Competitive Taylor, Hill lead the way for Antioch
Point to Alan Taylor.
In his friendly rivalry with teammate Griffin Hill, the Antioch fullback got a leg up on Friday night. Taylor rolled up a game-high 144 yards and scored 2 touchdowns to lead the Sequoits to a breezy 37-12 homecoming victory over visiting Grant.
Hill, Antioch's other dangerous back, had 35 rushing yards and 2 touchdowns.
"There's all these little things that we compete on, like who got the better block or the better run. Now, I need to bounce back next game," Hill said with a laugh. "But even though today might not have been my best game, you've got Alan over there running all over the place. Just seeing him break out long runs, gets me excited. We just feed off each other."
"Yeah, we motivate each other," Taylor said.
Hill and Taylor also take the pressure off each other. When defenses focus on one of them, the other usually has the room to go crazy.
It's a pick-your-poison situation for the opposition.
"Depending on alignment and what the defense runs, that's what predicates our attack," said Antioch coach Brian Glashagel, whose team improves to 4-1 overall and 3-0 in the North Suburban Prairie Division. "(Hill and Taylor) are both really good athletes, but some nights, one guy's hot until the defense finds a way to take that away. Then, the other guy goes."
Antioch was going and going and going from the very start.
The Sequoits were up 10-0 at the end of the first quarter on a Ben Gutke 44-yard field goal and a 15-yard pass from Dan Meade (6-of-9, 90 yards) to Ian Flately. Antioch scored again just two seconds into the second quarter on a Taylor 1-yard run. That put the Sequoits up 17-0.
"You want to get off quick," Glashagel said. "And we said that we didn't want to take our foot off the gas the whole time."
Grant running back Jeremy Bredwood broke up Antioch's string of scores with a 33-yard touchdown run midway through the second quarter, but Antioch scored again on a 2-yard run by Hill to take a 23-6 advantage into the halftime locker room.
Bredwood also scored Grant's other touchdown, on a 15-yard run in the fourth quarter.
"I just saw the end zone," said Bredwood, who finished with 105 yards on 12 carries. "I just ran. The schemes are there. But we don't always execute."
Antioch scored 2 touchdowns in the third quarter (a 32-yard run by Taylor and a 2-yard run by Hill) to put the game away for good.
"We're just a program in transition," said first-year Grant coach Vito Andriola, whose team drops to 1-4 overall and 1-2 in the division. "We had times when we could get back in the game, but we didn't. We're just not there yet. They're way better than us, and a lot of it was strength. A lot of this was the weight room. Our program isn't there yet."