Miracle finish for North Chicago at Round Lake
North Chicago had no kicker, nor life, seemingly, after Round Lake sucked it out of them by marching 92 yards to score the go-ahead touchdown with 27 seconds left.
But the Warhawks had heart.
And Arnold Shead.
Down to its final strike, North Chicago struck with Shead, its speedy, smooth, shakin'-and-bakin', smiling sophomore who improvised in the final seconds and connected with Nigel Williams on a 43-yard TD pass with four ticks left. The heroics rallied the Warhawks to a 20-17 victory that spoiled Round Lake's homecoming in a North Suburban Prairie Division thriller Saturday.
“We stuck with it,” Shead said. “We told ourselves we were going to be a family and, no matter what, we were going to fight to the end.”
For North Chicago (1-3, 1-1), which had not won since beating Round Lake in Week 5 last year, the victory snapped a seven-game losing streak. The euphoric Warhawks celebrated by dousing coach Glen Kozlowski and a couple of his assistants with ice water from a giant jug.
“That last drive, they got their athletes the ball,” Round Lake coach John Coursey said. “Unfortunately for us, we weren't in the right spots.”
Round Lake (1-3, 1-1), which snapped a 26-game NSC Prairie losing streak the previous week against Wauconda, was seeking its first two-game winning streak since 2006, when it opened the season with wins over Westosha Central and Maine East.
“We're competing, and that's what we come to do,” said Round Lake quarterback/outside linebacker Anthony Burton, who rushed for 86 yards, passed for 84 and notched a sack. “I'm happy for that.”
North Chicago won despite playing without kicker Doug Mead-Colon, whose absence due to a broken arm explained why the Warhawks went for 2 after each of their 3 touchdowns, including Shead's bootleg from 1 yard out early in the fourth. Shead's conversion pass failed, keeping North Chicago's lead at 14-11 and giving Round Lake a chance to force overtime with a field goal.
“We found out (Friday) night,” Kozlowski said of Mead-Colon's broken arm. “This is how it goes for us.”
Shead, who alternated between quarterback and running back, rushed for 182 yards on 24 carries. He also completed 7 of 13 passes for 110 yards.
After Round Lake took the late lead on Daniel Vega's second touchdown of the game — from 1 yard out to complete a 16-play drive that started at the Panthers 8 with 5:55 left — North Chicago took over at the home team's 43. After an incompletion on first down, Shead dropped back, scrambled, sprinted and then, just before he hit the line of scrimmage, found Williams on the sideline.
“Coach called me over to the sideline (after the incompletion on first down) and he said, ‘Outside guys run flies and inside guys run deep outs,' ” Shead said. “He said, ‘Keep it if we don't get (the completion) and run out of bounds, or we'll call a timeout.' I was thinking about running it, but at the last (second), (Williams) jumped out of nowhere. I just hit him, and he took off for the touchdown.”
Williams, whose only other catch resulted in a 16-yard scoring pass from Shead, eluded tacklers, cut up the middle and sped into the end zone.
“I thought he was down,” Shead said. “He pulled through for us. He was a playmaker at the end.”
Kozlowski credited Shead's athleticism on the game-winner, too.
“He created that by running, sucking the linebackers and flipping it to the open guy,” Kozlowski said of his young QB. “You got a lot of guys and you're trying to get touches to everybody, but at the end of the day he's the kid that's going to make the most of it.”
Round Lake “did all the right things,” Coursey said, on its go-ahead drive late in the fourth. The Panthers picked up 6 first downs on the march before Vega burst in from the 1.
“It was everything we practiced all week,” Vega said. “We just executed everything.”
Two plays before Vega's TD, the Panthers faced a fourth-and-3 from the 13. Instead of sending out the field-goal unit, they had Burton line up behind center. North Chicago helped out by jumping offside.
“We knew that if we went on a hard count that they'd probably jump offsides,” Coursey said. “Our plan was, if they didn't jump offsides, we'd call a second timeout and then we'd kick the field goal.”
Ultimately, the Panthers scored too soon, as Coursey put it.
“A loss is a loss,” Vega said after the Panthers lost for the 10th time in their last 11 games. “You know you worked hard, but it doesn't matter (if you lose). We just got to try to keep focused.”