Dundee-Crown tops East Aurora for 1st victory
Greg Williams had every reason to smile.
The Dundee Crown senior enjoyed a monster night with 197 yards on 29 carries and 2 touchdowns to go along with a 7-yard touchdown pass from Conor Ryan as the Chargers won their first game of the 2016 season, a 34-6 homecoming nonconference victory over East Aurora Friday night in Carpentersville.
"We had three really tough losses to start the season," said Williams. "This is a great win for our confidence, Our offensive line opened huge holes for me all night and were phenomenal. The seniors on our team wanted to win our last homecoming game."
D-C coach Mike Steinhaus praised Williams' efforts.
"We call him Mighty Mouse for a reason," said the D-C coach. "He is just an athlete who runs hard and does a great job of following his blockers."
Sophomore Ricky Ibarra complemented Williams in the running game with 64 yards on 10 carries with a touchdown run of 24 yards. The sophomore also caught a 5-yard scoring strike from Ryan,
Ryan completed 9-of-12 passes for 108 yards and 2 scores. Sean Jay caught three passes for 46 yards.
"It was nice to see us get the passing game going tonight," said Steinhaus. "Conor really threw the ball well and was able to use a lot of different receivers."
The opportunistic Charger defense registered 3 turnovers on the evening. Senior defensive back Justin Garvey had 2 interceptions and Ross Dalgleish recovered a fumble for the Chargers (1-3).
Led by Williams and Ibarra, D-C rushed the ball 49 times for 319 yards. With Ryan's 108 yards of passing, the Chargers compiled 427 yards of total offense with 28 first downs.
"This was a great win for us after 3 losses to start the win," said Steinhaus. "We played with a lot of emotion tonight and it was good to get a win on homecoming and sing the school's fight song."
D-C set the tone in the first quarter with 2 scores, an 11-yard TD run by Williams and a 15-yard scoring pass from Ryan to Ibarra. The Chargers led 14-0 with 3:33 remaining in the first quarter.
The Tomcats looked in position to slice the D-C advantage to a touchdown, moving to the Charger 9 but a fumble recovered by Dalgleish with 10 seconds left in the first quarter ended the threat.
East Aurora's only score of the game was a 2-yard touchdown run by quarterback Andre Pearson with a minute left before intermission.
"The turnovers and mistakes really hurt us," said East Aurora coach Kurt Becker. "But games are won on the defensive and offensive lines and we haven't won those wars all season. We played well in spurts but we didn't have any consistency or rhythm."