Monday night football? Lisle likes it

Lisle football coach Paul Parpet had a simple solution for keeping his boys excited for a Monday game rather than disappointed by Friday's washout.

"You've got to keep going," he said. "You've got to keep going."

And Lisle went, right downfield to reclaim the Old Plank Road Trophy with an emphatic win over Westmont. Beating the Sentinels for the seventh time in 10 meetings for the icon, Lisle won the Interstate Eight Conference Small Division game 43-0 at Benedictine University in Lisle.

Lisle (2-2, 1-1) ran its clockwork double-wing offense to a T, rushing for 370 yards at better than 6 yards a carry. Behind Lions offensive linemen Jack Pawlowicz, Austin Coffey, Andrew Marroquin, Alex Lange and Jeff Marach, Nick Massura ran for 138 yards and Grant Haen for 118.

"Last week at Wilmington we had a tough time getting off the line," Haen said. "This week in practice we really emphasized our offensive line play. We talked about how that was going to be the key to win the game tonight."

Using nine straight run plays on Lisle's first possession, quarterback Alec Van Volkenburg sneaked 1 yard behind Marroquin for a 7-0 lead at 8:08 of the first quarter. The senior had the Lions up 14-0 less than three minutes later on a 50-yard fly in stride to Mark McGrath.

A spread passing team anyhow, Westmont (1-3, 0-1) went full-bore to quarterback Kyle Domin's right arm. He threw for 150 yards with Marquis Thomas catching 8 balls for 104 yards. Domin also ran for 86 hard-fought yards.

Down 20-0 after Mike Metoyer's 6-yard touchdown run at 7:08 of the second quarter, Westmont coach Otto Zeman demanded an up-tempo approach that worked - to an extent.

Domin's 33-yard pass to Thomas gained first-and-goal from the Lisle 2-yard line, but the Lions' defense held, linebacker Zach Temmerman stuffing the quarterback for a 2-yard loss from the 1.

"We knew they weren't going to try to run the ball that much so we just played press-man and we just waited for them to come at us. We played it right," Temmerman said.

Leading 20-0 at halftime, Lisle tacked on a 40-yard touchdown run by Haen, a 22-yard McGrath field goal, Josh Jamison's late 21-yard touchdown run and, as time expired, Drew English's 82-yard interception return for touchdown, English's second pick of the game.

"My hat goes off to our defensive backs tonight, to shut out a team with that kind of explosiveness," Parpet said of Lions such as Metoyer, English, Massura and Zach Porter.