Late score lifts Dixon over Stillman Valley

DIXON — With 21.3 second left in the Big Northern Conference game Saturday at AC Bowers Field, Dixon quarterback Jacob Gaither got flushed from the pocket. He rolled right to buy some time, then launched a pass to Hunter Gehrt, who broke toward the end zone when Gaither rolled out.

Gehrt was able to get behind the Stillman Valley secondary on the play and Gaither’s pass dropped neatly into his hands, securing the 28-yard touchdown and with it a 20-19 Dukes win over the Cardinals.

“I tried just getting open into the open field and he just saw me run across the field,” Gehrt said. “He just threw it up and it happened to be right there.”

It was a final drive which did not start out well for the Dukes. Starting with the ball at the Dixon 26 with 59 seconds to play and needing a touchdown, Gaither completed a 1-yard pass to Jacob Gusse on the sideline and threw a pair of incompletions, the second just out of the reach of Cal Kyker streaking down the sideline. That brought up a fourth-and-9, with Gaither converting it by finding Gehrt for a 28-yard gain to get into Cardinals’ territory.

“We were trying to get to the outside on every play,” Gaither said. “We just ran fades down the field, had to look the safety off so he wouldn’t go to the side I was going to. I just threw it down the sideline and he caught it.”

After a pair of completions to Gusse on the next two plays, he was able to find Gehrt once again for the score.

The Dixon touchdown with 21.3 seconds left answered a score by Stillman Valley with 1:01 to play.

The Cardinals (2-2) got the ball at the Dixon 30 with 3:03 left down 14-13 thanks to a 48-yard punt return by Kaden Viverito. Converting a pair of third downs along the way, Stillman claimed the lead on a 7-yard run by Viverito.

“We were able to seal the edge pretty good,” Stillman Valley coach Mike Lalor said. “I think the biggest thing was we were able to take care of the ball on the last drive. The dropped snaps were hurting us a bit there. It is what it is. That’s the situation we’re in right now.”

Stillman Valley had a chance to answer again in the closing seconds, with a handful of Dixon penalties pushing the ball to the Dukes’ 25 with 9 seconds to go, but on the last-gasp attempt from the Cardinals, Gehrt intercepted the pass and raced the other way, stepping out of bounds after he saw the clock hit 0:00.

Gaither completed 11-of-22 passes for 147 yards and two touchdowns. He also rushed 14 times for 58 yards, using option plays to keep the ball moving.

“It really spreads you pretty thin,” Lalor said. “He can take it for 10 or 20 a pop running it, and he can throw it like on the last drive, too. He’s a great ball player.”

Gaither’s first touchdown pass of the afternoon came late in the third quarter, when he hit Gusse on a slant route and Gusse raced 53 yards for a score.

“We had someone coming around and his dude followed him, so we had the middle of the field wide open,” Gaither said. “Gusse just caught the ball and ran in wide open space.”

Viterito led Stillman Valley with 192 rushing yards on 18 carries with two touchdowns, one of them from 65 yards on the Cardinals’ first drive of the game.

As a team, Stillman Valley gained 247 yards rushing, but also had numerous issues with the snap along with other issues keeping hold of the ball, resulting in 11 fumbles, three of which Dixon recovered.

The long touchdown run by Viverito, a series of three-and-outs, and the fumbles meant that Stillman Valley ran just 16 offensive plays in the first half. Following Viverito’s score, the Cardinals gained 34 yards the rest of the half, then saw their first two drives of the second half stall out resulting in punts.

“Our defense played well after the first series, which was similar to last week when we let Lutheran come out get a drive to begin the game,” Dixon coach Jared Shaner said. “We did it again today, tightened up, the kids played well defensively.”

Dixon (1-2) also scored on its first drive, a 12-play, 61-yard campaign capped off by a 4-yard plunge up the middle.

The Dukes punted the ball away the next two drives, then seemingly got the offense moving again in the second quarter, only to turn the ball over on downs at the Stillman Valley 32 with 8:32 left in the half and then miss a 34-yard field goal with 3:31 left in the half. Dixon punted six times in the game, with four of those drives going three-and-out.

[ Check out more photos from Saturday's football game between Dixon and Stillman Valley ]

The win is Dixon’s first of the year after a pair of close losses. The 19-14 Stillman lead entering the final drive was identical to the final score of Dixon’s opener, a loss to Winnebago. Last week against Rockford Lutheran, Dixon also trailed by five and had the ball in the closing seconds, but could not move the ball downfield, resulting in a 7-2 loss.

“We just talked to the kids about making plays,” Shaner said. “I thought we had some kids step up and make plays. Just continued to move forward, and that’s what the kids did. We can go up and down our lineup with kids who made plays and just stuck with it. It wasn’t always pretty, but our kids fought the entire time.”

The win is Dixon’s first over the Cardinals since the 2017 season, the year the Dukes reached the Class 4A quarterfinal, snapping a four-game losing streak to Stillman Valley. In both 2018 and 2019, Stillman got the best of the Dukes both in the regular season and in the playoffs.

“It’s such a big win,” Gaither said. “It’s a big win for next week, then for the following year for everyone who’s returning.”