Antioch outruns Lakes
It’s not easy carrying the ball 34 times in a football game.
Or is it?
Antioch’s offensive linemen, who include Cody Gwinn, Jonathan Buxton, Lee Shannon, Justin Seyter, Jacob Craft, Austin Vogel and Mark Lyman, were asked who had it easier on Friday night: running back Danny Arden, who carried the ball 34 times for 248 yards against Lakes, or them.
After all, they had to do the blocking for all 34 of those carries.
“(Arden) definitely had it easier. He was running untouched all night,” said a smiling Shannon, insinuating that the line blew open such big holes that the Lakes defense could barely even lay a hand on Arden.
The rest of the linemen laughed and echoed the sentiment.
But they quickly changed their tune.
Shannon admitted he was kidding. He and the rest of the linemen said that Arden’s job of finding holes, running at full speed and eluding charging defenders is actually pretty darn tough. Especially when he’s asked to do it play after play after grueling play.
But whether Arden’s job is really tougher than the linemen’s is debatable and may never be known for sure.
What was for certain, though, is that by working together, Arden and his linemen made everything — the blocking, the running, and ultimately the scoring — look relatively easy as Antioch cruised to a 30-14 North Suburban Conference Prairie Division victory over Lakes on a chilly night in Lake Villa.
“Those guys,” Arden said of his offensive linemen, “were really, really good today.”
Good timing to be really, really good.
The win was a big one for the Sequoits. It not only gave them bragging rights over their District 117 sister school, it also put them in the driver’s seat in the race for the Prairie Division title.
Antioch (6-0, 3-0), now an early playoff qualifier with its sixth win, is now the only team that is unbeaten in division play. Lakes, which didn’t crack the scoreboard until there was only five minutes left to play in the game, drops its first Prairie game and is now 4-2 overall and 2-1 in the division.
“This week was so big with the rivalry, qualifying for the playoffs, the division race,” said Arden, who scored 3 of Antioch’s 4 touchdowns on runs of 7, 53 and 11 yards. “Everything was (tied in) with this game. We’re happy about it, we think we’re pretty good. But we still have some things to work on to get better.”
It was hard to find fault with Arden’s game.
He was so potent running the ball that the Sequoits barely had to crack open their playbook.
“We ran like one play the entire game, over and over and over again,” junior offensive lineman Mark Lyman said. “It kept going to Danny and they (Lakes) were never able to stop it.”
Arden shot out of the gates. He had 174 yards on 20 carries in the first half alone. His 2 touchdowns gave the Sequoits a 14-0 lead at halftime.
“We knew (Arden) was really good,” Lakes coach Luke Mertens said. “There wasn’t one thing he did that shocked me. He’s a tough runner and we knew he’d get the ball a lot. It all goes through him.
“If you don’t take him out of the game, he’s going to keep giving it to you. We never took him out of the game.”
On the flip side, the Sequoits did just that to the Lakes’ running game.
The Eagles, who are balanced offensively but like to run the ball as much as possible, managed just 96 rushing yards, 77 of which came in the fourth quarter when Antioch had the victory well in hand.
Leading rusher Direll Clark was held to 60 yards by the Sequoits.
“We knew that to stop them we needed to stop Direll Clark,” Antioch defensive back Stephen Smith said. “We worked this week in practice on getting the whole defense to swarm and we did a good job of that today.”
The Antioch defense also got credited with a safety when Zach Freundt sacked Lakes quarterback Chris Hoffman in the end zone in the third quarter. Quarterback Josh Anttila also scored in the third quarter for Sequoits on a 25-yard run.
Lakes got a touchdown from Clark (1-yard run) with 4:56 left to play and a 9-yard touchdown pass from Hoffman to Justin Bergeron as time expired.
“We just had too many penalties and too many missed plays,” Hoffman said. “By the time we got our offense going, it was too late. It’s frustrating. We’re not doing what we need to do to put points on the board. Our offense is better than what we’ve been showing lately.
“We got two good drives at the end of the game, maybe that will help leading into the next game.”