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Wheaton Academy wins neighborhood rivalry game

Friday was historic for Wheaton Academy and West Chicago football, significant for Kent Harmon, too.

The Wheaton Academy junior had transferred from Marmion the second semester of his sophomore year and was eager to play.

“I love to play football and this is a great school to play football at,” he said.

In the first varsity game between the two West Chicago schools, Harmon clinched the visiting Warriors' 23-14 nonconference win on a touchdown blast with 1:43 left to play.

“It was a perfect play, about 2, 3 yards,” he said. “I put my head down, trusted my teammates, trusted the hole and went through, scored,” said Harmon, bulling between center Derek Johanik and right guard Graham Wall.

“Yeah, a little bit extra tonight knowing we're playing a team that's only a mile down the road from us,” said Wheaton Academy coach Brad Thornton.

Wheaton Academy owned the ball nearly the whole first quarter but saw West Chicago take a brief 7-0 lead late in the first half. C.J. Griffin recovered a Warriors fumble and Wildcats quarterback Zach Stefan ran 19 yards for a touchdown.

Thirty-nine seconds later Wheaton Academy's Harrison Taylor got the Warriors within 7-6 on a fingertip catch of Ben Thorson's 36-yard touchdown pass.

“The touchdown we gave up just before halftime was very difficult,” said West Chicago coach Ted Monken. “We could have just shut them down before half, that makes it a whole different complexion.”

Wheaton Academy's Miles VanderKlock hit a 27-yard field goal for a 9-7 lead, but West Chicago's Devonte Pascal ran 49 yards to help West Chicago gain first-and-goal at the Warriors' 5-yard line.

On fourth-and-goal from the 2, Wheaton Academy linebacker Tyler Jackson stuffed the Wildcats' ball carrier. Wheaton Academy then went 98 yards, 70 of them on a VanderKlock catch, and capped a huge swing on Taylor's 1-yard touchdown run for a 16-7 lead at 9:13 of the fourth quarter.

“I just knew that I had to do everything to get them down,” Jackson said. “If they score the game could have changed.”

Stefan completed a pair of 28-yard passes to Michael Alfano and Noah Jones to set up Pascal's 7-yard touchdown run to trim the margin to 16-14, before Harmon clinched the win.

“We've just got to work on our technique, on our mental aspect of the game. We'll fix it by next week, we'll punch it in,” Stefan said.

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