Week 1 rewind: 11-man offenses take to the skies in openers

Cole Latimer threw for 423 yards and four touchdowns in a DeKalb loss to Sycamore. Spartans quarterback Burke Gautcher had 250 yards on 15-of-17 passing in the win over the Barbs. Chase Kruckenberg had both Kaneland touchdowns in a win at Washington.

And, perhaps most surprisingly, Nathan Kelba had three passing touchdowns for a Genoa-Kingston team that famously runs the ball almost exclusively out of a wing-T.

That kind of passing prowess didn’t trickle down to the eight-man level, where Hiawatha picked up an overtime win at Rockford Christian Life.

Sycamore 35, DeKalb 28: At Huskie Stadium, it was a wild one from the start as Josiah Mitchell returned the opening kickoff for a score and Carter York got an interception on the first DeKalb drive.

DeKalb answered with two touchdowns before the end of the half but missed both extra points and trailed 14-12 at the break. Billy Miller turned two slants from Latimer into touchdowns, the first going for 69 yards in the first quarter. Travis Gooden also had a 2-yard touchdown catch from Latimer before the half.

The Barbs led 28-21 halfway through the fourth when Sycamore forced a punt and things started getting really wild. The punt bounced off the helmet of a Sycamore player, and DeKalb recovered. But on the next play, Caden O’Donnell intercepted Latimer, returned it 30 yards, and five plays later Dylan Hodges tied the game with a 3-yard run.

DeKalb’s drive ended at the Sycamore 36 with 37 seconds left in the game after O’Donnell broke up a pass. On the first play of Sycamore’s drive, Aidan Wyzard turned a short pass from Gautcher into a 64-yard score, blazing past the DeKalb defense for the winning score.

“We talk about playing 48 minutes all the time,” Sycamore coach Joe Ryan said. “It’s not cliche. It’s what we believe in. We finally got some stops, and it was a huge interception by Caden O’Donnell to get us back into the game after that muffed punt. It didn’t look good, but our kids kept playing.”

The Barbs had the chance to tie it or win it. Latimer found Davon Grant for 50 yards, but Gautcher intercepted the last pass of the game in the end zone as time expired.

“This one hurts,” DeKalb coach Derek Schneeman said. “There’s nothing that’s going to take the hurt away. You play a really good team Week 1, back and forth. There’s plays we’d like to have back. That’s just how it goes. We’ll figure out what we need to correct and move forward.”

Kaneland 20, Washington 14: At Washington, the Knights picked up a huge road win to open the season against a perennial state power.

“I’m just so proud,” coach Michael Thorgesen said. “They played their hearts out. We were definitely underdogs going into this one. The kids showed up and played with heart and got the win.”

Sophomore Jackson Little had two interceptions for the Knights (1-0) and Luke Gadomski had an interception in the final five minutes to seal the win.

Kicker Sam Bruno had a big game as well, kicking two field goals and booting every kickoff out of the back of the end zone, Thorgesen said.

The coach also said he was impressed with Kruckenberg, a senior quarterback who had two touchdown passes in his first varsity start. One was a 50-yarder to Brady Brown, and the other was 25 yards to Dylan San Augustin.

Genoa-Kingston 41, Leo 22: At Genoa, Kleba hurled three touchdown passes in the first half as part of a big-play explosion as the Cogs beat the Lions.

Kleba started with a 26-yard pass to wide-open Patrick Young. He also had a 57-yard TD pass to Blake Ides. With less than five seconds left in the first half, Kleba found Hayden Hodgson to stake the Cogs to a 35-6 lead at halftime.

“I definitely influenced his decision on calling those [passing] plays,” Kleba joked. “I’m a little surprised we called all those pass plays, but it worked out.”

Hiawatha 6, Rockford Christian Life 0 (OT): At Rockford, quarterback Aiden Cooper had a 3-yard sneak for the only score of the game to start the overtime for the Hawks.

In the RCL half of the overtime, Hiawatha had a couple of sacks, including freshman Camden Rasmus and Braden Ross on fourth down to end the eight-man game.

“Defensively we played an amazing game,” coach Kenny McPeek said. “We flew around, did our responsibilities to a T and tackled. We tackled better than we have in the past. Everything kind of worked how it should.”

Ross had six tackles in the game, while Tommy Butler had 12 and was a menace on defense, according to McPeek.

• More information about these games is online at Friday Night Drive.