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Football: Third time’s a charm as Prairie Ridge downs Batavia
Mary Beth Nolan~For Sun-Times Media
Updated: November 20, 2011 9:41PM
After losing the the 6A semifinals the last two years, Prairie Ridge’s Connor Greenwald wanted to make sure there was not a three-peat.
Greenwald rushed for 219 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Wolves past host Batavia 33-22 Saturday. Prairie Ridge (12-1) will meet Richwoods in the 6A title game next Saturday.
“It was definitely redemption for us,” Greenwald said. “That’s all what we were talking about. we wanted this one bad.
My offensive line was terrific. we preached all week about staying low. And that’s exactly what they did.”
With the 35-mile per hour winds a factor, Batavia (13-1) led 14-13 at the half as the teams traded touchdowns.
The scoring started when Prairie Ridge tallied on a 25-yard pass from Nick Nissen to Nick Margiotta and three-yard run by Greenwald. Batavia countered with a 48-yard pass from from Noel Gaspari to Jon Gray and a 30-yard touchdown pass from Gaspari to Zach Strittmatter.
After stopping Batavia’s opening drive of the second half deep into their own territory, Prairie Ridge took control.
Jordan Getzelamn scored on an 18-yard run for the Wolves and Josh Hrudicka returned a Gaspari interception 37-yards for another touchdown. and when Greenwald scored on a 25-yard run with 11:32 to play to make it 33-14, it appeared Prairie Ridge was on its way to its first state title game.
But Gaspari, who would finish 27 of 42 for 334 yards, drove the Bulldogs 68 yards in just 42 seconds, tossing a four-yard touchdown pass to Evan Zeddies. Gaspari then threw a conversion pass to Gray to make it 33-22 with 10:56 to play.
Gaspari and the Bulldogs had two other chances to close the gap, driving to the Wolves’ 5-yard line on each occasion, but fell short on both.
Batavia first had a touchdown called back on an illegal block and then Gaspari threw an incompletion on fourth down. Then with less then two minutes to play, Prairie Ridge’s Sean Follard took the ball away from Zeddies in the end zone to clinch the victory.
“I just wanted to strip the ball,” Follard said. “I just hit him as hard as I could and I came up with the ball.” “A lot of hard work went into this,” Prairie Ridge coach Chris Schremp said. “When we lost the game last year it was a heartbreaker. But from that moment, the senior class made up their mind to work as hard as they could to get the job done.”
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