22-yard field goal from Robert Mensching.

After Kenwood had a quick three-and-out, Lincoln-Way East capped the third quarter with a 60-yard touchdown strike from Tischer to Cade Serauskis and the Griffins led 35-6.

Kenwood had another big play at the beginning of the fourth quarter as Khamari Thunderbird found Bolingbrook transfer I’Marion Stewart (five catches, 114 yards) for an 80-yard sprint and score to close up the gap a tiny bit, but Lincoln-Way East responded fairly quickly with Muhammad scoring from 1-yard out after Zion Gist’s 67-yard run had him tripped up just inches before hitting paydirt.

Kenwood racked up nearly as many yards offensively as Lincoln-Way East did. But nearly two-thirds of Kenwood’s total offensive output came on the two long scoring plays. The Broncos did next to nothing outside of those efforts against Lincoln-Way East’s experienced and relentless defense.

“We just wanted to stay together as a team,” Lincoln-Way East defensive end Caden O’Rourke said. “We were just planning on playing our game and keeping to our responsibilities.”

Kenwood also played most of the game without its standout defensive end Marquise Lightfoot, a Miami (Fla.) commit, who suffered an injury early in the first quarter and did not return.