Johnny O’Brien leads Fremd past Lake Zurich, 31-0

LAKE ZURICH – Fremd has traditionally been a pound-and-ground football program.

That appears to have changed this season thanks to the play of quarterback Johnny O’Brien.

The junior, who is committed to Northwestern, made the Vikings look like “Air Coryell” Friday in Lake Zurich. O’Brien was 25-38 for 259 yards and three touchdowns as Fremd stunned the Bears 31-0.

It was the first Fremd win over Lake Zurich since 2019.

“Our team was preaching that the whole week, just have fun out there,” said O’Brien, who threw 14 consecutive passes to open the game and would later also scramble for 45 yards.

“It’s the new era. As our coach likes to say, we like to attack the RPO game. So yeah, I expect a lot of throwing out of us, and all that throwing seemed to pay off.”

Fremd coach Lou Sponsel said that this is a new type of Fremd team.

“We like to throw the ball,” Sponsel said. “But we can run it as well. We just go out and play hard and have fun in football in practice. And that’s exactly what we did tonight. We warmed up just like that.”

Fremd was completely dominant on both sides of the ball in the first half as the Vikings took a 17-0 lead. The Vikings ran 36 plays to Luke Zurich’s 21.

Fremd ran just two set rushing plays and leaned almost exclusively on O’Brien’s left arm. O’Brien didn’t disappoint and was masterful in distributing passes to six different receivers. He completed 21-of-30 passes for 225 yards and two touchdowns.

Fremd took a 3-0 lead late in the first quarter on a 25-yard field goal by Shea Sloan. That score was set up by a fumble recovery by Will Klimas.

O’Brien then worked on his connection with Marquan Brewster. The duo combined for a hat trick of touchdowns as the Vikings pulled away.

Brewster caught a 14-yard touchdown pass with 4:55 left in the first half. He then followed up with a 33-yarder with 26 seconds left on the half that had Brewster make a nifty cut to take the ball into the end zone.

Then O’Brien and Brewster connected for a one-yard touchdown pass.

“We have been working all summer camp,” said Brewster, who had 7 catches for 131 yards. “All that hard work paid off tonight.”

With O’Brien nursing a cramp in his throwing thumb and the Fremd offensive line wanting to play some power football down the stretch, the Vikings returned to a previous form. Running the ball behind Owen Jakubczak, Bayarbat Chuluubat, Stathi Regopoulos, Mikey Varon and Sid Yalamanchili, Fremd was able to wear down Lake Zurich, running 31 second-half plays to Lake Zurich’s 19.

Jayden Faulkner closed out the Fremd scoring with a two-yard touchdown run.

The Frend defense, led by Klimas, Troy Pepe, Alex Foreman, John Stevens, Luke McIlhon, Devyn Kuhn and Brennan Saxe forced four turnovers and held Lake Zurich to zero rushing yards and 112 passing yards.

“It was a rough night,” Lake Zurich Ron Planz said. “We had a lot of fundamental issues and that is on us coaches. We just didn’t execute very well.”

https://www.dailyherald.com/20240830/prep-football/obrien-fremd-shock-lake-zurich/